Baby Led Weaning

Personally, the only way I enjoy polenta is with as much parmesan cheese as it can support without falling apart. It will take years of trial and error on my part to find out exactly how much that is. Be careful as it starts to boil, to give you an idea of how dangerous polenta is just imagine you are cooking with lava straight off the slopes of Mt Etna and you won’t go far wrong.

Polenta with Herbs

75g (3oz) polenta
Either 1 tsp of dried herbs, say, oregano or thyme, or a fistful of chopped fresh herbs, perhaps parsley or coriander? If using fresh rosemary or thyme, probably best to stick to the teaspoonful.
1 tbsp olive oil or butter.
A whacking amount of parmesan cheese, freshly grated, say about a fistful again. Or however much you like.
Cook the polenta according to packet instructions, and stir in the butter or olive oil and then the parmesan and herbs as it starts to thicken. Pour into an oiled baking tray and leave to cool, befor cutting into wedges and grilling or frying until golden on both sides.

Post Script

We made some polenta the other night but I didn’t have any parmesan in and the kind that I bought claimed to have vegetables in it already and therefore didn’t need anything extra. Wrong. It really needed cheese.

Anyway, I made it, and in it’s plain boiled form it was distinctly unimpressive. Likewise when I spread it out onto an oiled tray and grilled it. However, I left it overnight and cut it up and grilled the pieces and we had some more success. It had started, by this time, to look and taste oddly and not unpleasantly like French Toast. Babybear ate a really big piece of it, as did I, but mine was smothered under a layer of salt. Next time, cheese.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Personally, the only way I enjoy polenta is with as much parmesan cheese as it can support without falling apart. It will take years of trial and error on my part to find out exactly how much that is. Be careful as it starts to boil, to give you an idea of how dangerous polenta is just imagine you are cooking with lava straight off the slopes of Mt Etna and you won’t go far wrong.

Polenta with Herbs

75g (3oz) polenta
Either 1 tsp of dried herbs, say, oregano or thyme, or a fistful of chopped fresh herbs, perhaps parsley or coriander? If using fresh rosemary or thyme, probably best to stick to the teaspoonful.
1 tbsp olive oil or butter.
A whacking amount of parmesan cheese, freshly grated, say about a fistful again. Or however much you like.
Cook the polenta according to packet instructions, and stir in the butter or olive oil and then the parmesan and herbs as it starts to thicken. Pour into an oiled baking tray and leave to cool, befor cutting into wedges and grilling or frying until golden on both sides.

Post Script

We made some polenta the other night but I didn’t have any parmesan in and the kind that I bought claimed to have vegetables in it already and therefore didn’t need anything extra. Wrong. It really needed cheese.

Anyway, I made it, and in it’s plain boiled form it was distinctly unimpressive. Likewise when I spread it out onto an oiled tray and grilled it. However, I left it overnight and cut it up and grilled the pieces and we had some more success. It had started, by this time, to look and taste oddly and not unpleasantly like French Toast. Babybear ate a really big piece of it, as did I, but mine was smothered under a layer of salt. Next time, cheese.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

The reason I love these is that they are easy to make with very little faff, and the flavour of the harissa is warming without being too hot, so the baby can eat them too. I don’t really know where the recipe came from, we just magicked it up out of our own heads one day, so those of you who have your own tried-and-tested burger recipes just keep doing what you’re doing. I don’t add breadcrumbs because I can’t be bothered making them, likewise egg (actually the combination of raw egg and raw meat makes me feel a bit gruey) so I leave it out and just stick with the beef.

Here goes.

A pack of good-quality lean minced beef, you know, the normal size, whatever that is. Say 500g or so? That should give you four or five good-sized burgers.

One medium onion, finely, finely, finely chopped.

One clove of garlic, but not essential.

A good hunk of cheese, roughly grated. The amount depends how cheesy you want your burgers, how strong the cheese and how much you happen to have in the fridge. I have used half a normal-sized pack in my time.

A teaspoon or so of harissa. I prefer rose harissa, as it isn’t so much of a paste, so that’s what I use. You can get it in delis and in the Sainsbury’s fancy-pants section. It’s about £3 but it lasts for ages and a spoonful of it in a bowl of yoghurt or creme fraiche is lovely as a dip for tortilla chips or whatever if people swing by unexpectedly. With regards to the burger, the kind of harissa you buy in the tube would be fine too.

A spritz of olive oil for frying.

