Pa Amb Tomaquet for Toddlers and Adults

If you're not familiar with the name, let me explain.  This would be lofty to call this a 'dish' but it's kind of a way of serving bread in Catalonia (Spain) which is absolutely delicious and fantastic with good Spanish ham or cured meats.

This is typical of Spanish cooking.  Take good bread, good tomatoes, good olive oil and make something which elevates all of them.

There's no reason not to give this to your toddler, just leave the salt out and it's fairly similar to a garlic / tomato bread which is the kind of stuff my toddler loves.  Oh and you must have good bread.  I'm lucky that I have a friend who made some sourdough bread yesterday and this is the kind of dish for using up slightly stale bread and sourdough has that fantastically chewy crust.  Before the days of using enzymes, preservatives and improvers in bread, there were hundreds of recipes around the world for using stale bread because bread would stale quickly.  These thrifty dishes are generally pretty good in their own right.

If I have any bread left over, I think this one is getting frozen as breadcrumbs.  Imagine chicken nuggets made with sourdough bread!  Or is that just taking the 'junk recipe made with good ingredients' just a bit too far?

I wish I had the time to devote to a sour.  Maybe as my son grows up a little I will but treating a pot of yeasty goodness like an additional child feels a bit wrong when my son is still so little!

Pa Amb Tomaquet (tomato bread) - serves 1 adult, easily increased

Ingredients

Some good bread
1 ripe tomato
2 tsp of good quality extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled
Coarse sea salt (miss out for toddlers or babies)

Method

Slice two slices of bread per adult.

Take the garlic and gently rub over the bread slices.  It might seem strange but it does give a subtle garlic flavour.

You can serve this completely cold but I like to take the slices of bread and put them into a dry pan and toast quickly either side over a high heat.

Take off the heat, slice the tomato in half and squeeze and rub over the bread slices.  Pour a tsp of olive oil over each slice and top with a sprinkling of salt (if using).

Eat on its own (ideal with some good Estrella Dam if you're an adult) or you could even use to make possibly the best sandwich in the world with some Spanish Serrano ham.  Delicious.

Savoury Welsh Cakes for Babies and Toddlers

Why on earth did I not think of this before?  A welsh cake is a bit like a scone but cooked on a frying pan (well traditionally it would have been cooked on a griddle but that confuses people because I don't mean a ridged griddle pan, a griddle is flat without sides.  My mum is the only person I know who has one.)  I suspect they could be cooked directly onto an Aga plate but I don't have one and I suspect very few of my readers have an Aga either.

Welsh cakes are normally made with sultanas and sugar but there's no real reason why not to use the inspiration for a savoury snack.  Also they're quick to make and as in this case, I've used an ingredient which would normally be discarded so they can be pretty thrifty too, especially as you're cooking on a hob and so not using all that energy to heat up an oven.

If you use a small cutter, you can get loads.  I used a diamond shaped cutter which was probably approx 3 cm (1.25 inches) long which also has the benefit of being able to cut closer together without waste (unlike a round cutter).

Anyone who is offended at my use of the term 'welsh cake' for something which is clearly a way removed from the traditional recipe; I do apologise and I would also like to point out the use of red, white and green in the ingredients ;o)

I think this has potential for more savoury and sweet options.  I will experiment and let you know...

Savoury Broccoli and Red Onion Welsh Cakes for Babies and Toddlers makes 30+ depending on the size of your cutter

Ingredients

1 small red onion, finely chopped
60g broccoli stalk, grated
Spray oil or additional oil or butter
225g (8oz) SR flour
75g (3oz) unsalted butter
75g (3oz) mature cheddar
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp full fat greek yoghurt
1 egg
A few sprigs of parsley

Method

Fry the onion and grated broccoli in the spray oil or butter until softened.  Allow to cool.

Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.  Add the onion and broccoli, cheese and chopped parsley and mix.  Add in the mustard, yoghurt and egg and bring together into a dough.  Roll out on a floured surface until just over half a cm thick (quarter of an inch).  Heat a non stick pan on a hob and then cut the dough into pieces.  For babies just getting used to finger foods, it might be a good idea to cut into sticks.

Cook a few 'cakes' in the pan at a time at a medium to low heat until they have formed a good crust on one side (takes a couple of minutes) and turn over.  You'll find they will puff up a little when they cook, check they're fully cooked.  Turn out onto a plate and continue cooking the remainder.

Serve the same day (allow to cool a little until safe but great when still warm) or freeze then defrost from frozen in a microwave.

Obviously keep an eye on salt content if giving to a young baby but if you consider that I made 36 I think and still had a little dough left over, the amount of sodium from the raising agent in the flour and the cheese will be pretty low per 'cake'.

I'm definitely going to have a go at sugar free sweet welsh cakes so I'll keep you posted.

The Best Cottage Pie EVER!

I'm not generally prone to overstatement but this is certainly the best cottage pie I've ever eaten even if my presentation is a bit rubbish.  I mean it's almost worth making yesterday's pot roast just to have the ingredients!

