Mexican-style Chicken Soup

Vienna's been feeling a bit sorry for herself this week. Her teeth are coming through and she's had a bad case of the sniffles so I thought I'd make her some chicken soup to feel better and put a bit of a YMHT spin on it.

Ingredients

• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 red chilli, chopped
• 400g chicken, diced and grilled
• 1 can sweetcorn, drained
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 800 ml stock (see below)
• 1 tbsp tomato puree

For the Stock

• 800 ml water
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp coriander
• 1 tsp oregano
• a pinch of tarragon
• the chicken from the ingredients above

1. Put 800ml water into a saucepan and add the herbs. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5-10 minutes.
2. Add the chicken, cover, and simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
3. Don't forget to take the bay leaf out before you use it!

Method

1. Put the onion, garlic and chilli in a large saucepan and cook until soft.
2. Add the tomatoes, sweetcorn and tomato puree. Stir well.
3. Mix in the stock with the chicken in and leave to simmer for 15 minutes.

 It's great with a nice bit of buttery toast. Vienna had hers with a jacket potato, broccoli and some kidney beans. I gave her some of the juice in a cup so she could have her own cuppa soup too!

Ratatouille

That's quite hard to spell but to be fair, I was planning on eating it not spelling it so apologies if it's wrong ;) I love ratatouille because it's a nice main meal with some pasta if you've forgotten to take some meat out of the freezer, but it also goes really nicely with fish and garlic bread (like we had it), chicken, baguettes- it's just really versatile and pretty easy to do.

Ingredients

• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 large aubergine, cut into chunks
• 1 large courgette, cut into chunks
• 1 red pepper, chopped into chunks
• 1 green pepper, chopped into chunks
• 5/6 large tomatoes, blended (feel free to substitute for a can of chopped tomatoes)
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 2 tsp oregano

Method

1. Fry the onion until lightly browned and add the garlic. Cook for about 3-5 minutes.
2. Add the aubergine and brown, followed by the courgette and then peppers.
3. Add the tomatoes then mix in the tomato puree and season with oregano to taste.
4. Leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes until soft.

You can get boneless, skinless fish fillets that can be microwaved from frozen and they're so handy for some healthy food in under 5 minutes. The amount of fish you actually end up eating makes these better value than buying from the fish counter and it's just as good for you. I don't eat cod so we always get either salmon or haddock but any white fish would be really tasty.

Aubergine Gratin

That's posh for Aubergine and Lentil Bake.

Ingredients

• 1 large aubergine, sliced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 150g red lentils (dried)
• 1 tsp oregano
• 50g grated mild cheddar (mature has more salt in it)

Method

1. Give the lentils a rinse and put them in a pan with twice as much water. Bring to the boil and simmer until all the water has evaporated.
2. Stick the aubergine slices under a low heat grill until they're nice and browned.
3. Fry the onion  in a small saucepan until soft, then add the garlic and cook for about 3-5 minutes before mixing with the tomatoes and oregano. Add the lentils and simmer until they're really nice and soft.
4. Preheat the oven to 180C.
5. Take a casserole dish (ceramic/pyrex dish) and layer the aubergine on the bottom. Cover with the sauce, then repeat until you run out of both.
6. Cover with the grated cheese and bake for 20 minutes.

Tell you what, this was really nice on top of a toasted bagel. Vienna said so too.

(Well, actually what she said was "ning ning" but I'm assuming that means yum.)

What is this "Spice" Nonsense?

I have a few updates tonight so I'll get to them in a minute, but this has been on my mind this week. I want this blog to be a bit more than just a list of recipes, I want it to be helpful to people (mainly mums and dads, obviously, but not just parents) who want quick but nice food, and, like me, don't speak "chef".

Tonight, I'm going to decipher the mysteries of the spice rack! Sort of...

I kind of take after my mum, who thinks you NEED herbs and spices in a dish, except not quite as strongly. I think people that say they "transform a dish" are going a bit overboard, because no amount of coriander is going to make chicken taste like fish, you know? But on the other hand, if all you've got in the cupboard is a couple of carrots and some coriander then there you go! Carrot and coriander cuppa soup. Just makes life a little bit less beige.

