Archive for Vegetarian

Thank you (and an essential summer salad)

Well, what a year! Thanks to all of you who’ve tuned into my blog, to those who’ve taken the time to comment on posts and contribute to the (sometimes feisty) Facebook ‘discussions’. Thanks too, to those of you who’ve bought cookbooks and e-books over the past year. The growth of my micro-publishing business has been really exciting and I want you to all know how much I appreciate your support.

I really love doing what I’m doing and I hope that comes across to you. Most of all I really hope that the recipes and (often very silly) craft sheets have made parenting just a tiny bit easier for you this year. That’s always my primary aim. This parenting malarky is SO hard, and I love the thought that my recipes are helping you make healthier families and that the craft stuff is giving you the tools to find creative time with your kids.

But it’s tiring, isn’t it, this life thing! Along with blogging, my regular illustration work and odd days of magazine design freelancing, this year I’ve moved house, published a new book and my hubby has started a business (Temple & Webster – yes, I HAVE to keep flogging it, sorry). I’ve continued to pour SO much energy into my gorgeous little Miss Fruitarian and Mr Meat & Potatoes. For some strange reason, I had thought that by this age, caring for them would have become easier, but I realise now that the parenting never eases, just reshapes as their needs grow and change.

So from my family to yours, I wish you a really happy holiday season. I do hope you manage to find some time for stillness to reflect and enjoy your situations, and to find the gratitude and love that we are each blessed with.

As you can tell from my sentimental waffle, I’m losing it a bit! Time to take a blogging break. I’m aiming to be back in 3 weeks or so. I’ll still be popping by Facebook (I do love our stoushes on there!) and the shop is open throughout Summer.

And as my final gift for the year, here’s my take on the modern Australian classic noodle salad – my kids both LOVE this dish and I figure a few fatty noodles are ok when so much fresh, raw goodness is being inhaled. See you next year…

Simple & delicious & perfect for this summer.



Crispy noodle salad

1 cucumber
4 cups Chinese cabbage, finely shredded
1 carrot, peeled, grated
6 spring onions,
thinly sliced
100g packet crispy noodles

Sauce
¼ cup white vinegar
3 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp grapeseed oil
Drizzle of sesame oil

Halve your cucumber lengthwise, scoop the seeds out with a teaspoon and slice into half-moons. Place in a salad bowl. Mix in the cabbage, carrot, spring onion and noodles.

Place all the sauce ingredients in a bowl or glass jar and whisk or shake until well combined. Pour over the salad and stir through.

SERVES 2 ADULTS & 2 KIDS

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Foolproof roast chicken & cous cous salad

On the fridge all year - Miss Fruitarian's 'to do' list for 2011

Each year I have a ‘to do’ list. You know, a list of things that I’d like to master in the coming year. Important stuff like “make choux pastry” and “be thankful every day”. Miss Fruitarian jumped on the bandwagon this year and has done well on her list, which included ‘get a kitten’ and ‘skip to 100’.

My list was blown out of the water by a house purchase, house sale, house move and job change (husband). I’m still catching my breath, and actually can’t even remember what was on my list for this year, let alone WHERE the piece of paper might actually be.

So with the year hurtling to a close, it’s lucky that my list in 2007 included ‘cook a perfect roast chicken’ – you know, where the vegies and meat are all cooked perfectly and AT THE SAME TIME. It’s a skill that comes in handy during the festive season.

Just in case you’ve got the chicken cooking thing on the list for next year, here’s a recipe that will cut you a bit of slack – a roast chook with a cous cous salad that is SO delicious and suited to hot Australian nights.

This cous cous salad is the best I’ve tried – it’s based on a recipe from Ainsley Harriott’s Barbeque Bible. It’s his spice combination and cooking method, which seems to produce perfectly fluffy cous cous. I’ve just added in a stack of vegies (of course).

Do my kids eat this salad with all the green flecks and pumpkin (their least favourite) bits? Surprisingly yes. The first time I made it, I thought they wouldn’t, which really vouches for how yummy it is. I do have to cut up Mr M&P’s chicken and mix it through as a lure, and Miss F does gag if she hits a chunk of coriander, but apart from that it disappears.

Now, if only I could get my kids to eat with their cutlery properly and have some vague semblance of table manners, I’d be feeling pretty accomplished. I guess I better put it on the ‘to do’ list for next year.

Fancy enough for the festive season, methinks.


