Pumpkin tagine with date couscous

With so many pumpkins going around, (we have 5 in the house at the moment!) I couldn't resist a pumpkin recipe and this one is lovely and sweet so very child friendly.

2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, thickly sliced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp ground chilli (optional)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
750ml veg stock
800g coarsely chopped pumpkin
150g frozen broad beans, thawed, shelled
1 tbsp brown sugar
120g chopped seeded dates
2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

couscous
50g butter
250g couscous
500ml boiling water
80g chopped dates

1. Heat oil in medium saucepan, add the onion, garlic, spices and cook stirring for about 3 mins.
2. Add the stock and pumpkin, bring to the boil then reduce and simmer covered for about 10mins or until pumpkin is almost tender.
3. Remove lid and simmer uncovered for 5 mins or until the pumpkin mixture thickens slightly.
4. Add remaining ingredients, cook stirring until heated through.
5. Combine butter, couscous and the water in a large heatproof bowl, cover and stand for 5 mins or until all teh water is absorbed, fluff with a for and stir in the dates. Serve with the pumpkin tagine.

Chinese chicken fried rice

This is a very easy dish to make, using slightly different spices. Your kids may pull faces at first put don't make them give up as its really tasty and a great one for all the family to eat.

2 tbsp groundnut oil
1 tbsp freshly grated ginger
3 shallots, finely chopped
3 dried chinese mushrooms, pre-soaked in hot water for 20 mins, drained & finely chopped.
225g chicken fillets, diced
1 tbsp shaohsing rice wine or dry sherry
1 tsp five-spice powder
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
50g dry roasted peanuts
300g cooked jasmine rice
3-4 tbsp light soy sauce
1-2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
ground white pepper
1 spring onion, finely chopped

1. Heat a wok or pan over a hight heat and add the groundnut oil. Add the ginger, shallot and chineses mushrooms and cook for a few seconds.
2. Add the chicken and cook for a few more minutes, then add the rice wine or sherry followed by the five spice powder. As the chicken starts to turn white add the dark soy sauce.
3. Add the peanuts and then the rice, stir-fry for 1 minute.
4. Season with the light soy sauce, sesame oil and pepper to taste and stir to mix. Finally, stir in the spring onion, transfer to a serving dish and serve immediately. Serve with steamed green veg.

Friday Lunch Box

So sorry this is late, mixture of visitors and sick kids! But better late than never I guess....
I'm taking my inspiration for this box from a fantastic book that Kazumi (Taiga's mum) gave to me, on Bento boxes, looks fantastic with lots of pictures on how to make the items but unfortunately for me all in Japanese - therefore I just used my imagination and fortunately the lunch box came back empty and i got a big thumbs up.

Snack - humous dip with carrot, cucumber and apple sticks
Lunch - Japanese rice (or any other rice of your choice) cooked and cooled it the fridge, mix with nori and these fantastic little sachets of dried vegetables and herbs that you can buy in the Japanese store. Serve a normal size portion and put in the lunch box with a salad (see below) and simple egg omelet (see below).

Salad
Half a peeled carrot, quarter of a cucumber, handfull of sweetcorn and cooked mange tout - use a potato peeler make slices of the carrot and cucumber, then put in a bowl with the sweetcorn and cooked mange tout, mix together and dress with olive oil, raspberry vinegar, salt and pepper.

Omelet
1 egg, tiny splash of water, salt and pepper, olive oil for frying - in a cup whisk the egg up with a fork, add the seasoning (you could also add herbs here) and water, heat the oil in a small frying pan and cook the egg. Cool then cut into strips.

Lunch box for Thursday

In my research into lunchboxes I found 2 government/food agency guidelines on how to put together a healthy lunchbox. The first is from the UK the second which I got from a friend is from Japan. Today I will do an example of a UK one and tomorrow I will do a Japanese one.

