Nut allergy? Chuck out the peanuts and try chickpeas instead!

Chickpeas are a great source of all sorts of nutrients.  They're high in fibre and contain 10 different vitamins.

In particular they're a great source of thiamin and B6, which helps the body convert food into energy, so they'd be a great snack on test/exam days when they've been revising into the night before!

Chickpeas provide multiple essential minerals, including calcium, magnesium and phosphorus -- essential to healthy bones and they're higher in potassium than bananas. 

A lot of kids love humus, which is fabulously easy to make - just blitz the chickpeas in a blender with some garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and tahini - obviously it's better for them if they'll eat it with raw vegetables but if you can only get them to eat it with toasted pitta, it's still good for them in its own right.  

Chickpea curry is a good vegetarian dish - I have a great recipe - if anybody would like it, let me know!

This may not sound appetising, but I promise you it is quite addictive - try warming through naan bread, breaking it open smearing humus inside, tucking in some crispy bacon and some pickled beetroot for breakfast - my mouth is watering just thinking about it!

But my recipe for today is for roasted chickpeas - eat them like nuts or popcorn......oh whoops, this is supposed to be about feeding the kids......you could let them have a taste if you are feeling that way inclined!  In the recipe below, I've used tinned chickpeas, they aren't as good for you as the dried variety but they are much more convenient.  When I prepare them from dried, I generally do about three times as much as I need and freeze what I don't use.  I haven't tried my frozen chickpeas for roasting yet and I'm not sure how the freezing would effect the texture for this recipe - frozen ones are fine in curries and humus though. 

• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (harissa or ras al hanout also work really well)
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 
  
• 1.    Pre-heat the oven to 220C.
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• 2.    Pat the chickpeas dry with a paper towel and place on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper.
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3.    Bake for 30 minutes.

4.    Mix together the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and add the baked chickpeas, stirring them to ensure they are all well coated.

5.    Transfer to mouth and chew!

Toffee Tasting Pumpkin Cupcakes - with parsnip!

Two veg in one cake - a great mid-morning snack or even with a glass of milk for breakfast, and they'll never know!

Ingredients:

For the buns:

175g soft butter (this needs to be at room temperature)

200g plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Small pinch ground cloves

250g tinned pumpkin puree (Waitrose/Ocado do this year round now)

2 medium sized parsnips, chopped, steamed and pureed

2 tablespoons maple syrup

325g light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

Icing:

175g soft butter

225g icing sugar

1/2 tin caramel/dulce de lecce

1.     Preheat oven to 190C.

2.     In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat, stirring, until the butter turns a light golden brown. Pour into a bowl to stop it cooking or plunge the saucepan bottom into a bowl of iced water.

3.     In a mixing bowl combine the dry ingredients.

4.     In another bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients including the brown butter.

5.     Add the wet mixture to the dry and whisk until combined.

6.     Line a muffin tin with 12 deep paper cases and divide the batter evenly using an ice cream scoop.

7.     Bake, rotating the tin halfway through, until a cocktail stick inserted in the centre comes out clean, which should take about 20 minutes.

8.     Transfer to a wire cooling rack and cool completely.

9.     To make the icing whisk the butter with an electric whisk or in a mixer until pale and fluffy.

10.  Add the icing sugar and caramel and continue to whisk until you have a stiff but fluffy frosting.

11.  Swirl the frosting onto the cooled cakes and then drizzle the rest of the tin of caramel over the top.


3rd June 2013

P.S. I've just tried to buy another batch of ingredients and it seems Waitrose don't do tinned pumpkin year round anymore - it can be bought from Amazon though!  It seemed cheaper to buy in a batch of 5 cans so now I need to make up some more recipes!

Meal times should be fun times

Sometimes, after a hard day's work and coming home to a bomb site in the living room and a teenager's bedroom with rotting unidentified old food stuffed under the bed, I do wonder why it was that I wanted a family and in that moment, I do take comfort from the thought that there are probably a million other mums experiencing exactly that same thought all over the world that night.