Gently, always gently, fry the onion and garlic in oil or butter in a frying pan. When it is transparent, remove from heat and leave to cool briefly while you mix the minced meat and the cheese and harissa, before adding the onions to the mixture. Really get your hands in about it and give it a good squidge.

Then roll into balls and flatten, to whatever size of burger you fancy, and then fry them to as cooked as you wish, roughly five minutes each side (but I like ’em a bit rarer, to be honest.) The cheese keeps them together and it goes crispy and oozes out of the burger as it cooks. We tend to have them in toasted pitta breads, so we make them roughly to fit, with sweet potato chips.

Smaller ones are lovely in mini pittas, and little children love making them and eating them in my experience. I often make double the amounts so I can freeze these between layers of greaseproof paper and then just defrost what I need.

Babybear feasted on a good lump of burger this evening, hence the recipe. I gave her a couple of well-cooked fist-sized bits and she was gorgeous with them. Bit some off and then sucked and slurped at it in a most ignoble manner. When it started to break up she jammed as much as she could into her mouth, so really very little was wasted. Especially when her father scooped up any leftovers and ate them himself, the good boy.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Not kidding. It’s spot-on, if you think about it. A stew of baby-fist-sized meat and chunky veggies bound together by the unifying theme of gravy but each piece utterly recognisable and distinct from the other… it’s absolutely ideal. Oh, and apparently the beer is fine so long as you boil the alcohol off. Huzzah, I love winter… bring on the cold weather food I say.

500g lean stewing beef, cubed
Butter
Olive oil
Large onion
Plain flour, not much more than a heaped tablespoon is necessary
Two carrots
6 or so new potatoes
Three-quarters of a pint of beer. If the beer is dark make it half a pint.
Water for adding extra liquid
Two bayleaves or a bouquet garni
Salt and pepper

It’s really the Husband who is in charge of beef casseroles in our house (I make beautiful ones myself but he showed an aptitude when we first got together and I saw no reason to discourage him). He somewhat pompously insists that the secret to a good casserole comes from drying the meat with kitchen towel before dipping it in seasoned flower. He reckons, and I am inclined to believe him, that if the meat is wet it poaches briefly on contact with the oil and isn’t as nice. You might want to leave out the seasoning as it’s for the baby, but I know that he puts in only a couple of turns of the salt grinder and most of it gets left behind anyway.

So he takes 500g or so of meat (we get ours from the farmer’s market, it’s actually from Highland cows, the hairy ones with the horns. I was horrified when I realised but they taste soooo nice). He dries it, as mentioned, dips it in a wee bowl of salt and peppered flour and then drops it into some hot oil and butter in the pan. Say four or five cubes at a time, dependant on the size of your frying pan/casserole dish. Sometimes we cook a kilo of meat up and freeze half.

Once you’ve finished with that, leave your browned meat in a dish to the side and crack on with your onions and whatever else you fancy. There will probably be some flour stuck to the bottom of the pan but don’t worry, it will come off during the course of the cooking and ‘it’s all flavour’, as my Grandma used to say. Chop your large-ish onion, add some more oil (and a spot of butter for flavour) keep the heat down and slowly cook your onion. We find this takes about eight to ten minutes – it’s a source of some confusion to me that recipes seem to suggest that onions cook in a flash. They do if you’re burning them, I suppose.

We normally just have this with mushrooms in it but in deference to Babybear’s new-found ability to eat solids we put in a couple of sliced carrots and a good handful of quartered new potatoes. Fry them off gently, then slowly pour over a bottle of beer, something like an 80 shilling, not too dark not too light and let cook for five minutes to take off the alcohol. Add a couple of bay leaves or a bouquet garni, then return the meat to the pan cover with lid and cook at 325F/170C/Gas Mark 3 for 1 and a half hours, checking it every so often for sticking or extra liquid. Because of the potatoes we served this just with some petits pois, which are a story in themselves. We left her bits and pieces to cool and put them on Babybear’s highchair tray while we ate our meal, and she really absolutely adored it. There were some leftovers which, of course, tasted even better the following day.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Cut a thick slice of bread into fingers and brush the bread with honey or marmite diluted 50:50 with water before baking at gas 4/180C/350F for about 20 minutes. I’m not sure I would use the marmite ones myself, but I’m assuming that the honey is okay cos it’s cooked.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Cut a thick slice of bread into fingers and brush the bread with honey or marmite diluted 50:50 with water before baking at gas 4/180C/350F for about 20 minutes. I’m not sure I would use the marmite ones myself, but I’m assuming that the honey is okay cos it’s cooked.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