So in the UK it is recommended to put the following into a lunchbox:

• 1 portion starchy food – bread, pasta, rice
• 1 portion milk or dairy food
• 1 portion fruit
• 1 portion vegetables
• 1 portion protein such as meat or fish

Snack - small pot of yoghurt with granola (recipe to follow), pot of fresh fruit
Lunch - brown rice salad with tuna, cucumber, red and yellow pepper, carrot, boiled egg, olive oil, lemon juice with salt and pepper. Chop all the vegetables quite small and the same size as with the egg. You could also add cubes of cheese or put them in a separate pot to add more bits, kids like opening different pots. Banana in a banana box.
Granola
350g porridge oats
50g wheatgerm
50g unsweetend shredded coconut
50g sesame seeds
75g sunflower seeds
75g hazelnuts, finely chopped
125ml sunflower oil
75ml runny honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
175g dried fruit, chopped into small pieces

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees. Grease a large baking tin.
2. In a large bowl, mix the oats, wheatgerm, coconut, seeds and nuts.
3. In a large saucepan, combine oil, honey and vanilla. Heat gently until the honey has melted. Pour the honey mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix well. Spread the mixture out in the tin. Bake in the oven for 35-45 mins, stirring every 10 mins.
4. Cool then add the dried fruit.

Lunch box for Wednesday

So far so good, I haven't had any food rejected, fingers crossed for Wednesday, fish pate may be going too far!

Snack - Blueberry Muffin (recipe to follow) and yoghurt pot - most kids yoghurts are laden with sugar or worse sweetners more so than standard fruit yoghurts, it will save you money and be better for your kids to find a plain or fruit yoghurt in a larger tub and put some into a small tub with a lid for school.

Lunch - Smoked Mackerel Pate (recipe to follow) with Oatcakes, cubes of cheese and pot of fruit.

Blueberry Muffin
You can make these with any soft fruits, banana, strawberry, raspberry etc. They are also super easy to make so another good one to make with kids.

90g plain flour
90g wholemeal flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
80g caster sugar or (40g and 40g equivalent of Agave syrup or go the whole hog and use only Agave, you will be surprised how sweet and appealing Agave is)
1 medium egg
125ml full fat milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
45g unsalted butter melted
150g blueberries, fresh or frozen

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Butter a muffin tray or line with paper cases. Makes 12
2. Sift the flour into a bowl with the baking powder. Stir in the sugar.
3.Whisk the egg, milk, vanilla and melted butter in a separate bowl.
4. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until you have a wet lumpy batter. Add the fruit.
5.Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake in the oven for 10-12 mins , until risen and golden.


Mackerel Pate
2 garlic cloves, crushed
400g/3 mackerel fillets flaked (ideally un-smoked, if you can't find this you could replace with tinned fish)
4 tbsp full fat natural yoghurt
juice of 1 lemon

1. Put all the ingredients into a bowl and puree with a hand blender, or process in a food processor until smooth.
2. Put in small tubs for taking to school. I will post a recipe for making your own oatcakes as its super easy and you can make it in your own shapes which adds to the fun. However the British Stores in Amsterdam stock good oatcakes, the best ones are Nairn's or Patterson's. This is also nice served with carrot, cucumber, celery and cauliflower sticks.

Lunch box for Tuesday

I'm Using a recipe posted earlier on here for the lunch, so a shorter post today - however I'm also posting the recipe for Scotch Broth for our friend Greg who is a big fan!

Snack - Banana (in a banana box, nothing worse than squidgy banana, although this may be a personal thing) plus brown rice cakes or mixed grain cakes with nut butter - try almond, cashew or pecan for a change from peanut (available at all the naturwinkels here in the dam). White rice cakes have a medium/high GI causing peaks and troughs in blood glucose levels - not nice whilst at school.

Lunch - Mini Quiches with cherry tomatoes and sticks of red and yellow pepper, small pot of broken down sushi nori (the japanese store in the gelderlanplein store small snack packs of Korean Nori which my kids love and is really tasty) pot of chopped apple/pear.

Lunch box for Monday

So here we go with the first lunch box idea of the week. I apologise in advance for the time consuming nature of some of the ideas but in reality it is perhaps nice to make these every now and again and perhaps store or freeze some of the items so you can pull them out as and when.

Snack - Apricot and Sultana Flapjacks (recipe to follow) and fresh fruit pot - mixture of seasonal fruits (mandarines, apples, pears, bananas, kiwis)

Lunch - Onigiri, Sushi rice balls (recipe to follow), carrot and cucumber sticks, edamame beans still in their pods and a pot of red grapes.