Roast chicken with a delicious cous cous salad

1×1.8kg chicken
1 lemon, halved
Olive oil
Salt & pepper

¼ cup pinenuts

2 cups pumpkin (Jap is good), peeled and cut into a 1cm dice.
2 tsps honey
1 clove garlic, minced
½ tsp coriander powder
½ tsp cumin powder
½ tsp sweet paprika
¾ cup cous cous
¾ cup chicken stock
Pinch saffron (optional)
4 spring onions, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled, grated
½ red capsicum, finely diced
Handful fresh herbs (any combination of mint, parsley & coriander)
Juice ½ lemon (plus the zest if you can be bothered)

Preheat the oven to 170C fan-forced. Have a rack down low (for the chook) and one up high (for the pumpkin).

Don’t be squeamish and don’t think about how a wee chicken carcass feels vaguely like holding a baby… Wash the whole chook well. Use paper towel to dry it both inside and out. Place a rack in a roasting tray then pop the chicken on top (breast side down). Pour about ¼ cup of water and the juice of half a lemon in the tray. Shove the squeezed half and the full half of lemon inside the birdie. Close up the legs (a girl’s gotta have some dignity), drizzle over olive oil & salt & pepper.

Roast in the oven for about 40 minutes. Meanwhile…

Pour your dry cous cous into a heat-proof bowl.

In a small non-stick pan, toast your pinenuts and set aside. Add about one tablespoon of olive oil to the pan, then fry off the garlic, coriander, cumin & paprika for a minute or so. Pour in the chicken stock. Add the saffron (if using) and the spring onions (this takes the onion tang out of them). Pour into the cous cous bowl. Use a fork to quickly combine, then cover with plastic wrap.

Spread the pumpkin out on an oven tray (lined with baking paper), drizzle over olive oil and honey. Toss lightly.

Pull out your chicken. Turn over (carefully), baste or drizzle a touch more oil. Season. Pop back into the oven & also put in the pumpkin (on the top tray).

Bake everything for about 40-45 minutes, until the pumpkin is soft and the juices of the chicken run clear. (There’s a demo of how about 1:40 into this video – or push a skewer in behind the drumstick then press to see the colour of the juice)

Cover the chicken with foil for a bit while you fork through the cous cous then toss in the rest of the ingredients in. Then carve the chicken (good ‘how to’ video about carving chickens, turkeys etc here), serve and EAT. Yum.

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Quick. Make-ahead. Cheese.

After a far-reaching day on Facebook yesterday that stretched from poo jokes to fat kids, some of you may have concluded that my birthday is not my best day of the year. The day after however is like a renewal. I’ve accepted the new age and am ready to move forward.

With that in mind, let’s stick straight to food today. No pfaffing or spamming, just a delicious, healthy, snacky meal that will come in handy throughout December as life gets more and more frantic.

It’s a good one since you can make the filling ahead and leave it in the fridge for a few hours or a couple of days, then spread it over a tortilla, sprinkle some cheese then either cook in the pan, or just fold one tortilla in half and cook in your sandwich press. It smuggles a bunch of good stuff, is a hearty vegetarian option and has enough oozy cheese to charm even the toughest tiny food critic.

Onions, carrot, capsicum, tomatoes, kidney beans, avocado. YUM.


Bean & vegie quesadillas

1 tbsp olive oil
1 brown onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 large carrot, peeled, grated
½ capsicum, seeded, finely chopped (any colour)
2 tomatoes, chopped
400g can red kidney beans, rinsed, drained, roughly mashed
½ tsp sugar
½ tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp barbecue sauce
10 bought tortillas
Grated cheese
Sliced avocado (optional)

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium–high heat. Add the onion and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring often. Pop in the garlic, carrot and capsicum and continue cooking for 2–3 minutes or until everything starts to soften.

Mix through the tomato, then add the beans, sugar, cumin and barbecue sauce. Cook for another couple of minutes. Season with salt and black pepper.

Warm the tortillas in the oven or microwave according to packet directions so that they separate easily. Spread some of the bean mix over one tortilla. Top with cheese and avocado. Place another tortilla on top and slide into a warm non-stick frying pan over medium heat. When toasted on the bottom, slide out onto a plate, place your hand on top and flip over. Return the tortilla to the pan until both sides are golden. Repeat with the remaining mixture and tortillas. To serve, cut into quarters.

MAKES 5

real-healthy-families

Like this recipe? Check out my cookbooks to find a bunch more meals that your family will love.

