Pumpkin & Spelt Cob (yeast free)

I love baking bread, but lately I've been experimenting with soda loaves. It's not that I think yeast is bad, per se, but too much of anything's not great, and a different type of bread is just another string to le bow, no? 

I'm also playing around with hidden veggies at the moment - ways I can increase my kids' intake without them declaring "But I don't *like* salad, mum!", which is what my three year old declares when anything green even touches his plate!

Ingredients: 

About 1.5 cups mashed pumpkin or sweet potato

3 cups spelt flour, sifted

2/3 cup full fat milk

1 tablespoon bicarb soda. 

Pre heat oven to 190'c and line a tray with baking paper. 

Combine bicarb and milk and set aside for ten minutes, stirring gently occasionally. It will thicken quite impressively. Meanwhile, cook your pumpkin and mash - no need to add anything else. 

Combine the milk milk, spelt and pumpkin in a bowl until you have a loose dough. Don't worry that it's not the consistency of a regular dough. As long as it is firm enough to hold a rough shape, you're good to go. Tip the bowl out and form a round cob shape on a tray lined with baking paper. 

Bake for around 50 minutes then leave to cool another 20 minutes or so. 

I served it cut through the middle and topped with sliced pear, sauteed mushrooms and goats feta. 

Salmon & Peach Salad

This dinner goes into the 'food on the table in under ten minutes' file. We literally walked in the front door from scootering the sidewalk and by the time my small fries had got their shoes off and washed their hands, I was just about ready to plate up. 

Ingredients: 

1 salmon fillet (ideally wild caught, but if not, antibiotic free)

2 hard boiled eggs (I always have a supply to hand but if not you can do this while you cook the salmon)

1 organic potato, peeled and sliced into thin rounds (like crisps)

1/3 cup frozen organic peas

1 peach, deseeded and finely sliced

Olive oil for frying and dressing

Defrost the salmon in the microwave for one minute. While this is happening, get your eggs boiling if you don't already have them prepared. Transfer the salmon fillet to a small skillet and fry with a little olive oil over a moderate heat. 

Place the thinly sliced taters in a microwave safe dish and cover with water. Microwave for circa 4 - 5 minutes (depending on the strength of your microbeams) until al dente. Meanwhile, prepare the peach and flip the salmon so that it's browned on both sides and cooked evenly. 

Transfer the cooked potato to the salmon skillet and gently move around to flake the salmon and coat the potato in a little oil. Add the peas. 

Leave to fry on a low heat for a minute longer while you peel the (by now) hard boiled eggs and slice finely (I used one of those nifty egg slicers that doubles up as a little-person-guitar. You know what I mean). 

You're done. Assemble the salad and top with a little extra organic EVOO to serve. 

My kids LOVE this, and you can obviously vary the ingredients to include your own child's favourites - strawberries, or chickpeas in lieu of salmon. Just try to get a balance of veg, fruit and protein. 

Vegetarian Sausage Rolls (GF, could easily be vegan)

Yesterday was one of 'those' days in my house. A day where it felt like little master three had a serious conversation with miss one and between them, they decided to pull out all the stops to make me want to rip my hair out. No naps, toilet training accidents, tantrums for no reason, and 36'c and extreme UV outside, leaving us more or less house bound with a very frazzled set of personalities by the end of the day. SO, for dinner, I needed something that would hold them quiet and still for at least fifteen minutes (essential decompression time for this mum!). Enter the sausage roll. And a glass of wine.

I make my pastry using a recipe that was my husband's grandma's, and it's a cinch. If I'm doing big batches, I use the food processor, but for a small amount like this, I just go by hand. I even melt the butter completely and (so long as I then have time to rest it in the fridge) it works perfectly. To make it vegan, you can switch out butter for a nut butter or, preferably, a virgin organic coconut oil. 

Ingredients

For the pastry:

110g butter (about 80g coconut oil or, if it's melted, maybe 1/3 cup). 

225g spelt flour

A few tablespoons of water

For the filling: 

1 kipfler potato

1/2 small sweet potato

1 carrot

1/3 cup peas 

About 50g goats feta (exclude for vegans)

Melt the butter so that it's liquid but not molten, then remove from heat. Incorporate the flour until you have the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add the water tablespoon by tablespoon until you get a pastry dough consistency and knead until it's well combined (don't overdo it or it can get tough). Gladwrap it and put it in the fridge. 

