cooking with children – Page 2

Cheat’s ciabatta pizza

April 22, 2013April 23, 2013Posted in Bread, Meat, RecipesTagged blog challenge, bread, children, ciabatta, cooking with children, pizza, recipe challenge, recipes for life, swallow charity8 Comments

Now that I’m working full-time again, the only chance I really have to play around in the kitchen is at the weekends. But then if I spend too much time in the kitchen, I feel bad that I’m not spending enough time with the kids. So wherever possible I try to involve Jessie and Mia in the cooking too.

On Saturday, after spending the afternoon in Bath shopping for new clothes (my girls are growing so blinking fast at the moment!), we rustled up some quick ciabatta bread pizzas for an easy tea. And the girls enjoyed deciding on their own toppings.

I’m not really sure whether to call these posh open grilled sandwiches or ciabatta pizzas – I guess they’re somewhere in between. And they don’t really warrant a recipe. I simply spread some passata on sliced ciabatta (you may prefer French bread or even a slice of cottage loaf) before the girls got going with their own special creations. Up for grabs was whatever we found in the fridge; leftover tinned sweetcorn, ham and salami, some chopped wild garlic leaves we’d picked from the hedgerows, black olives, capers and of course lots of mozzarella cheese.

Mia likes to play safe when it comes to food and kept her pizza topping simple. She isn’t a big fan of strong flavours like olive and capers. Despite that, she did go crazy with the wild garlic, and ate it all quite happily.

Jessie, on the other hand, has always been much more adventurous with food, and went for everything on offer. If there had been raw chillies, she’d probably have thrown some of those on there too.

Cheat’s ciabatta pizza

Serves 4 (2 adults, 2 children with leftovers perfect eaten cold for breakfast!)

4 small part-baked ciabatta, sliced widthways
350g passata or crushed tinned tomatoes
3 x 125g mozzarella cheese

And any toppings you fancy – we went for…

cooked ham, roughly chopped
salami, roughly chopped
tinned sweetcorn
pitted black olives
capers
wild garlic leaves, roughly chopped (or any other fresh or dried herb)

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

Smother the ciabatta with passata and decorate with your chosen toppings. Tear the mozzarella and place on top.

Place your ciabatta pizzas on a lightly greased baking tray and pop in the oven (or alternatively under a medium grill) for 10 to 12 minutes, until the bread is lightly toasted and the cheese has melted. Easy as.

As our ciabatta pizzas feature ham, salami, sweetcorn and tomatoes, I’m entering them into this month’s Recipes for Life, a challenge hosted by me and run in conjunction with SWALLOW, an amazing charity supporting adults with learning disabilities. Each month we set three ingredients and challenge bloggers to use these to come up with tasty, healthy and easy to cook dishes that can be made by SWALLOW members in their cookery class and at home. And this month’s three ingredients just happen to be pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes…

If you like this, you might also like to try…

Gingerbread men and the ‘joys’ of baking with kids

May 20, 2012Posted in RecipesTagged biscuit, cooking with children, ginger, gingerbread, gingerbread men, recipe1 Comment

I really have to be in just the right mood to cook with my children.

Cooking with children is supposed to be a joyful, carefree time; one of those warm, fuzzy memories you hope your kids will hold dear when they’re all grown up. If you google cooking with children, practically every result features the word fun. But unless I’m in just the right mood, cooking with children is anything but.

When my daughters were younger I would force myself to involve the children in kitchen activities, because that’s what good, wholesome mothers do. But just minutes into our chosen cookery adventure, I’d feel my temper rapidly rising as the kitchen grew messier, as egg shell started flying everywhere, as more chocolate chips ended up in mouths than in the bowl, and as the arguments started about whose turn it was to stir.

I know it’s important to get children active in the kitchen from an early age. But I’ve learned to choose my moments carefully, particularly with pre-schoolers. Children are going to make a god awful mess in the kitchen and there’s no getting around that.

And if they’re not making a mess, it’s questionable as to whether they’re actually having any fun. So I only cook with the kids if I’m in the mood to let go and embrace the ensuing chaos; prepared to accept the fact that I’ll be finding hundreds and thousands strewn across the house, to be discovered in every available nook and cranny for weeks afterwards.

But on those days when I am in the mood to just go with it, cooking with the children can be wonderful. Especially of course if there is any kind of decorating required, as with these gingerbread men I made with Jessie and Mia recently. It was a rainy Sunday and we didn’t get out of our pyjamas all day long. Baking gingerbread men just presented itself as the perfect lazy Sunday activity.

