A while back it came to my mother’s attention that my children did not necessarily have the world’s best table manners. And possibly, I have to admit that she was right – training them up on the finer points of silver service mealtime hadn’t been my priority. While my kids could use a knife and fork correctly, they were a long way from being sophisticated cutlery-champions. And when I stopped to think about it, basic table manners are pretty nice and worth pursuing (surely one day they’ll want to have the skills to impress potential partners in restaurants).
Since it is just a skill to learn, we did deliberately start off on a bit of a utensil-mastery-mission. We began with pancakes on Sunday mornings. Unlike dinnertime, we were all fresh and could handle the mess with humour. Pancakes proved to be the perfect practice food, too. Once we mastered them, we moved onto sausages and chips and worked our way to the point where they can use a steak knife and manage their way through most meals.
But it’s taken time and in our defence, most of the dinners we eat are fork or spoon affairs – we’re not much of a meat-and-three-veg family.
Graceful-soup-eating however is still a bit elusive. We have soup spoons and we’ve tried to teach the kids the whole dipping-at-the-back-of-the-bowl trick, but to no avail. Especially if they’re hungry and the soup is yummy, like this one.
In a moment that made me feel like I was living “The Castle”, my husband had one sip of this and declared, “Darl, I’d be bloody happy if I was served this in a restaurant.” Because it’s THAT good apparently.
It’s perfect too, for kids who only like white food.
Dairy-free creamy cauliflower soup
Lactose-free, cream of cauliflower & potato soup
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp garam masala
1 large onion, diced
1 tsp garlic, crushed
1 tsp grated ginger
1 potato, peeled, roughly diced
1 litre vegetable stock
270ml coconut milk
Salt & pepper
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Pop the cauliflower onto a baking tray. Scatter over 2 tbsp of the olive oil and garam masala. Toss well then bake for 20-25 minutes until tender (you can push a fork through).
Meanwhile, heat the last tbsp of oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add in the onion, and cook, stirring frequently for 6-8 minutes until golden. Tip in the garlic, ginger and potato. Fry this off for a minute or two before adding in the cooked cauliflower and veggie stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes or so until the potato and cauliflower is all really soft.
Remove from the heat. Use a stick blender to blitz everything up until smooth. Pour in the coconut milk and blitz further to combine. Season well, to taste (I like a lot).
Serve with coriander, a slurp of coconut milk on top and bread.
Serve 2 adults and 2-3 kids
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