Apricot and Sultana Flapjacks
75g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
75g golden sugar (or replace with Agave syrup, I will talk about this stuff in a later post)
2tbsp honey
6 apricots chopped and a small handful of sultanas
175g rolled oats (normal porridge oats)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees, butter a 20cm tin.
2. Melt the butter, sugar and honey in a large pan over a gentle heat. Stir well and then mix in the oats along with the apricots and sultanas.
3. Tip into the tin and level off. Bake for 15mins, until pale golden.
4. Cool slightly in the tin and mark into fingers or squares. Cool completely and remove from the tin.

Sushi Rice Balls
This is the link to the recipe I used to cook my sushi rice correctly. I did this today and although time consuming it worked a treat. The quantities made enough rice to make sushi for our dinner (3 adults, 2 kids) and enough rice balls for Sonny and Mia for lunch tomorrow.

http://japanesefood.about.com/od/sushiforbeginner/r/sushirice.htm

Once you have cooked the rice, crush up some sushi nori into small pieces and mix this into the rice along with black and white sesame seeds. Wet your hands and roll the rice into balls.

Carrot Cake

This has to be the recipe I have been asked for the most. I have been making this since Sonny's first birthday party, he is coming up for 6 now! Perhaps all my friends will have it but for those of you who asked and i never got round to sending it to you, here it is. Its truly delicious and there's quite a few "healthy" ingredients in there so it has a feel good factor too.

275g organic plain flour - i usually use a 50:50 mix of white and wholemeal, 100% wholemeal makes it too heavy
1 level spoonful bicarbonate of soda
2 level teaspoonfuls baking powder
1 level teaspoon salt
175g soft, light, brown sugar
3 free range, organic eggs
2 ripe bananas, peeled
175g finely, grated carrots
handful of sultanas (optional)
6 fl oz organic sunflower oil

1. Forewarm your oven to 180 degrees.
2. Sieve the flour into a large mixing bowl with the bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt.
3. Add the eggs and brown sugar and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl mash the bananas with a fork, then add to the cake mixture along with the carrots and oil (sultanas too if your using them).
5. Mix well with a wooden spoon, then pour into a 9 inch cake tin.
6. Place in the oven for an hour, test with a metal skewer to ensure the cake is cooked all the way through. Leave for 5 mins once out of the oven, then remove from tin and allow to cool on a wire cake rest.

I use a Jamie Oliver recipe for the icing if I'm making this for adults and its just devine, the kids often prefer a plain butter icing - butter, philidelphia cheese and icing sugar or none at all! Jamie's version is as follows:
115g mascarpone cheese
225g full fat cream cheese
85g icing sugar, sifted
zest and juice of two limes

Mix all the ingredients together and spread over the top of the cake.

Gingery Salmon

This is a really tasty way to do Salmon for kids - great if you sense a cold is on its way as the garlic and ginger will help fight this.

450g salmon filets
lemon or lime wedges

for the marinade:
5cm ginger peeled, grated
2 garlic cloves crushed
1 tbsp light soy sauce
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp sesame oil
a little olive oil

1. Cut the salmon into 10cm cubes. Mix all the marinade ingredients together and pour over the salmon in a non metalic bowl. Cover and chill in the fridge for 30-60 mins (also overnight is good).
2. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. You can also choose to fry the salmon if you don't want to put the oven on just for the fish, however it will be slightly drier and you will loose some of the nice juices. You could serve with some oven baked rice to use up the heat from the oven.
3. Take the salmon out of the fridge and place on a roasting tin, pour over the juices and roast for about 15 mins.
Serve with the citrus wedges, rice and some steamed green vegetables.

Burgers

One for the meat lovers, the inspiration for this one came from Sonny's Fit Nut class at school, the reason I think he loves eating them so much is that he gets to make them. We make them in the food processor which makes them so easy but you could do them by hand.

Makes about 20 small burgers
500g organic minced beef
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
half red pepper & half yellow pepper
2 good handfuls of spinach
few florets of broccoli
1 egg
salt and pepper to taste

1. Put the onion, garlic, peppers and broccoli into the food processor and process until all the vegetables are cut very fine, but not mushed.
2. Add the minced meat, spinach, egg and a pinch of salt and pepper. Process until all the ingredients are well mixed.
3. Take golf ball sized amounts of the mixture and flatten into mini burgers.
4. Put a spot of olive oil into a heavy based frying pan and heat on a gentle heat, put the burgers in about 6 at a time, and fry without burning. I often only cook half the batch and freeze the other half, separating the burgers with greaseproof/baking paper.

