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: Savoury
Celeriac, Butternut Squash & Walnut Pesto Puff Pastry Tart
Celeriac, Butternut Squash & Walnut Pesto Puff Pastry Tart Puff pastry tarts are so versatile and look lovely but are really easy to make. The combination of earthy celeriac and walnuts with sweet squash and tangy cheese comes together beautifully to make a simple dinner that reheats well in the oven for lunch the next…
Savoy Cabbage Parcels Stuffed with Rice, Olives, Artichokes and Capers, with Smoky Tomato Sauce
What a title. This tastes nowhere near as worthy as ‘cabbage parcels’ sounds, and is a good one is you’re hosting vegetarians for dinner — just leave out the anchovies and use a veggie alternative to Parmesan. The filling can be mixed up in all sorts of ways to suit the contents of your fridge:…
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…
Squash & Sage Macaroni Cheese
Adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe Serves 4 Tip: no need to peel a butternut squash, just wash the skin well and it roasts up soft enough to eat. Ingredients ½ a butternut squash or 500g piece of pumpkin / other squash, peeled if required and chopped into chunks 1 onion, diced or finely…
Moroccan Squash, Chickpea & Kale Stew
Adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe Tips: 1. This tastes way better a day or two after it’s made. 2. Don’t bypass the feta/lemon zest/olive oil topping, it takes the whole dish up a notch. 3. If you’re short of time, you could swap out the cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, fennel seeds and ground coriander…
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,…
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,…
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 