Baby Led Weaning

Now as far as I’m aware Melsy hasn’t yet tried this on her wee one, but she will soon. In the meantime I think it sounds amazing and am going to make it just as soon as I can get my mitts on some preserved lemons. I saw them in the supermarket the other day and rather wondered what to do with them, Couscous, of course, can be quite messy though so I tend to overcook Babybear’s to an inathentic clump.

1tsp oil
30g butter / marg
3lb chicken pieces (8) thighs &/or legs
2 onions grated
1tbsp garlic crushed
1tbsp ginger crushed
Pinch saffron
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp chili flakes (optional if not into heat)
1 pint chicken
season with pepper no salt
55g stoned olives
Handful of dried apricots chopped (optional)
1 preserved lemon sliced
1 tbsp honey – to balance sharpness of lemons

To serve ; couscous made with veg stock and cooked softened onions/ raisins & chopped parsley.

preheat oven 180/ gas mrk 4
heat oil & add butter brown chicken
remove with slotted spoon and lay in a tagine or thick casserole
add onions to pan and fry slow and low till soft
add garlic , ginger, honey , apricots & spices
cook for 2 mins
add stock and bring to boil
season and then pour this over the chicken in the casserole/ tagine
cover and cook for 1 hr
remove from oven add olives , preserved lemons and cook for a further 15-30 depending on how caramelised you like things.
Serve with couscous.

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Someone on Mumsnet posted this recipe with feta cheese but hot feta makes me heave… Anyway, it reminded me of an ancient WeightWatchers recipe my mum used to make and honest injun, it’s really nice. Plus it takes 5 minutes to prepare – hooooo-zah!

Lasagne strips
1 big tub of full-fat cottage cheese
One or two tins of chopped tomatoes, dependent on how big your dish
Bag of spinach
Nutmeg to grate
Some more cheese, whatever you’ve got. Mozzarella would be swish, grated cheddar fine.

The first thing you have to do is work out approximately how many bits of lasagne you’ll need. Rather than using bits of cannelloni which are a pain to find and tend to make it home from the supermarket in shards, you’ll be rolling up your lasagne pieces lengthways. So work it out, folks. I do mine in a dish that’s about 25cm square, so that’s 10 bits of lasagne.

Pour some boiling water into a bowl and put in the lasagne. It’s better if you drop in a bit of olive oil and fan them out a bit as sometimes they can stick together. Leave for 5 minutes. (Post Script: Bear in mind, as has been demonstrated below in the comments section that the pasta would like to stick together and coagulate into a big old lasagne brick. You must fight against this, hence the oil and the fanning. Or use a shallow dish so that you can give the lasagne a bit of space. Or just keep an eye on it, so that you can give it a swoosh if it looks like it’s going to stick. I’m making this sound a lot more complicated than it is, amn’t I? [sighs])

Mix the cottage cheese and finely chopped spinach (you’ll probably need less than a bag, but it’s up to you) and grate some nutmeg in as well. Don’t be too horrified if there seems to be tons of spinach and not much cheese, the spinach disappears. I should say that you are also at libery to make this recipe with ricotta cheese, which would be more correct. But I tend to keep cottage cheese in the house and it behaves much the same as ricotta, to be honest.

Here’s where it’s up to you what to do next… on the Mumsnet recipe they just spread out the mixture onto the pasta and rolled it up like a swiss roll, which is beyond easy. I put a blob at the end then rolled it up to make a tube and then jammed some more in each end.

Whichever method you use, put them in the dish and then cover with a tin of chopped tomatoes. Or two, if you think that you need the extra.

Lob some mozzarella or grated cheese on top and then stick it in the oven for about half-an-hour. I sliced up the cannelloni and put them out for Babybear and she loved stuffing them into her mouth. As did her father into his.

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Carrie and Xavier’s lentil cakes…

• 1 tbps olive oil
• 1 onion
• 125g red lentils
• 400ml veg stock or bouillon
• 85g bread crumbs (stale or oven dried is possible)
• Flat leaf parsley to taste (or other herbs – optional)

1. Gently fry onion in olive oil until soft.
2. Add the lentils and stock to the onions and bring to the boil.
3. Simmer for 20-25 minutes.
4. Mix with breadcrumbs and flat leaf parsley (optional).
5. Shape mixture into small patties for little hands to hold. If your mixture feels a little sticky add more bread crumbs.
6. Brush with oil and place on lightly oiled baking tray – cook for approx 7 to 10 mins on gas mark 6 (I did for about 12 I think)

I freeze them to keep them fresh and use them as and when I need them – although not as popular as the fish cakes, Xavier likes them a lot – I think to make them more interesting you could add different herbs/spices.

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Carrie and Xavier’s lentil cakes…

• 1 tbps olive oil
• 1 onion
• 125g red lentils
• 400ml veg stock or bouillon
• 85g bread crumbs (stale or oven dried is possible)
• Flat leaf parsley to taste (or other herbs – optional)

1. Gently fry onion in olive oil until soft.
2. Add the lentils and stock to the onions and bring to the boil.
3. Simmer for 20-25 minutes.
4. Mix with breadcrumbs and flat leaf parsley (optional).
5. Shape mixture into small patties for little hands to hold. If your mixture feels a little sticky add more bread crumbs.
6. Brush with oil and place on lightly oiled baking tray – cook for approx 7 to 10 mins on gas mark 6 (I did for about 12 I think)

I freeze them to keep them fresh and use them as and when I need them – although not as popular as the fish cakes, Xavier likes them a lot – I think to make them more interesting you could add different herbs/spices.

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Things to do with leftover roasted veg…. this lunchtime (at soft play hell) my daughter is having chopped up leftover roast veg mixed (carrots, butternut squash, turnip and parsnip) with cream cheese and spread on fingers of wholemeal pitta bread. It looked yum when I made it

The rest of the roasted veg can be made into:

soup – fry with an onion until soft, add a no-salt stock cube and boiling water and whizz up – serve with large hunks of bread.

roasted veg pasta – make a simple tomato sauce and heat the veg in that then add pasta of choice.

fishcakes – add to mashed potato (might have that leftover too!) stir in tin of tuna or crab then dip in flour egg and crumbs and fry until golden each side.

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Things to do with leftover roasted veg…. this lunchtime (at soft play hell) my daughter is having chopped up leftover roast veg mixed (carrots, butternut squash, turnip and parsnip) with cream cheese and spread on fingers of wholemeal pitta bread. It looked yum when I made it

The rest of the roasted veg can be made into:

soup – fry with an onion until soft, add a no-salt stock cube and boiling water and whizz up – serve with large hunks of bread.

roasted veg pasta – make a simple tomato sauce and heat the veg in that then add pasta of choice.

fishcakes – add to mashed potato (might have that leftover too!) stir in tin of tuna or crab then dip in flour egg and crumbs and fry until golden each side.

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