Peel and chop the vegetables, with the exception of the peas (save them for later). Put in a saucepan covered with boiled water and continue to cook for around ten minutes or until al dente. Strain and mash, then add the goats feta and peas and continue to mix. At this point, you can add in any additional seasonings - more chopped cheese, fennel seeds, spring onion, basil, etc. 

Remove the pastry and roll flat (about 2 - 3mm). Scoop the vegie mix down the center and form sausage rolls. 

Bake at 180'c for 25 minutes. I served these with a homemade tomato sauce but they don't really need anything (you have probably guessed that yesterday was not a day for arguing if I didn't have to). 

Enjoy!

Rice Crispie Easter Eggs

This was a really easy thing to make and would make great easter gifts for kids or grown ups alike. You could definitely make them smaller than I did, but this is the mould I had to hand!

It's about 2 cups organic puffed rice kernels, mixed with about 250g to 300g melted chocolate and a few tablespoons of coloured sprinkles (definitely optional - I figured this amount of colouring and sugar as a special treat wouldn't break the healthfulness bank...but they'd also look great with some finely chopped goji berries and orange zest, or grated white chocolate). 

Also, the plan with this was to wrap it in cellophane and top it with a bright yellow ribbon, but as you can see from the above pictures, once the kids saw it being made, they wouldn't rest until they had tasted its bounty!! 

Hot Cross Buns - Easterlicious.

I'm not ashamed to admit it. I LOVE EASTER. My Easter cards went into the post two weeks ago. We have an actual storage crate for Easter Decorations. And I don't blame Easter. I blame Christmas. I am so in love with that annual celebration that, when December gives way to January, and the tree, the gingerbread, the tinsel and lights are all put away, I feel an emptiness that only another festive event will answer. Sure, New Years does its bit, but that's not really child-centric. 

Easter, on the other hand, in our house at least, is all about the tiddlywinks. We do a fair bit of crafting and celebrating to mark the event. 

Today, I made spelt hot cross buns for the kids, and they were so, so, so, so sinfully good. 

Ingredients

500g spelt flour + a little extra for the flour paste

300g mixed dried fruit, diced (I used a mix of dried fruits and nuts - cranberries, pistachio, sunflower kernels, raisins, apricot)

1/3 cup tepid water

2 tablespoons of yeast

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

C. 1 cup tepid water

Combine the water, yeast and sugar in a cup, stir, then cover with a saucer. Leave for ten minutes so that the yeast can 'activate'. Meanwhile, sift flour into a large mixing bowl and add the dried fruit and cinnamon. Stir until combined. Once the yeast is well and truly frothed, add it to the dry mix. 

I use my trusty kitchenaid (for anything I possibly can) but I've made these by hand and it's a cinch. Add extra tepid water until you get a dough like consistency - about 1/4 cup at a time, then stir, knead, etc. You'll know when it comes together but doesn't feel 'sloppy' that it's just right. Knead until it's elastic (you can press a finger into the dough and it immediately bounces back). 

Leave to rise around thirty minutes, then knock the dough back to its original size. Preheat oven to 180'c fan forced. Slice the dough into equal portions and roll to form balls. 

TO make the crosses, you can either score the buns (traditional) or make a flour paste, which I did (I always did love that crispy dough!). Just mix flour and water until you get a thick paste and then use a piping bag (or plastic sandiwch bag with a corner snipped off) to lay down your crosses. I know some people who make a really thick dough and roll out long snakes and place it on top to form the crosses. Whatever works for you. 

Bake for around 20 minutes. You'll know they're done when they smell divine and their bases sound a little hollow. Now, this is optional, but I like to top mine with a sugar syrup - a couple of tablespoons of good brown sugar mixed with water until it's thin and spreadable, massaged into the top of the buns while still warm. 

and there you have it! Easy, delicious and healthy hot cross buns. Perfect!

Food and things.