I love the look of concentration on Mia’s face in this picture. She’s not generally known for her focus or attention span, so I was rather impressed with her dedication in ensuring each of her gingerbread men was carefully covered from head to toe in stars and sprinkles.

Jessie’s gingerbread men on the other hand were decorated as the cast of Harry Potter. Can you spot Harry?

And yes, that is of course, a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. Not 100% sure though about the sheriff badges. Or are they nipple piercings, as someone suggested when I put a photo on Twitter?!

So if you do find yourself in just the right mood for some fun in the kitchen with the kids, here’s just the right biscuit recipe…

Gingerbread men

350g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
125g soft butter
175g demerara sugar
1 large egg
2 tbsp treacle
2 tbsp golden syrup
writing icing in a variety of colours
decorations – hundreds and thousands, edible stars and shapes, Smarties etc

Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon into the bowl of a food processor. Then add the butter and blend until you have a mixture resembling breadcrumbs. Mix in the demerara sugar.

Lightly beat the egg and add to the food processor along with the treacle and syrup. Blend until the mixture comes together as a dough.

Tip out the gingerbread dough and knead gently until smooth. Wrap in clingfim and put in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Lightly flour your surface and roll out the dough until it’s about half a centimetre thick. Using your gingerbread men (and women) cutters, cut out your shapes and place on the baking tray.

Bake for 15 minutes until golden-brown, swapping the trays around half way through to make sure they bake evenly. Leave to cool on the tray for 10 minutes, then move to a wire rack. When completely cooled go wild decorating them with the writing icing and decorations.

Homemade pizza

January 25, 2012October 7, 2022Posted in RecipesTagged children, cooking with children, family food, family meals, homemade pizza, pizza, pizza dough, recipe2 Comments

Pizza has to be one of the best things to cook with children, and homemade pizzas always taste so much better than the ready-made variety. Children, well mine anyway, seem more inclined to eat something if they’ve been involved in the making of it.

OK, so it might turn into a slightly messy affair. I used to come close to panic attacks when I first started cooking with the kids and ingredients would go flying everywhere.

But I’ve learned to just go with the flow; it can all be cleaned up afterwards.

It really is worth it to get your children used to helping make meals and forming a positive relationship with food.

I much prefer to make my own dough but I am not too proud to admit to cheating now and again. I generally keep some shop-bought pizza bases in the freezer too; perfect for when little friends stay for tea unexpectedly. My children think it’s great to make pizzas with their friends and having some frozen bases on standby means we can always rustle some up at a few moments’ notice.

If you have a little more time though (pizza dough takes an hour to rise), I would strongly recommend making your own dough from scratch. It is so incredibly easy and I’ll never get over the magical feeling of seeing the dough increase to double its size. It’s like a science experiment in the kitchen.

What ingredients you put on top of your pizza is very much down to personal taste and, of course, what your children like to eat. If you make a little pizza each, everyone can choose their own favourite toppings.

And don’t forget, cold pizza is great the following day in a packed lunch, so always a good idea to make a bit extra.

Homemade pizza

Makes four pizzas

For the dough:

400g strong white bread flour
1 tsp salt
1 7g sachet fast action dried yeast
1 tsp dried oregano
250ml luke warm water
1 tbsp olive oil

Passata, about half a jar

Our favourite toppings:

Cherry tomatoes, halved
Small red, green or yellow pepper, chopped small
Fresh basil, torn
Pitted black olives
Ham or salami, chopped
Capers
Artichoke hearts, quartered
Mozzarella (a couple of balls, around 250g each, should be enough for four pizzas)

To make the dough, put the flour, salt, dried yeast and oregano into a large mixing bowl and mix well.

Make a well in the middle and pour in the lukewarm water and oil. Gradually work the flour into the liquid, making a soft dough. If it’s too dry, add a drop more water. If it’s too sticky, add a little more flour.

Flour your surface before tipping the dough onto it. Knead the dough by stretching it away from you, then pulling back into a ball. Do this for five minutes or so, until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Return the dough to the mixing bowl, cover loosely with cling film and put in a warm place for about an hour, until the dough has doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

Uncover the risen dough and punch it back down. Flour the surface again and divide the dough into four balls. Stretch or roll out each ball until you have a thin circle about 22cm across. Place the pizzas onto slightly oiled baking sheets.

Pour a couple of tablespoons of passata onto each pizza, smooth out with the back of the spoon, and then let the artist in you run free while you apply your choice of toppings, leaving the mozzarella until the end.

Bake your pizzas for 15-20 minutes and leave to cool for a couple of minutes before devouring.