I suppose Italians do that though.  If you look at their slow cooked hare or boar ragus, they are bubbled away for hours before being chopped up and served with pasta (and I heartily thank them for it).  So I like to think some traditional English establishment might stumble across my blog one day and realise what a fantastic idea this is!  I mean, ok, it's a leftover recipe now but sometimes thrift and hunger are the best inspirations.  Perhaps you might need to work on my presentation, I know, it's a bit ropey.

So, yesterday's recipe for Pot Roast will have had some left over if you weren't too hungry and I also encouraged you to cook a few extra potatoes.  Well here we go:

Amazing Cottage Pie for all the Family - serves 2 adults with quantities below, but easily increased.

Ingredients

Approx 300-400g Cooked Pot Roast Beef
Gravy (approx half from the pot roast)
Left over Mashed Potato from 2-3 potatoes (or 2-3 cooked jacket potatoes scooped out and passed through a ricer.)
30g Grated grana padano, parmesan or strong cheddar

Method

Cut up the pot roast into delicious little meaty shards.  Use a sharp chef knife for this.  Mix with the remaining gravy and put into an ovenproof baking dish.

Top with mashed potato.  I use a ricer which practically guarantees it to be lump free.

Then add the cheese and chill until ready to bake.

Bake for 30 mins approx or until browned on top and thoroughly hot throughout.  Serve with green vegetables.

Absolutely fantastic.  One of my favourite meals and frankly cottage and shepherds pies normally leave me cold.  Great for kids.  If you don't have enough ingredients for a full family version, it's worth making a kid sized one to stick in the freezer (uncooked) for when you're eating that chicken madras that might be a stretch too far...

Oh there are some seconds.  I'll be back in a mo...  nom, nom, nom...

Beef Pot Roast for Babies, Toddlers and Adults

Sorry to all US readers if this is inauthentic.  This is based upon a recipe I found in "Making the Most of your Slow Cooker" by Catherine Atkinson.

It's amazing that I've been cooking with slow cookers (crock pots) since I was a student in *ahem* 1996.  So that makes it 15 years.  If I type small it won't seem that long.  Anyway It's taken me that long to come up with a pot roast recipe.  Surely slow cookers are made for pot roasting right?

Well there are loads of great things about this recipe; it's a cheap cut of meat, it's tasty, it makes it's own gravy, needs very little attention and there is a great leftovers recipe... see tomorrow.  What's more because the beef is so tender, it's great for whizzing up for traditional weaners or giving in small pieces to baby led weaning babies and I think even babies and toddlers will love the leftovers too.  If you think about it, it's often the texture which puts kids off meat.  It must be hard if you think about it; most kids only get their first molars over the age of 12 months, maybe their second set by 2 years old but that's still only 8 'chewing teeth' until their much older!

I would imagine you could make this without a slow cooker but it would be much more faff and more inclined to be a bit dry I would imagine.   Just buy a slow cooker!  They're really cheap to buy and cheap to run!

Pot Roast Beef For the Whole Family - Makes 2 adult portions plus enough for 2 further adult portions as leftovers (see tomorrow's recipe).

Ingredients

850g Rolled Brisket of Beef (sometimes called a 'pot roast' joint in UK supermarkets.  You can use a bigger piece of beef to serve more, just make sure it fits into your slow cooker and don't go bigger than 1.2kg; 2.5lb.)
2 small red onions cut into small wedges
2 carrots cut into thick slices
2 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
1 small wine glass of red wine (optional, substitute for more stock for babies)
200ml stock (use homemade salt free stock or very low salt stock cube if serving to babies or toddlers)
2 dried bay leaves
A few sprigs of thyme
A few sprigs of parsley
2 dsp cornflour

Method

Put your slow cooker on high.

Put the onions and carrots into a frying pan with half of the oil.  Fry on a medium heat until getting softened and slightly browned, add the garlic and fry a little longer.  Put into the slow cooker.

Heat up the remaining oil in the frying pan and brown the joint all over.  Put on top of the vegetables in the slow cooker.

Deglaze the pan using the wine (or use the stock if not using wine), i.e. scrape up any tasty bits from the bottom and, if using wine, boil for a few minutes to drive off the alcohol.   Add to the slow cooker with the hot stock.  Add in the herbs.

As you can see, my slow cooker is getting a bit worn out and it's a bit on the small side if Santa is reading...

Cook for 3.5 - 4 hours on high, then lower the heat to low and cook for a further 2-3 hours or until it's very tender.  I found 3.5 hours on high and 3 hours on low in my slow cooker was perfect.

Lift out the meat carefully (it might start to fall apart so use a big spoon, don't just skewer it with a fork!)  Cover the meat to keep it warm and leave to rest for 10-15 mins.

Strain the gravy into a sauce pan and discard the vegetables (if serving to a traditionally weaned baby on early stages of weaning you could puree some of the soft carrots, onions and beef together but probably best not to include the garlic in the puree!)

Bring the gravy to the boil.  Mix the cornflour with some cold water until it makes a paste and gradually add to the boiling gravy, stirring constantly until it's thickened to your liking.

Cut up the beef into chunks, it won't carve neatly however sharp your knife is.  Serve with vegetables.  I like to serve with jacket or mashed potatoes.  If you do too, cook two or three extra and stick them in the fridge... because the next recipe is cottage pie with the leftovers!