Bonfire toffee

You wait six months for a festival, then two come along in one week (much like Mealtime Meltdown blog posts… ahem…). Hot on the heels of Hallowe’en* comes Bonfire Night** at the weekend, so you’ll be needing a treacle toffee recipe, won’t you?

A pumpkin explosion

We carved this monstrous trio from pumpkins grown for us by our lovely neighbour. She didn't know what variety they were but I decided to have a go at cooking the flesh anyway. It was a rather haphazard affair. I roasted some of the larger chunks, steamed the smaller bits in the microwave... but then just mixed it all together anyway and blended it to what turned out to be a rather looser puree than I might have hoped for. The answer seemed to be to reduce the water content by simmering it in an open saucepan... The answer, that is, if the question had been: "What's the best way to spread volcanic splashes of pumpkin over the widest available area?"

Cheesy corn bread

“Can’t we have something regular that you get from the shops and you don’t even have to make?”

Sigh.

OK, I’ll admit that the children (who, you'll have gathered, are not exactly adventurous) have had a fair amount of new stuff foisted on them this week. I’ve been researching recipes for a parent and toddler cooking class that a friend and I are going to be running this autumn.

A nugget of the purest green

We didn’t eat many meals together as a family when our children were just learning to eat solid foods. This was because DH was working long hours and was rarely home to see – let alone eat with – the children and because I’d convinced myself that I couldn’t make food that satisfied their needs and tastes as well as my own (now is not the time or the place to have the conversation about how dieting WRECKS LIVES, though).

I wish I’d had Nikki Duffy’s book back then. Nikki (who happens to be a former colleague) has written a fantastic book (under the aegis of River Cottage) all about feeding babies and toddlers and it’s crammed with useful, reassuring, practical and pragmatic advice, as well as some really, really terrific recipes. I plan to write in more detail about the book in a future post BUT suffice it to say that the most iron-clad advice that she gives and that anybody could give anybody about feeding young children is MAKE THEM EAT WHAT YOU EAT FROM AN EARLY AGE.

So I – clearly – feel like I’ve already failed in this regard, even if the two of us dining together regularly (telly off, candle on table, good bottle of wine) has felt like a sanity-saver on occasion. But I think what I mean to say here is that if I was eating regularly with a young child, this – as well as the amazing recipes in Nikki’s book - is what I would be making.

Pizza, and some observations on dough

I know I’m supposed to be pushing the boundaries, using this blog as a way of challenging myself to make innovative, interesting family food that takes us out of our comfort zone… but the Gorgeous Boy looked at up me the other day with his beautiful, liquid brown eyes and asked for pizza. I was pretty powerless to resist.

In theory, at least, pizza-making is a fun activity in which to get the kids involved. They can slap the dough around a bit, and, look! Here are some vegetables! Make a funny face with them on top of your pizza!

I have two observations to make at this point.

Quickie post: Best. Chicken. Sandwich. Ever.

Hi, howareya? Yeah, I know I haven't been around much lately. I have been thinking about you, though! And as my last post (way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) featured roast chicken, I thought I'd offer my take on what to do with some of the leftovers.

Roast chicken with leek

Oh, man. Is there anything (anything?) finer in this world than a chicken, roasted to crisp, golden, salty perfection? Amazingly enough, even the children seem to agree, so I’m taking it to the next level by introducing an accompaniment that makes the most of the marriage made in heaven that is chicken + leek + pasta. Wait a minute, that’s bigamy. Ha ha.

For this dish, a plump, farm-fresh, free-range chicken is roasted atop a mound of snowy white, aromatic leeks. When it’s done the bird is removed to reveal the cooked leeks (some tantalizingly crisp, some melting and soft) resting in a pool of intensely flavoured chicken juices. A heap of cooked wide papardelle pasta – I’m afraid I’m talking non-PC, refined white pasta that will absorb all those lovely juices – is mixed in. The ribbons of leek get lost and melt into the pasta, making the kind of slippery, flavourful mouthful that will have you picking at the dish until lo-o-o-ng after you’re full.

That’s the theory, anyway. But will the kids go for it? Here’s the recipe.