But, I do know why I had a child really - it was because, I like children and I liked the idea of having someone I could love and nurture and watch and help grow into a beautiful grown up who will give me grandchildren!

And the latter is what I want to think about when we sit down to our supper at night.  I want to emulate in a small way those wonderful Italian outdoor family meals we see in films, where everyone is laughing and chattering and passing each other fabulous looking food - even if it's only the two of us.  I want meal times to be a time where we unpick our day, moan about the ignorant guy in the car park who nicked my space, hear about how her little buddy at school has fallen out with her imaginary friends again, talk about what to wear on mufty day to wind up that stick-in-the-mud teacher and just know about each other's days and lives whilst sharing food and talking about it too.

At the end of a day, I do not want to have to pick a fight.  I do not want to fall out with my child and send her off to bed on a bad note whilst I sit in front of the TV with a feeling of disappointment and unease.  And, I don't want to put the same plate of food that she won't eat in front of her night after night until she caves in from hunger and eats something that isn't currently in her pallet.

Say your child takes the view that vegetables are poisonous - I have a nephew just like that - if you don't want to fight with him (or her!) about it, why not disguise them in a meal he will eat?  No need to tell him - just enjoy the food together and feel smugly happy that your child just got something he needed and liked it and don't stress about the fact he also ate a bunch of stuff he didn't need - he was going to do that anyway, whether you liked it or not.

I know this goes against what the current child psychology gurus preach - but gurus have got it wrong before............

So........grate carrot into your bolognese sauce, mash cauliflower into your mashed spuds (with plenty of butter), puree parsnip into banana dishes and start on the road to stealth health!

Avocado Ice Cream

 Avocado is technically a fruit and fruit goes into ice-cream doesn't it?

3 medium sized ripe avocados

1 tablespoon lemon juice

375 ml full fat milk

125 g caster sugar

250 ml double cream

250 ml dulce de lecce

1.              Peel and pit the avocados.

2.              Puree the avocado flesh together with the lemon juice, milk and sugar.

3.              In a mixing bowl, combine the avocado mixture with the double cream and whisk with an electric whisk until you have a soft peak consistency.

4.              If you have an ice-cream maker, process the mixture in the machine for about 8 – 10 minutes until the mixture starts to set and then spoon in the dulce de lecce caramel to form ripples through the ice cream and continue to process for another couple of minutes.

5.              If you don’t have an ice-cream maker, spoon the mix into a clingfilm lined plastic container and freeze for 40 minutes.  After that time, remove and pop the mixture back into a mixing bowl and whisk again with an electric whisk.  Re-line the container with fresh clingfilm and repeat the freezing then whisking process.  As you spoon the mixture back into the container this final time, gradually add the dulce de lecce caramel so that it is rippled through the icecream.  Pop it back into the freezer for a further 40 minutes and it should be ready.

Our 5-a-day and the humble pea!

Do we really need to achieve variety with 5-a-day?  We’ve all heard the “eat a rainbow” mantra but that’s not always possible and there is a lot to be said for picking your battles.  Ideally, your child’s 5-a-day should be made up of 3 portions of veg and 2 of fruit.  A portion is about a handful – and that’s a handful of the person eating, so a child’s portion will be smaller than your own.

Whilst that variety is the ideal, some of us know that with the best will in the world, the only thing we’re going to get some children to eat on the veg side is the humble pea!

The humble pea - we don’t usually think about it as an exotic food in terms of nutrient composition—but we should, they’re rich in phytonutrients, low in bad fat and generally nutritious and high in anti-oxidants. Cooked peas contain significant quantities of vitamin K, manganese, vitamin B-1 and vitamin C. Additionally, peas are a great source of dietary fiber.