We had these tonight served with carrot and courgette sticks and brown rice noodles with sweet chili sauce.

Peperonata

I like to serve this with pasta, however its also good on its own as a starter or served with fish, excellent with swordfish.

4 peppers - i use a mixture of red, yellow and orange as i find the green too bitter.
2 red onions
extra virgin olive oil
2 gloves of garlic, crushed
2 handfuls of fresh flat leaf parsley
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1. Half the peppers and put them under a hot grill until the skins turn black. Once they are blackened put the peppers into a plastic bag straight away. Tie a knot in the bag and leave the peppers in there until they cool down. Take the peppers out, peel off the skins and de-seed.
2. Put a big glug of olive oil in a heavy based pan, add onions and fry gently until softened. Add the peppers, garlic and parsley with a pinch of salt and cook for a further 20 mins.
3. Add the vinegar, which will sizzle and give it a good stir. Serve with pasta and a big handful of parmesan cheese.

Tofu

I recently did a Tofu cooking course, which was great, its good to have a few more ideas of how to use it. The top tips that I picked up from tee course - due to the high number of phytoestrogens it should not be eaten in huge quantities every day, for children about 100g a week is good. Also it is one of the most genetically modified foods - so if this is a concern to you, try to buy Organic. You can buy silken tofu - which is great for adding to sauces or dips to bump up the nutritional value - great in guacamole, or the firmer tofu which is more widely available.

Tofu and herb omelette

150g tofu
4 eggs
1 cup chopped, mixed, fresh herbs (parsley, coriander, chervil, dill, chives, oregano etc)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
spice mixture (optional)
30g hard goats cheese

1. Mash the tofu with a fork until crumbled.
2. Mix in a bowl with the remaining ingredients except the cheese.
3. Fry in a lightly buttered pan until golden on both sides.
4. Just before serving grate some goat's cheese on top. Serve with salad.

This is also good served cold in pita bread with salad.

Easy Peasy Fish Cakes

I use breadcrumbs instead of potatoes as it makes the cakes a bit lighter and somehow easier to eat for little ones, if there's a wheat alergy then oatmeal is a good alternative.

Mackerel, haddock, salmon and tuna are all high in Omega-3 so are good choices here, but really any fish will do, fresher the better.

3 fish fillets, de-boned and skinned about 500g
handful or two slices of brownbread crumbs
1 egg
juice of a lemon
few sprigs of fresh parsley or coriander
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

1. Put all the ingredients expect the olive oil into a food processor and mix thoroughly, taking care not to over do it as you will end up with mush. Alternatively put all the ingredients in a bowl and use a hand blender to process.
2. Make into round patties a little smaller than the size of a burger.
3. Cook them in the olive oil until they are golden brown and a little crispy on the outside.

Great served with green beans, broccoli or other favourite veg. If your children like it, these are also delicious served with sweet chili sauce for dipping into.

Mini Quiches

When using flour for baking I try to use wholemeal or if it doesn't really work i try half and half - this is one that works well with half and half. These are extremely easy to make if you use a food processor.

90g plain flour, 90g wholemeal flour sifted
pinch of salt
90g of unsalted butter,chilled and diced, 15g for the filling
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp cold water
1 leek washed and finely chopped
1 courgette or red pepper finely chopped
50g cheese - gruyere, emental or hard goats cheese
sprig of rosemary
2 large eggs beaten
200ml full fat milk

1. Chill a muffin tin - makes them so much easier to eat in this size and great for lunch boxes. Put flour, salt and butter into the processor and mix until it looks like breadcrumbs.
2. Add the egg yolk, and if necessary the water, until the pastry draws together into a ball.
3. Roll the pastry to about 2.5mm thick and cut into circles to line your muffin tin with. Chill in the fridge for 1 hour.
4. Preheat the oven to 180/gas mark 4. Heat the remaining butter in a frying pan and sweat the leak for 5 mins. Add the courgette/pepper and fry for a further 5 mins until browned. Spoon the mixture into the pastry cases and then sprinkle with cheese.
5. Chop the rosemary leaves. Whisk the milk and eggs together, then add the herbs season with black pepper. Pour over the filling in the pastry cases. Cook for about 20mins or until golden and fluffy.