So here's the YMHT guide to essential herbs and spices it might be a good idea to stick in the cupboard:

1. Coriander (dried, leaf)- lots of recipes ask for this, it's one of the most useful herbs there is, you can use it in soups, curries, stews, salsa, mexican food, thai food, indian food and it's really nice in stuffing
2. Oregano (dried)- this is also really useful, the best way of describing its flavour is 'italian' and it's great with tomato dishes and meat stews
3. Cumin and Turmeric (ground)- if you only have cumin, you don't necessarily need turmeric and vice versa, but they work really well together in curries and asian dishes- I use a lot because I love moroccan food and these two give a nice, bit more exotic flavour
4. Nutmeg and Cinnamon (ground)- these are lovely in cakes or rubbed into grilled apple wedges but they give sweet dishes a little bit more of a pudding-y flavour; if you get cinnamon sticks these are nice in asian stews as well but they aren't all that essential
5. Flat leaf parsley- parsley's quite easy to grow and it is nice fresh but it's just as easy to buy dried. There is actually a difference between curled and flat leaf but flat leaf is a bit more common for cooking and curly is more of a garnish- it has a nice clean flavour that goes with fish, pork, soups, salads and vegetables on a sunday roast
6. Basil- this is like oregano in that it has a nice italian flavour that goes really well with tomatoes and meats
7. Chives- really easy to grow, it has an onion-y type flavour because it comes from the same family so it's great with cheese, salad, dips and sauces
8. Mixed Spice, Mixed Herbs- right now this can be a bit confusing because mixed spice and mixed herbs are pretty obvious, but allspice lives near mixed spice in the supermarket and it's not the same- technically it's ground pimiento berry but you can make an allspice substitute by mixing 1 part cinnamon/nutmeg/cloves

If you only want a REALLY basic stock I'd go with cumin, coriander, oregano and mixed spice, but that's no fun at all.

Granny's Proper Pancakes

My mum taught me this last week after only, oh... 20 years. They're really tasty and I did promise you the recipe last week!

 Ingredients:

• 1/2 a pint of milk (whole for babies, any kind for you)
• 4oz plain flour
• 1 egg

Method:

1. Blend the egg and milk together (in a blender, we don't go for inefficiency on this blog!).
2. Gradually add the flour.
3. Let the mix rest in the fridge for half an hour.
4. Heat some oil in a frying pan (no more than a tbsp olive oil for a baby) then pour a ladleful (about 4 tbsp) in and swirl it around until the base is completely covered.
5. Leave it on the heat until the sides of the mix begin to come away from the edges of the frying pan (like you would an omelette).
6. Flip it (the fun part!) and let it cook for about half a minute.

Vienna has a thing about blueberries at the minute. They're great for practicing her pincer actions (using your thumb and forefinger to pick things up). I think this would also be nice if you stuck the raspberries and blueberries in the blender then spread the moosh inside the pancakes and rolled them up.

Here's Steve's with strawberries and fruit sugar. I stole half of it and did not feel guilty.

Snaffoo Sauce

Part of me really did not want to share this with you because if you knew how easy it is to do it would make me look a lot less clever ;)

Ingredients:

• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 1 can kidney beans (in water)
• 1 can sweetcorn (in water)

Method:

1. Mix in a pan until warmed through.
2. Don't tell anyone how easy it is.

We had this for tea last night with a poached egg, meatballs, pasta, courgette and beans. Yum.

PS. 3 of your 5 a day. Just saying.

Planning for Parties!

Well what a day! It was Vienna's christening today so Steve and I had quite a lot of planning to do. 