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How to have them begging for zucchini (in their lunchbox)

Now I don’t like to brag, and I generally am a very self-effacing person, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this recipe is possibly the most genius recipe I have ever formulated! It is just SO good. When my kids see me making these, they start JUMPING AROUND.

It meets all of my usual vegie-smuggling criteria – easy to make, full of all sorts of good ingredients, stores well and is tasty enough for kids and adults alike. You can eat them hot or cold – so whip up some for a side dish for tonight’s dinner and then pop the rest into tomorrow’s lunchboxes.

Did I mention that this recipe is from the complete Vegie Smugglers lunchbox planner? I like to give one recipe away for free (last term was the easy beetroot dip/sandwich spread). I know I’m banging on about the planner, but without a few sales here and there, the Vegie Smugglers blog ends up being a time-consuming and rewarding passion that I have to squeeze in between my other money-making commitments. But nearly every mum I talk to has some intriguing online venture going on, so you all know what I’m saying.

Anyway, enough blatant spamming. Here’s the recipe to enjoy.

Vegie Smugglers cheese puffs recipe

Delicious. Yum. Easy. Yum. Lunchboxes. Yum.


Cheese Puffs

½ cup milk (soy is fine)
1 egg
½ tsp smoked paprika
1 zucchini, grated (peeled first if your kids hate green)
2 spring onions, finely chopped
2 cups grated cheese (cheddar is best)
1 cup self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 190C. Line a baking tray.

In a large bowl, whisk together the milk and egg. Add the paprika, zucchini, spring onions and cheese.

Sift over the flour. Mix well (it becomes a thick paste). Dollop out portions. Bake for 20-25 minutes until deep golden brown and cooked through.

Store in the fridge in an airtight container for several days.

MAKES 16

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The best way to smuggle… red lentils

I think quite possibly, red lentils are the holy grail of vegie smuggling. They have that unique flavour of… well… dirt really, that makes them tricky to hide in a delicious, kid-friendly meal. I have tried all sorts of dahls & stews. I’ve tried to hide them in chillis, fajitas (a way that works briliantly with brown lentils) but time and time again I’ve served them up and gotten a big ‘not happy Jan’ from the kids.

But finally after 18 months of trying and trying I’ve cracked it with this amazingly good pumpkin soup recipe. It is a magic recipe. My kids don’t like pumpkin and they don’t like lentils, but this dish makes them swoon. Admittedly, the quantity of lentils is small, but from modest beginnings I can build. It seems like the trickiest part of vegie smuggling is discovering the first acceptable dish that contains a forbidden ingredient. Once the first meal goes in, the taste seed is planted and you can move on to bigger and bolder things. From here I’ll build a dahl recipe with similar flavours and before I know it, the kids will be pestering ME for a trip down to the local Indian.

vegie smugglers pumpkin and lentil soup recipe

Food alchemy.



Pumpkin, corn & lentil soup

1kg butternut pumpkin, peeled, chopped into 1.5cm cubes
Olive oil
1–2 tsp Moroccan spice mix (the better quality the mix, the better the flavour)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
1 litre good-quality chicken stock
¼ cup red lentils, picked over, rinsed
420g can creamed corn
Baguette
Grated cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 220°C.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and top with the pumpkin in a single layer. Drizzle with oil and as much spice mix as suits your family. Toss to combine and bake for 15–20 minutes until the pumpkin is soft but without too much colour.

Meanwhile, heat 1 tbsp oil in a large saucepan over medium–low heat. Add the onion and cook for 6–8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the pumpkin, stock and lentils to the pan. Stir well and cover. Bring to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes until the lentils are tender.

Stir through the corn and black pepper. Remove from the heat and use a stick blender to blend until creamy.

Slice the baguette, scatter with cheddar and grill under a preheated grill on medium until it is melted and golden. Cut some slices into cubes and keep some whole.

Serve the soup in cute bowls, with both cheesy cubes hidden throughout and a large slice on top.

SERVES 2 ADULTS & 2 KIDS

__________

If your kids like soups, why not try these other recipes…

Chicken, vegie & pasta soup

Witches Stew

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Back to school – oh, what a shame… ;)

I don’t know about you, but these holidays have seemed quite long to me! Mix together the constant chatter, vague pestering, the odd sibling quarrel and you have a noisy mix that has filled my ears to bursting. It’s around this time each break that I start to think that a job in a proper office might be nice, you know, away with adults where people pester you via email and only at appointed times. And just when you think you’re on the holidays home straight, the NSW department of Education chucks in a student-free day which means I have to actually wait until Tuesday for a bit of blessed silence.

