A quick recipe for lunch-boxes and snacks – I like to cut them in half and spread with butter and Marmite. Make sure you squeeze the courgette dry so the muffins aren’t soggy, but then the courgette helps keep them moist and slips a bit of extra veg into a little person’s day. I use…
Category: Absolute beginner recipes
Roast Cabbage with Tahini-Maple Dressing
Roasting cabbage turns it into a totally different vegetable than the boiled or steamed variety that we’re more used to seeing. Roasting caramelises the sugar in veg, bringing out the sweetness, but also adding crisp edges for a beautiful contrast. Cabbage works equally well in one-pot traybakes. Serves 4 – 6 as a side…
Cabbage, Wild Garlic and Walnut Pesto
Use this anywhere you would use regular basil pesto: swirled through soups or pasta; dotted into a sandwich, baked potato or pizza; mixed through mashed potato or shaken into salad dressing. For a beautifully simple tart, spread the pesto across thinly rolled puff pastry leaving a 2cm border round the edge, then pile roast vegetables…
‘Strawberry Surprise’ biscuits
Made up on the hoof at a Sunny’s Kitchen community lunch, the surprise of the title was whether these were going to be edible…They were intended to be shortbread, but I messed the recipe up and had to doctor it as I went along. They turned out well enough for the recipe to be requested…
Tortilla Pizza Cups
A healthy, quick and easy twist on pizza – or the tortilla pizza that I like to make – that children can get involved with making. There are lots of fun age-appropriate jobs they can help with: get them to choose the veg fillings, tear the mozzarella, grate cheddar and veg, practise their chopping skills,…
Chocolate ginger breadcrumb trifle
In the UK, we throw away 24 million slices of bread per day. And yet supermarkets still sell pre-made breadcrumbs! What is happening? Whizz your leftover loaf into breadcrumbs and freeze them so they’re always on hand for coating fish or chicken; sprinkling over mac n’ cheese for crunch; adding to veggie burgers and crab cakes; making…
Chocolate ginger breadcrumb biscuits
Our sliced bread tapers off into tiny end slices, all crust and not worth bothering with. Rather than waste them, we put these ends into a bag in the freezer, and when we have enough they get whizzed into breadcrumbs in the food processor and frozen. Handy as it is to have breadcrumbs available all…
Ratatouille
This is better made the day before eating to allow all the flavours to deepen and combine. Photos courtesy of the P5s at West Barns Primary School, who enjoyed making this as part of their Plenty Project week. Serves 4 Ingredients 2 aubergines, chopped into 2cm pieces 4 courgettes, chopped into 2cm pieces 4 peppers,…
Coleslaw
This is my basic coleslaw recipe, but everything can be mixed up from here. See under the main recipe for some alternative versions. Serves 6 Ingredients 1/4 red cabbage 1/4 green cabbage 2 carrots 2 spring onions 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 2 tablespoons mayonnaise 1 tablespoon natural yoghurt Black pepper…
Roast vegetable tart with nut-free spinach / kale pesto
This classic easy dinner is a great one for children to help make. Rolling out and pricking the pastry, ‘painting’ it with egg and talking about different vegetables and how to prepare them gives lots of scope for involvement. Whizzing up the pesto is fun too – this one was devised with seasonality in mind…
Potato latkes
These deceptively simple potato cakes bring some serious symbolism to the table, as I found out when researching the recipe to include in a lesson at a local primary school. The children had been learning about Judaism so I included this dish, traditionally eaten at Hanukka – also known as the Festival of Lights. This…
Butter Bean Dip
Devised as a nut-free alternative to hummus, this healthy dip can be whizzed up in minutes from store-cupboard ingredients. It’s a great weaning food too, just leave out the salt. Ingredients 1 tin butter beans, drained 1 small clove garlic, crushed – go with half first, it’s easy to make it too strong 2 tablespoons…
Time to Cook 