VNmum’s campaign to get us all eating our apple a day continues… they sound great. I’ve made kind of sausagey things before but they weren’t damp enough for my liking, so maybe the apple will help…

Chicken and Apple Sausages

1 chicken breast, diced
1/2 eating apple grated
1 small onion, finely chopped
1-2 tbsp fresh breadcrumbs
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Seasoning of your choice eg Italian herbs, paprika, chinese 5 spice
plain flour

Whizz the chicken for a few seconds in a food processor then add the rest of ingredients, except flour, and whizz together for few seconds. If the mixture seems quite sloppy just add more breadcrumb until it sticks together better.

Take a handful and shape into whatever size sausage shape you want, this again will make however many sausages you want depending on size.

Roll all the sausages in the flour to seal and fry in vegetable oil.

Can be frozen.

I found that if the mix was slightly wet, they held together for cooking and then fell apart nicely as DS was chewing. as he gets more teeth I will probably make them drier as it will be easier for him to chew.

Both this and the pork buger recipe can be tweaked to your liking with consistency and seasoning, they went down a treat with ds, served with homemade oven chips and salad.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

VNmum’s campaign to get us all eating our apple a day continues… they sound great. I’ve made kind of sausagey things before but they weren’t damp enough for my liking, so maybe the apple will help…

Chicken and Apple Sausages

1 chicken breast, diced
1/2 eating apple grated
1 small onion, finely chopped
1-2 tbsp fresh breadcrumbs
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Seasoning of your choice eg Italian herbs, paprika, chinese 5 spice
plain flour

Whizz the chicken for a few seconds in a food processor then add the rest of ingredients, except flour, and whizz together for few seconds. If the mixture seems quite sloppy just add more breadcrumb until it sticks together better.

Take a handful and shape into whatever size sausage shape you want, this again will make however many sausages you want depending on size.

Roll all the sausages in the flour to seal and fry in vegetable oil.

Can be frozen.

I found that if the mix was slightly wet, they held together for cooking and then fell apart nicely as DS was chewing. as he gets more teeth I will probably make them drier as it will be easier for him to chew.

Both this and the pork buger recipe can be tweaked to your liking with consistency and seasoning, they went down a treat with ds, served with homemade oven chips and salad.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

These sound rather delicious, I must say, and I am very interested in the substitution of olive oil for egg. Does that mean that you use an ‘egg-sized’ amount of oil or is it just a slug, vnmum?

My poor friend’s wee boy who is, I think, about 7 months or so was just rushed to hospital after discovering he had an egg allergy, so I’m sure she’d be interested in any egg allergic substitutions. I am too, by the way, as I have decided to hold off on giving Babybear some French toast (ooooh, I’ve been dreaming of French toast…) for a good while now after hearing my chum’s horror story.

Pork and Apple burgers

250g pork mince
1/2 eating apple, finely chopped or grated
1 small onion, finely chopped
5 – 6 tbsp fresh breadcrumbs
1 – 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
italian herbs to season
One egg ( I use olive oil instead as DS is egg allergic)

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, until mixture is sticking together nicely.

Make however many burgers you want depending on the size you want them.

Grill or fry

I dont see any reason why these cant be frozen either raw (as long as mince was fresh not frozen) or cooked.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

These sound rather delicious, I must say, and I am very interested in the substitution of olive oil for egg. Does that mean that you use an ‘egg-sized’ amount of oil or is it just a slug, vnmum?

My poor friend’s wee boy who is, I think, about 7 months or so was just rushed to hospital after discovering he had an egg allergy, so I’m sure she’d be interested in any egg allergic substitutions. I am too, by the way, as I have decided to hold off on giving Babybear some French toast (ooooh, I’ve been dreaming of French toast…) for a good while now after hearing my chum’s horror story.

Pork and Apple burgers

250g pork mince
1/2 eating apple, finely chopped or grated
1 small onion, finely chopped
5 – 6 tbsp fresh breadcrumbs
1 – 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
italian herbs to season
One egg ( I use olive oil instead as DS is egg allergic)

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, until mixture is sticking together nicely.

Make however many burgers you want depending on the size you want them.

Grill or fry

I dont see any reason why these cant be frozen either raw (as long as mince was fresh not frozen) or cooked.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts