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Butternut mac and ‘cheese’ with a buttery sage and oat crust

I did a little poll on Facebook the other day into what peoples comfort foods were.Mac and cheese kept getting mentioned and so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Ill fess up now, that I have never eaten mac and cheese and that is for one simple reason. I really really don’t like melted cheese. I dont even like the smell of melted cheese and this is a real problem come lunch time in Central London. Most lunch places are rammed with folks ordering sandwiches and many of these sandwiches contain cheese (it is England after all) and lots of said sandwiches need toasting. This means that the entire place smells of slightly charred cheese. Even my beloved Fernandez and Wells isnt immune to it and whilst I am sure that they are carefully toasting a homemade sourdough with locally churned white cheddar and a cheeky pickle…I still cannot enter the smokey premises during the noon hours. It is only once the afternoon settles in and the tea pots are put to use, and the world starts thinking of cake that I can go and get my lunch.

That said I wanted to make mac and cheese but I wanted to try the ever popular butternut squash version.The logic is that you can either half the cheese in your normal recipe by adding butternut squash or you can swap it out totally. In normal mac and cheese there is a whole heap of cheese as well as butter, flour and milk or cream forming the basis of the white sauce. When you use butternut puree you do away with the need for a white sauce as it is naturally thick and clings lusciously to the pasta. I used nutritional yeast as we had some in the cupboard and I had always been a little apprehensive about trying it.

Even though it looks (and smells) a little like goldfish food, it is in fact a total powerhouse of nutrients. For anyone on a plant based diet it contains the magic Vitamin B12. It also, when used in cooking tastes remarkably like parmesan. If you want to add cheese, go ahead, try ricotta, feta or a tangy cheddar.

The topping here is toasted buttery oats flavoured with sage. They add texture, bite and a salty richness to the dish. This version is perfect comfort food. Creamy, rich and comforting but with a little hit of autumn vegetables. It is a great family friendly recipe too – the baby loves it!

Ingredients
1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp rapeseed oil

4 tablespoons nutritional yeast (or 6 tbsp grated cheese)
0.5 tsp paprika
0.5 tsp ground nutmeg
200ml oat or other milk
300g dried macaroni

50g oats
2 tbsp chopped sage leaves
1 tbsp butter or butter alternative

Method
Preheat your oven to 180C
Rub the butternut squash with oil, salt and pepper
Place into a baking dish with the garlic and roast until tender
Whilst the squash is roasting, cook the pasta according to the packet until it has a firm bite
Once cooked, drain and set aside
Place the roasted butternut squash, milk, nutmeg, nutritional yeast, and paprika into a blender and process until totally smooth
Combine with the pasta
Pour the mixture into a baking dish
In a frying pan place the oats,  butter and sage and allow to ‘fry’ until golden and crispy
Top the pasta with the oats and bake for a further 15mins

 

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Avocado and broccoli pesto

Pasta pesto makes me think of living in Hackney. Of taking the 55 bus home from work (because I couldn’t afford the tube). It reminds me of getting off the bus early at Diss St, picking up pesto, pasta & chilled coronas at the corner shop and going to see two beautiful friends. Their flat always felt so much more grown up & together. Their jobs were more important and exciting.

Their nights out were what urban stories are made from. Whenever things were rocky in my own life, I would pile into their flat and we would eat pesto pasta, drink beer & try to widen my film knowledge.

What I would give for corona & chats with those two right now but I would make the pesto, because this version is even more delicious & also because it contains avocado which would amuse them both.

This sauce is good. Really really good. It’s rich and creamy, but at the same time it isn’t heavy. By switching out the usual oil for avocado you get a sauce which is packed with good fats, loaded with vitamin C and most importantly it sticks perfectly to pasta (or courgetti for that matter). The broccoli base doesn’t mask the basil but adds an earthiness as well as packing in even more vegetables. There are no nuts in this but you could add in pine nuts or cashews if you wanted. There is also no salt, making it baby friendly, so salt your portion as needed. If your little one is just starting with pasta then use chopped vermicelli for spoon feeding or easy to pick up fusilli as finger food. If they aren’t on pasta yet then you could easily let them just eat a spoonful of the pesto or stir it in with pureed potato. I imagine it is delicious too on toast topped with perfectly ripe tomatoes, or mixed with hummus a top a baked potato. It will keep in the fridge, in a sealed jar, for five days so enjoy experimenting with it. For the record, I recognise that this is hardly a pesto as the ingredients haven’t been pounded together. It’s also hardly a Genovese sauce as it doesn’t contain hard cheese or pine nuts. But it is a creamy, basily sauce of deliciousness that takes minutes to create & will feed a family. Enjoy

Ingredients (makes 6 servings)
1 head broccoli

1 ripe avocado

1 large handful basil

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp pepper (optional)

Method
Cut the broccoli into florets & boil until well cooked

Place into a food processor with all the other ingredients (avocado at the bottom)

Blend until you have a thick creamy sauce

Stir through cooked pasta

Enjoy

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Life isn’t always instagrammable

There isn’t a recipe to post today because family life got in the way. I cook real time for this blog which means that Monday to Friday when the baby sleeps, or the mornings that she is at nursery, I cook something that is inspiring me. Then I serve it up, photograph it, upload the photos, write the accompanying blog post and publish it. And whilst we hardly live in the back of beyond, doing it this way requires a lot of fore planning. We have two shops nearby, Munich’s most famous delicatessen which is beautiful but is style over substance. It is perfect for beautiful fruit or picture ready vegetables, but it is not well stocked. On the flip side of that we have a tiny ReWe which is never fully stocked and is the size of a small express supermarket. There is an organic shop nearby too which is perfect for coconut oil and chia seeds but lacking in everything else. All of these shops close at the crazy early time of 7pm!!! Seriously who closes at 7pm? They are also shut on Sunday…and one of them shuts up shop by 4pm on a Saturday. They also don’t deliver. London (and Wholefoods) have spoilt me for choice and I have to admit that last weekend in Cambridge I may have gotten a little wet eyed in the middle of a Tesco Superstore.