To get you back in the swing of things, here’s a recipe from the Term 3 menu planner – an easy beetroot spread that brightens up sandwiches and also works well as dip. And don’t forget to download the Morning Jobs sheets that you can stick up and help your kids be in charge of organising themselves in the mornings.

I’ll think of you all at 10am Tuesday morning when I’m sitting, sipping my cup of tea in the solitude. In fact, at that alloted time, let’s all give each other a (silent) toast.

Brighten up a dull lunchbox with this pink hit


Beetroot Sandwich spread

2 medium beetroots
125g low-fat cream cheese
2 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180C. Wash beetroot gently. Trim stems leaving about 3cm. Wrap each one in foil. Place on tray and bake for 1 hour until skewer can easily slide through.

Unwrap, cool slightly then peel and roughly chop. Pop into a stick blender (or food processor). Blitz. Add rest of ingredients and blitz until smooth and well combined.

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Meat-free Monday

Paranoid about protein, I eat a lot more meat now that I’m a parent than I ever did in my dink-chardonnay-socialist-vegetarian-exept-for-bacon-and-a-really-good-bit-of-sirloin days.

Luckily my vegetarian phase didn’t last long and mainly coincided with living in the UK where meat is not only expensive but vaguely tainted with the whole mad-cow thing. I was swayed too by a stint at an ashram where I attended endless lectures about the wholeness of everything and that when we kill creatures we are actually killing ourselves. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Besides, the astonishingly creative and good vegetarian food there was quite a revelation.

But being a pragmatist, the main things that really convince me to be meat free more often are the environmental arguments and the hideous statistics about the wastage that occurs in order to raise animals for us to slaughter and eat. There’s a quick rundown here on “10 reasons why it’s green to go veggie”.

Which is all good, but raising vegetarian kids who are already fussy eaters can be a tricky business. Getting the nutritional balance right for them is tough (there’s a Vic health article here) and I think most of us who are toying with the whole thing give it a miss as soon as our tantruming-toddlers are silenced by a cutlet.

So perhaps now is a nice chance to join the meat-free Monday movement and help our health, the environment, and the universe… man. Peace.

Vegie Smugglers vegetarian bolognaise

This is a simple one-pot pasta sauce that not only hides veg but IS all veg.


Vegetarian bolognaise

A stick blender is entirely useful to get a convincing consistency for this dish.

800g can chopped tomatoes
1 red onion, finely diced
4 mushrooms, diced
1 cup broccoli florets
½ red capsicum, seeded, diced
310g can chickpeas, rinsed, drained
½ cup red wine (optional, but recommended)
2 tbsp sun-dried tomatoes in oil, sliced
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp finely chopped herbs (try basil or parsley)
1 bay leaf
Cooked fettuccine, to serve

Place a large saucepan over medium heat. Add all of the ingredients except the pasta. Bring to the boil, then lower to a simmer and leave it bubbling away for 30–40 minutes or until everything is tender.

Remove from the heat and discard the bay leaf. Use a stick blender to whizz the sauce it until you have a texture to suit your family. I keep small chunks in mine so that it looks like regular bolognaise.

Taste and season with salt and oodles of black pepper. Serve with fettuccine (or pasta of your choice).

SERVES 2 ADULTS & 3 KIDS

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Controlling, fat and unnecessary

Aren’t commas great? They make a mundane, uptight phrase so much more interesting.

You see, “controlling fat and unnecessary additives” should really be today’s headline, but it’s a bit dry, isn’t it. I much prefer ‘controlling, fat and unnecessary’, which sounds much more salacious and intriguing. You read that and think, “Is she talking about herself, her mother-in-law, who else?”

But actually, I’m talking about how just a little effort can go a long way toward improving your family’s diets.

Now, I’m as big a fan of convenience foods as the next stressed-out-over-scheduled parent, but there’s one mass selling processed food that I just don’t understand – frozen chips. And here’s why…

You have to preheat the oven to 200C. Open the packet; pour them onto an oven tray. Bake 10 minutes then turn and bake for another 10. And then you have a half soggy chip that has been processed in a factory and shipped in plastic, then bought (at a premium) by you and prepared.

Here’s what I do for my chips.

My new fav kitchen toy - makes vegies instantly more fun

I buy potatoes. Not in plastic. I preheat the oven to 200C. I peel my potatoes and chop them with my new favourite wiggly chopper. It takes about 3-4 minutes to do 3-4 potatoes. I put them on the tray, and toss them with olive oil, salt & pepper. After 10 minutes, I sprinkle over parmesan cheese and bake for another 10-15 minutes until they are golden and crunchy and delicious.