Even though green peas are an extremely low-fat food, the type of fat and fat-soluble nutrients they contain is impressive. Recent research has shown that green peas are a reliable source of omega-3 fats in the form of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and also omega-6 fatty acid, linoleic acid.  They also contain beta-carotene and small but valuable amounts of vitamin E.

Give yourself a break – if all they’ll eat is peas, then give them lots of peas!  And you can add them to so much – so if you’re having a meat dish with rice – boil the peas in with the rice.  If using frozen, let them defrost first and add them to the rice about half way through cooking – this way any “leaching” of nutrients will be “caught” by the rice!  If you’re having cottage pie, put the peas in with the mince and make it a one pot meal!

I gave my daughter, as a toddler, a small bowl of frozen peas as a snack when it was hot outside rather than sugary ice pops and to this day, when frozen peas come out, her hand is straight in the saucepan to scoop them up before they cook!  I don’t really have many memories of food as a child but I certainly remember the joy of picking peas in my grandfather’s garden and eating them fresh from the pod – I preferred them to raspberries as picking them didn’t scratch my hands up!

Curry castle and rice moat

When I was a child, I doubt curry would have been on the menu for many if any picky eaters.  Now though, possibly in an effort to keep up with their peers, it seems that a mild curry is often a will eat.

For the purposes of this blog, I have actually found a castle shaped cookie cutter to make a curry castle.  To do this, I placed the cookie cutter on the plate, then wedged the cooked rice around it, spooned the curry inside the cutter and then carefully removed it.

I often do curry in the slow cooker so all I have to do when we all get in is prepare the rice.  With this recipe, I don’t even need to worry about any other accompaniments as the veg are stealthily hidden in the curry itself!

It's been called curry castle and rice moat in our house for as long as I can remember and don’t now know where the name came from, it may have been something from my own childhood.  It doesn’t usually get served as a castle and moat though.  A friend called me in a state of apoplexy one day asking how I managed to get the chicken to stack up like a castle – she’d been trying all afternoon as her daughter had asked for the dish by my name for it.  I couldn’t help laughing as I explained that I just serve the rice round the edge of the plate in a circular “moat” and dollop the curry in the middle – it’s just our name for curry and rice!

For the rice, I use a normal mug full of dry rice for 4 people.  Put the rice in a lidded pan and cover with two of the same sized mugs full of freshly boiled water and add a knob of butter.  Bring back to a simmer then cover and cook over a low to medium heat for about ten minutes or until all the water has absorbed and the rice is cooked.  If the water all disappears before the rice has cooked add a little at a time – about 25ml – until the rice is tender.

A good tip with making rice in advance is to drain it and hold it in a strainer/sieve under cold running water until it is cool throughout – this stops it cooking and turning to a mush.  You can then pop it into a bowl and cover it and refrigerate to heat up later.  Don’t keep cooked rice in the fridge for more than a few days though.  To reheat, simply put it back in the sieve and pour over boiling water.

For the curry: (serves 6)

2 tablespoons rapeseed oil

800g filleted chicken thighs

1 large onion, finely chopped

250g can of white beans

250g steamed cauliflower

2 tablespoons plain flour

250g can of chopped tomatoes

4 tablespoons ground almonds

4 tablespoons coriander

1 tablespoon cumin

½ teaspoon chili powder (or more to your taste)

½ teaspoon allspice

2 cloves garlic crushed

1cm cube ginger, finely chopped or grated

2 tablespoons turmeric

2 tablespoons garam masala

1 teaspoon tamarind paste (use Worcestershire sauce if you don’t have tamarind)

200g block of creamed coconut

1.             In a flame proof casserole, heat the oil and gently fry the onion, ginger and garlic.

2.              Using a slotted spoon to allow the oil to drain back into the pan, transfer to a food processor and blend to a fine puree together with the cauliflower and white beans.