From the moment my kids showed a tentative interest in food (circa four months old), I've relished introducing them to different flavours and textures. Guiding them to become food appreciaters has been a true pleasure. Recently, though, we had dinner with a couple of our friends who have a daughter smack bang in the middle of my two kids. Like me, our friend loves food and has helped her daughter become a true gourmet (she counts tabbouleh and home made beetroot dip amongst her favourite things). However, unlike my unruly duo, this little one has just about the most impressive table manners I've ever seen. She knows the rules. She has to try everything on her plate, even if she doesn't eat it all. She has to ask before she leaves the table. She uses cutlery. She sips her water quietly. And after her meal, she goes straight to the bathroom to wash her dear little digits. I realised with abject horror as my two held their own slimy fingers perilously close to the immaculate white suede dining chairs, that I had dropped the ball somewhat when it came to dining etiquette. I had the best intentions. Truly, I did. I loved and lived by Pamela Druckermann's French Children Don't Throw Food, but somewhere along the way, the necessities of life meant I couldn't quite follow through. Meal time is when they're held still and captive, and (because our house is tiny and I could hear choking noises from any room) I use their restful states to zip around and do chores (laundry, that never-ending mountain of clothing). But not sitting with them, or at least being there and overseeing their meals, has meant they are slightly, well, aherm, savage. 

And so, it begins. Retraining my beautiful little messes. 

I might be painting a bleaker picture than is strictly true. We have many other little friends who seem to partake in meals in the same slap-happy and totally absorbing way that my kids think essential. It is an holisitic experience! 

Nonetheless, tonight I started to try to reprogramme them. Just a little. A little tweak towards juvenile civility. I started off with a shared cheese course (thank you, Pamela Druckermann, for making me appreciate that even toddlers can diferrentiate between their brie and blues). An organic apple sliced thinly with some dried locally grown and dried dates and an organic blue was the start to their dinner.

 

For mains, they shared a tasmanian salmon fillet (farmed, but antibiotic free) with organic vegetables. Part of this process was teaching them to squeeze a wedge of lemon over their seafood. This dinner will be blogged in more detail later. It's one of my after-work meal solutions. Eleven minutes from frozen and always a hit with every kid I've ever made it for.

For dessert, a local greek style yoghurt with these delicious apricots (from a cousin's back garden) I preserved before Christmas. And by preserved, I mean slow baked with raw caster sugar, brandy and vanilla beans until they were sticky and sweet. I chopped them into small pieces tonight and stirred through the yoghurt. Shockingly, my little mister did not like "the orange stuff" but little miss one ate with absolute gusto - all three courses. How she is such a tiny thing is beyond me!! 

Easy Roast Dinner

This dinner is the perfect meal for my little duo. It's healthy, affordable and involves a minimum of effort. Best thing about it? My kids, at least, polish off their plates completely when this is on the table. 

It takes 29 minutes to make this roast, from first heat of the pan to placing it on the table. That's about the time an episode of Dora lasts, for anyone keeping count. 

Ingredients

1 Free Range Chicken Breast

1/3 sweet potato - diced

1 carrot - diced

2/3 cup frozen peas

A few sprigs of mint, finely chopped, 

about 150g butter

2 tablespoons spelt flour

1 tablespoon fruit jam (optional)

1/2 cup filtered water

Pre-heat oven to 200'c fan. 

Heat a small knob of butter (about 40g) in an oven-proof pan over moderate heat. Add the chicken breast to sear, then the orange vegetables. Don't shake the pan. You'll flip the chicken breast once, and at this stage, you'll want to gently toss the other vegetables to coat in butter. This will take around four minutes.

Place the pan in the oven and leave to cook for twenty minutes. Have a glass of wine, or cup of tea, depending on which way your preferences run. Hands up, I sorted laundry with a strong black coffee <3

After 19 minutes, place 1/2 the remaining butter into a small saucepan with the frozen peas and mint. Stir intermitently - they will just gently heat over the next few minutes.

Next, remove the pan from the oven and place back on the stove top. Gently transfer the chicken and vegetables to a chopping board, leaving about three cubes of veggies in the pan. 

Because the chicken breast is skinless and a low-fat cut, there will not be much fat left in the pan - don't worry about that. Heat the pan and the remaining butter and the spelt flour. Stir until a paste forms, mashing the veg as you go. Add the water, and a tablespoon of jam if using, continue to stir over low heat for one minute. A gravy should now be bubbling away contentedly, ready to go. 

So easy, and such a lovely dinner for little people. Happy cooking!