REALLY yum, REALLY easy.

So my total extra effort isn’t much. And the result is SO much better. You can control the amount of olive oil and salt that you use (remember that every teaspoon of olive oil contains 4.5g of fat – .621g of which is saturated).

Like my muesli bars and beetroot tzatziki, sometimes we can easily produce a better tasting, healthier version of ‘convenience’ foods at home. Just sayin’.

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A spoonful of sugar (or croutons) helps the vegies go down

A big fat yummy bowl of witches' stew

Last week I served up an aesthetically challenged split pea soup that could best be visually compared to a bowl of snot. Full of vegetables and lacking in glamour, there was little chance of the little lovelies voluntarily hoeing in. Which is a shame, since it was absolutely delicious.

In these situations it’s important to remember the Vegie-Smuggling philosophy of sugar coating meals – that is, finding lures that will be irresistible to your kids that will ensure certain success with a risky dinner. For me, these include dollops of tomato sauce, mayonnaise and with soups, croutons.

There’s something FUN about discovering a crunchy delight in a thick soup and it works on my kids without fail.

I dump a load of them into a bowl and ladle the soup over. The first crouton goes in, coated in soup and the kids realise that the flavour is good and then they go back for more. I PROMISE you, that both the kids ate up full bowls of this soup and said they’d happily eat it again. We even had a laugh about the ugly look of it. Once the croutons were submerged, Miss Fruitarian renamed it ‘Witches stew’, which I think is a title just as enticing to kids as the oily, garlic bread.

This is an advanced Vegie Smuggling dish – if your kids aren’t used to soup, try my Chicken & pasta recipe instead, but if your kids are used to a nice thick hearty texture (and like peas), try this out. It’s not my recipe (it’s from Gateway Gourmet), I’ve only added the croutons and made minimal changes, which is why it’s not in the cookbook, only online.

Witches stew

2 tbsp olive oil
1 white onion, diced
1 carrot, peeled, diced
3 celery sticks, diced
1 parsnip, peeled, diced
1 ¼ cups green split peas, rinsed, picked over
4 cups vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
Half a bunch fresh thyme leaves (remove stalks)
Salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the vegies and cook, stirring often for 8-10 minutes to soften. Add the split peas, stock, herbs and some seasoning.

Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 1-1¼ hours. Remove the bay leaf. Use a stick blender to process until smooth. Add 1/4-1/2 cup extra water if the texture is too thick. Season further to taste.

Serve over croutons.

vegie smugglers croutons

Not healthy, but will make the rest of it magically disappear

Croutons

Preheat oven to 200C. Line oven tray with baking paper.

Slice 1 small breadstick into cubes. Scatter on tray.

Combine 2-3 tbsp olive oil with 2 cloves garlic and 1 tsp Italian herbs. Mix well. Pour over bread and toss to coat.

Bake 10-15 minutes until as golden as you like.

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Hippie food for hi-tech kids

It’s time to brush off the cookbooks from the 70s and revisit the health food section of the supermarket. Don’t be scared, everything is going to be OK.

Remember that kids have no inborn aversion to cliched hippie food like lentils and tofu. They will take their cues from YOU, so challenge your own food aversions and experiment a little. You might even find, that ‘health food’ meals like these lentil burgers are actually delicious and quickly become family favourites. They’re nutritious, quick and easy to make and individual patties can be frozen (find full freezing and defrosting instructions in the book).

lentil burger recipe

Lentils made delicious.

Lentil burgers

400g can brown lentils, rinsed, drained
1 cup mashed sweet potato (or plain potato)
1 carrot, peeled, grated
3 spring onions,
finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
Grated rind from
1 lemon
1 egg, lightly whisked
2 tbsp tomato chutney
½ cup fresh breadcrumbs
Salt & black pepper

Canola oil cooking spray

Avocado and tomato slices, lettuce, burger buns and plain yoghurt, to serve

Combine all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Use your hands to really combine everything well. Form patties (whatever size suits your family) and place on baking paper on a plate. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10-20 minutes.

Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Spray pan with cooking spray. Cook the patties for 5-6 minutes on each side.

Serve with avocado, tomato, lettuce and a dollop of yoghurt on a burger bun. These are also delicious in wraps dolloped with tzatziki.

SERVES 2 ADULTS & 2 KIDS

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