3.             Brown the chicken gently in the remaining oil for about 5 minutes.

4.             Mix together the remaining dry ingredients and then add to the pan with the chicken and continue to cook gently for a further 5 minutes

5.             Add the canned tomatoes and the puree and bring to a gentle simmer.

6.             Add the creamed coconut and stir through until it has dissolved into the sauce.

7.             Add 250ml of hot water and bring back to the boil.

8.             Cover and transfer to the oven (or put the lot into your slow cooker) and cook at 130C for 2 hours, checking and stirring occasionally.

Aloe, Aloe, Aloe!

Sorry - couldn't resist the title!

I'm a huge fan of aloe vera - so much so I think my daughter has caught the bug as she now carries a tube of aloe gel around with her all the time and swears by it for numbing and healing the various cuts and sores she gets from her brace.

So when my nephew, who is probably the fussiest eater I know and part of the reason for me starting this blog and writing my book, had his tonsil removed and was in an awful amount of pain from it, I sent aloe to the rescue, which he said really helped until the pain subsided but at that point his gag reflex came back and he couldn't deal with the taste anymore.

In truth, however good it is for healing (and it is the best for sun burn) it does taste pretty rank.

Apparently, ice-cream is no longer recommended when tonsils are removed - it has something to do with dairy products being mucus inducing or something.  But ice-lollies and sorbets are still ok.

So, I set to and came up with this - dairy free but (apparently) very soothing

500ml hazelnut milk
100ml maple syrup
5 tablespoons dairy free dulce de lecce
200ml aloe vera juice

Simply whisk the ingredients together and either put them in an ice cream maker or put them in a plastic tub, large enough to be able to use an electric whisk in, and put it in the freezer. Leave for 30 minutes and then remove and with an electric whisk, whisk for about a minute.  Put it back in the freezer for a further 30 minutes and repeat.  After another 30 minutes, I added a couple of spoonfuls more of dulce de lecce and forked it through to give it a ripple effect.

This was very sweet but you couldn't taste the aloe at all.

Please feel free to add comments......

I've noticed that there are lots and lots of people reading my blog which is great.......please continue.

But nobody is talking to me :-(

Seriously, please feel free to leave comments or feedback - I want this to be an open forum to discuss the issues of dealing with picky eaters as well as a place others can share their recipe ideas on this subject too.

A note about maple syrup!

I use Maple syrup rather than honey in most of my recipes.  

This isn’t just a personal preference (although I do prefer maple syrup if using it in the raw).  Maple syrup is actually better than honey for what I am trying to achieve!

Here goes with some science -  for a starter, and I for one was quite surprised by this, maple syrup is lower in calories than honey.  It's quite a significant amount - over 10%!

Also the carbohydrate content in maple syrup is primarily sucrose, which is a complex sugar that your body breaks down into equal parts of fructose and glucose whereas honey’s carbohydrate content is pretty much pure fructose and the problem with that is that too much fructose is detrimental to heart and liver health. 

Honey is however higher in vitamin content but maple syrup is much better on mineral content.  So I suppose that's a balancing act as to what you are trying to achieve.

On the whole, I tend towards maple syrup as I don’t use it in my recipes for the "what is good for me" content.   I use it as it adds sweetness, so the concern for me is much more about avoiding what is bad for me.  

One final thing to really keep in mind is that you should never give honey to babies or to children with a vulnerable health profile due to the risk of botulism.  That's a risk you don't run with maple syrup.  The botulism content of honey is very real - it isn't anywhere as insignificant as the risk of say salmonella with raw eggs.

Cooking with your child

This is by no means a guaranteed way of getting your child to experiment with what they'll put in their mouths but having fun with making food is a great way of getting the dialogue going.

To start with, rather than getting into battle mode and cooking things that are good for them, try something silly.  Maybe green eggs and ham - it doesn't matter if they don't eat it, it gives you a chance to talk about the food - how could we make the eggs green?  Experiment - what happens if we tip some green food colour in before we fry them?  Is there a way of making green eggs without scrambling them?  If we scramble them, what vegetable purees could we add that taste ok and make them go green?