Today I wanted to launch ‘Family meal’ week. A week of meals designed to allow you to cook once and all eat together. Food that could be pureed or mashed or simply served depending on the stage of your little ones. Today I wanted to make creamy broccoli pesto and had visions of some very stylish spaghetti wrapped fork photos in my head. I wanted to remind you that cooking for a family doesn’t have to be tricky and you don’t have to compromise on taste. That you can, easily, sit down round the table and all tuck in to the same meal.

But as I say, life happened. It has been pouring down all weekend and today is no different. The husband was going to do the weekly shop this morning in the car after his doctors appointment. Monday morning traffic meant he couldn’t even get near one supermarket and rainy day ‘everyone in their car’ traffic meant he couldn’t park near the other one. So we have nothing in the fridge. The baby had, what I like to think of as a picnic for lunch which means she ate the leftover baby friendly bits that we had in the fridge padded up with a few rice cakes. Im having a liquid lunch…of coffee (although I wouldn’t say no to the other). The baby is now asleep, the husband is on the turbo trainer in the basement. The fridge is still empty. The camera isn’t coming out.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will make creamy broccoli pesto and on Wednesday I will make ratatouille. Thursday will depend on the Great British Bake Off and on Friday I will introduce you to Yogi pie. Somewhere in there I will also make our weekly staple of banana eggy bread. But for today, Im going to make a big pot of bircher muesli, curl up on the sofa with a book and have a lunchtime out of the kitchen. If you need some ideas for Monday night dinners then you could always try my salmon fish-fingers or you could make bigger versions of the mini frittatas and serve with a dressed salad and some roasted veggies on the side? Happy eating and see you tomorrow x

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Mama on a Monday – baked courgette chips

I know that it feels like the day often revolves around making three balanced meals, but sometimes you just need a little snack. These courgette chips are exactly that. They are the most delicious, mid afternoon, makes a change from a yogurt or a box of raisins, snack. They are also a perfect side dish, a side to salmon burgers, or a late summer BBQ. They are really easy to make and follow the same system as the crispy avocado slices so whilst you are making one…you could make the other for a double snack whammy. All day long we have been nibbling these off the baking tray, warm out of the oven, dipped in homemade ketchup, Crazy delicious, crazy addictive.

Coating slippery vegetables in bread crumbs makes it much easier for small hands to pick them up. I also use a crinkle cutter for fruit like melon or mango to make it easier for the little one. This recipe would also work with pepper slices, marrow and green beans too. For older kids you can add grated parmesan into the breadcrumbs and for kids of any age you can add ground fresh or dried herbs or spices into the breadcrumbs to keep their tastebuds happy.

Ingredients
2 courgettes cut into batons

1 egg whisked

4 tbsp breadcrumbs

2 tbsp flour

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C

Lightly oil a baking tray or large dish

Place the egg into one bowl, the flour into a second and the breadcrumbs into a third

Dip each baton first into the flour, then the egg and finally the breadcrumbs

Place onto the baking tray, spray with a little oil and bake for 20mins or until golden brown and crispy

 

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Mama on a Monday – Breakfast cookies

I would like to impart on my daughter my love of breakfast. It is without a doubt my favorite meal of the day. I can easily go with dinner but breakfast makes me happy. It doesn’t have to be big, in fact a large well made coffee and a bowl of berries is perfection, but it does have to taste damn good. There are so many foods that just seem better at breakfast. Soft scrambled eggs, buckwheat pancakes, fruit. Not to mention porridge, bircher and smoothies. The mini one is coming round to the idea of eating in the morning but she is also busy right now, so very very busy. She has just started to stand up and is trying to stand without holding on right now. Every surface needs to be explored and every book shelf needs to be attempted. This means that breakfast for her needs to be quick and for my piece of mind it needs to be nutritionally dense. Every mouthful needs to count.

These breakfast cookies are delicious. I enjoyed one, warm out the oven, baby on one hip, coffee out of short arms reach. They are hearty and naturally sweet. They taste of cinnamon and raisins but with the earthiness of oats.

Oats are a great breakfast food, they are easy to digest but they don’t raise the blood sugar and provide slow release energy. Cinnamon is naturally sweet which means you can use less sweetener and it also has the added benefit of being a great antioxidant. It can be an allergen so make sure you test first. I made 12 cookies from this batch but you could make smaller ‘snack’ size version too.

Depending what your little one likes you could add in apricots or dried berries. If nuts are tolerated then you can substitute one cup of oats for 1 cup of ground almonds or fold in some chopped nuts. You could even add desiccated coconut or orange zest. Customize as you fancy but most of all enjoy.

Ingredients (makes 12 large cookies)
2.5 cups oats (plus 2 tbsp for rolling)

2 tbsp maple syrup/date syrup

1 large banana

1 tbsp apple puree

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp raisins

Method
Preheat your oven to 170C

Place the banana, olive oil, apple puree & cinnamon into your food processor and blitz till pureed

Add in the oats and raisins and blitz unit you have a thick, sticky dough

Line a baking tray with baking paper

Place 2 tbsp of oats into a shallow dish

Using your hands shape spoonfuls of the dough into balls and roll in the oats

Place onto the lined baking tray

Bake for 30 mins flipping once

Enjoy

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