That's as far as I got last week before I realised I still had to clean up after the do ;)

Planning a party with a baby was, for me, fairly stressful. It was our first time hosting a do so that in itself was something to be aware of, plus it was me that came up with the whole menu, did the shopping, the cooking, etc etc... THAT was the easy part. The hard part was coming up with a menu that would (I hope) please everyone- Steve's dad doesn't eat anything spicy, only plain food (my brain, which runs off garlic and chilli, finds this concept totally alien)... Vienna doesn't eat any salt/sugar/nuts/junk food... AND I knew there'd be at least one person there who would be wheat intolerant. You get my drift.

I really wanted there to be something for everyone, but at the same time I knew there was quite a high chance that Vienna would look at all the food and assume it was all for her so I wanted to make as much of it baby-friendly as possible while still keeping the costs down. I hope you find this post useful because it was actually pretty straightforward to do all the shopping and cooking.

In the end, here is what we came up with. I didn't manage to take any pictures because I was a bit busy dunking Vienna in oil and water ;) so you'll just have to take my word for it that it all went off without a hitch. Except the spaghetti. More about that later...

Note: I did the sandwiches salads and garlic breads sunday morning for the afternoon so they wouldn't go stale, the rice salad saturday night and the hot dishes friday night but I froze them so they'd still be good for sunday. Mum did hers the same morning but then she's annoying skilled at that. I don't normally like to talk about money, but this whole menu fed 20 people for £65 and we had food left over.


Drinks
Pretty easy as babies only need water so it's standard jug of water, juice, wine (for the grown ups), tea (for me and mine), coffee and cider (my uncle david is quite manly and lives off these) and lemonade.

Food

• Sandwiches- cheese and ham; cheese and meat are pretty much the worst ones for salt so you really have to read the nutritional value properly but don't panic about these because babies can eat them
• Salad- plain greens with Steve's dad in mind, then one I mixed up for everyone else which had lettuce/radishes/beetroot/spring onions/tomatoes/cucumber in
• Rice salad- I wouldn't give this to a baby, but I would give it to a toddler that had teeth and it's really nice for using up rice without the risks of reheating it: 
• 1 cup of rice (not an american cup, just a standard mugful)
• 1 handful of peanuts
• 1 big dollop of melted butter
• 1 handful sultanas
• 1 handful peas
• 1tbsp chopped herbs (chives and parsley are nice with this)
• Yes, all very technical ;) and here is the highly complicated recipe: mix!
• Spaghetti bolognese- I thought this would be ok for Vienna right up until my mum told me there was well over half a bottle of red wine it it... hmm... I'm a bit loathe to try spag bol because I'd be MASSIVELY disrespecting my mum but I would really recommend it at a do this time of year
• ah, note about the spag: keep it warmed. It cools like sticky schlop.
• Chicken supreme- again, mum's famous for her chicken supreme but it was baby-friendly so I might try and wangle the recipe off her ;)
• Chilli con carne- the one I made! It actually got all eaten, too!
• Moroccan-style slow cooker beef stew- yes, I know. Another moroccan dish. I LOVE moroccan food, it's my favourite. I'll do a post about this recipe later.
• Garlic bread and doughballs- shop-bought but suitable for babies, and from what I've gathered speaking to people at the baby groups, they do like their garlic!

Desserts

• Lemon tart- not for babies, only mummies ;)
• Fruit salad- 3 bananas, 3 oranges, 3 apples, a punnet of strawberries, half a punnet of blueberries, 5 plums, apple juice (half as much as the fruit, it keeps it fresher)... mix!
• Cakes and cupcakes- Steve's mum organised some really, really tasty cakes for us- I do have pictures of these so I'll show you how lovely they were but no credit claimed here, unfortunately!

I am a bit jealous, they were amazing. This is the aim, people! Watch this space, baby desserts...!

The Good Stuff

I took a bit of a short pause from blogging this week because I've had Vienna's christening (more about that later) plus a lot of italian studying to catch up with. I'm trying to teach myself Italian so I might even try a post in italian ;) I've got lots to tell you about so be prepared for a post-a-thon tonight, folks!

I've got a few recipes to share with you, plus I've been down to the library and decided that every now and again I'm going to go through various cookbooks and brush up on cooking lingo and share more yummy treats with you!