There are two absolutely brilliant books available which base all their recipes on the foods mentioned in Roald Dahl's books - the first is called Revolting Recipes and the second Even More Revolting Recipes.  They aren't about anything nutritious at all - they are purely about having fun with food.  I think that's a really fabulous first step.

Some years ago, on a rainy weekend, I used to let the kids each choose a recipe they wanted to try from these books, then I'd go to the supermarket and grab all the ingredients and let each of them have their own time with me making their chosen recipe whilst the others watched t.v. or played games.  We all then dug in to what could be described as a somewhat eccentric and unhealthy tea with all sorts of "eeeyew"s and "yuck"s.

We took photos of the food and made it into a folder, the kids wrote out the recipes of the successes to go in their folders and began their own recipe books.  I only have my own daughter's one left now and she continues to add to it.  For her 18th, amongst plenty of other more expensive must haves I'm sure, I think I shall have it printed into a book for her.

Fresh or Frozen

I'm a big fan of frozen veg.

The thing about it is that frozen veg is ripe when it is harvested and therefore has drawn maximum goodness from its environment and it is then frozen very quickly so very little chance to lose that natural given goodness.

Ripening before harvest is why vine ripened tomatoes taste so much better than those flacid horrid things in the "Value" pack.

Food that is harvested and not frozen will often ripen after it has been picked, when it has nothing but thin air to draw on for that process.

Don't beat yourself up about not buying fresh veg - think about how long it takes from picking to plate and how much of its nutritional value is lost in that process.

I'm a big fan of thinking about food miles and buying local.  I'm also a big proponent of buying British where you can.  It isn't just a political preference either - buying local food means that you are eating food stuffs which have the same environmental influences as you do and gives you the opportunity to buy fresher.  It isn't always possible of course - if you want asparagus in December, you're unlikely to get it just up the road.  For me though, that's when to turn to frozen.

I read an article the other day where they called people with this view point "localvores", I think I'm not unhappy with that label.

If you buy British frozen peas, they will have been flash frozen in minutes from being picked.  Let's think of what happens in winter when you buy fresh peas from say Chile.

They are picked in Chile and packed into boxes.  The boxes are then packed onto a lorry - no hurry, they have all day to fill the lorry.  The lorry then takes the peas to an airport, the drive takes several hours.  They wait at the airport to be loaded onto a plane, whilst various checks are made to make sure it really is a box of peas being transported and eventually they are loaded onto a plane.  It takes a while as there are other consignments to be shipped on the same plane.  Some hours later the plane takes off.  How many hours do you reckon it takes to fly from Chile to London (assuming of course that there isn't a change of plane at another Chilean airport because the first one was just a small local air strip) - let's say the trip takes 17 hours.

Then we have British customs and more paper work as the peas are unloaded.  Eventually they get put on a lorry and taken off to a big warehouse where they are repacked for the supermarket.  Then, once they've been repacked and some quality control checks have been undertaken, they are packed onto further lorries and sent out to distribution centres where they change lorry and get taken to your local Tesco, where some hours later they will eventually find their way to the food shelf.  Now take a look at those Chilean peas and see what the sell by date says - bet your last dollar it's more than a few days away.  So all in all if you are lucky from vine to plate that's likely to be at least a week, during which time many nutrients have faded away.

So next time you get out a packet of frozen peas - don't beat yourself up - congratulate yourself on choosing what is probably the healthier option!

Being a Secret Chef - a stealth health method of getting your kids to eat what they say they won't!: Students' Cottage Pie

Students' Cottage Pie

I remember cooking this in a dingy flat in Chalk Farm in our little Baby Belling oven that looked like something you would take camping rather than have in your home!  Every time I see Rachel Khoo's Little Paris Kitchen, I'm transported right back there!

This recipe is so cheap to make and yet it's packed with goodies and really has a comfort value.  If I was feeling extravagant I sometimes added bits of bacon or ham and on poorer days a can of spam of corned beef!  Salivating just thinking of it - this will be tomorrow night's supper in our house so that I can post a picture!

With the cheese and potato the cauliflower disappears and yet it retains all of its goodness because it's been steamed.  This isn't gourmet cooking but there's 5 of your 5-a-day in this.

So you will need:

4 large potatoes (King Edwards or Caras are my favourites for mash) peeled and diced into 1inch cubes
1 head of cauliflower or 5 handfuls of frozen cauliflower
50g butter
200g cheddar cheese, grated
2 tins of beans
1 tin of sweet corn
4 sweet potatoes peeled and cubed into 1 inch pieces
2 large tomatoes- sliced

Serves 4

Preheat your oven to about 200C

1.    Boil the potatoes in a large pan of salted water (I generally don't do salt but I'm afraid mash needs it).

2.    Chop about an inch off the bottom of the cauliflower stalk and remove all leaves then cut the cauliflower, including any stalk into about 12 pieces and place in a steamer over a medium heat for about 10 minutes.

3.    Put the sweet potatoes in the steamer above the cauliflower and cover.

4.    Drain any liquid from the sweetcorn.

5.    Mash the sweet potato with a little of the butter.

6.    Mix the mashed sweet potato with the sweetcorn and beans and put in an oven proof dish.

7.    Mash the cauliflower and potatoes together with the remaining butter (add a little more if needed or some milk or leftover cream).

8.    Mix half the cheese with the potato/cauliflower mash then spoon the mash mixture over the beans and corn.

9.    Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and arrange tomato slices on top of that.  A dash of Worcestershire sauce over the top is good but maybe not for some picky eaters.

10.   Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes when the cheese should be golden on top and the beans bubbling away underneath.

Gender and the picky eater

I have been on the research trail and have noticed how difficult I find it to stop once I get going.  The topic is food neophobia (fear of trying new foods).

I realise that not all fussy eaters are neophobic - some of them are just plain old stubborn and playing mind games with mum!

I was really surprised to learn though that in the studies I could find, girls are more prone to food neophobia than boys.  Maybe that means that boys are more prone to being just plain fussy and it isn't a fear related thing.  I have read in the past that boys are generally wired to be less risk averse so I suppose it makes sense.

Really interesting to find that early incidence of ear infections seem to be linked to picky eating though. I know I've now got a few weeks worth of reading to work out why that is - wish my mind wasn't always quite so enquiring!

PS3 or Xbox time!

Chatting to a mum at the school gate yesterday, I mentioned how I got my picky eater step-son to eat up and she suggested it might be worth sharing that tip here, so here goes.

He's one of those kids who uses food as a weapon for attention and his particular speciality if he doesn't get pizza at every meal is to eat painfully slowly.  From what his mum says, I think going slowly is his way of showing his displeasure in all sorts of things actually.

I hate electronic games but like most young boys, he loves them and given his way, I think he'd fester in front of the TV with his Xbox or PS3 24/7, in dirty clothes, unwashed, munching on the odd pizza and drinking coke.....I'm guessing he'd not be alone in thinking that was an OK way forward either!

So, last time he was staying with us, I devised a new rule.  Lunch time was going to be at 1.30 sharp and PS3 time would be for half an hour from 2pm sharp.  So if he wanted to take forever eating his lunch, that was fine, but it would cut into his PS3 time and come 2.30pm, the PS3 was being unplugged.

It was the most pain free week of meal times I've spent with him in 6 years.  He finished quickly, cleared his plate, stacked it in the dishwasher, drank his drink (he usually acts as though I'm trying to poison him when it comes to drinking water or juice) and was polite and friendly throughout meal times.

Some will call this bribery - they may be right.  But it worked for us and I'm guessing it'll work for at least some others too!