Kidding around with holiday food
The children are home from school so get them involved in the kitchen with these fun dishes says Clare Latimer
So few children are interested in cooking these days and this is partly due to the fact that families don’t make time to cook meals from scratch with someone shelling the peas and someone else making the bread to make it into a united family event.
I appreciate that part of this is lack of time due to having to earn money to pay the bills but a great deal is due to the ready prepared foods from supermarkets and the temptation to watch telly or use a computer.
When I have Godchildren to stay I take them to Farmers’ Markets, make them choose the food and then we come home to cook.
Perhaps they would rather go to the shops to buy clothes or gadgets but they always come back for more cooking so it can’t all be bad.
Here are some fun things to do with younger kids and it will encourage them to eat vegetables.
Potato Mice
If it is hard to find good baking potatoes at this time of year then get large new potatoes and boil them instead.
Just don’t scoop out so much in the middle as they will collapse. You will just end up with a paler mouse if you use this method!
Ingredients
Serves 4
Four baking potatoes;
One tbsp oil;
30g butter;
Six tbsp milk;
grated cheese;
salt and freshly ground black pepper;
cherry tomatoes;
chives;
raisins;
radishes;
spring onions;
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.
Wash the potatoes and pat them dry. Prick the skins with a fork and put the potatoes on a baking tray. Brush them all over with oil.
Bake the potatoes until they are soft. Medium-sized potatoes take about an hour.
Cool enough to handle. Then cut off the tops and carefully scoop out the soft potato centres. You can throw away the lids (or eat them).
Mash the soft centres with the butter, milk and cheese. Add a pinch of salt and pepper, then pop the mixture back into the potato jackets.
Sprinkle with cheese and cook your potatoes under the grill for a few minutes until they are golden.
Make a nose and whiskers with half a cherry tomato held in place with a cocktail stick and chives tucked behind.
Finish decorating with raisin eyes, radish ears and spring onion tails.
Snake Sandwich
This is great for a children’s party and the snake can get longer and longer with the more guests that you ask.
There are many more topping but this is just a suggestion. Crunchy peanut butter would be good to give the knobbly brown snake-like look so let the kids be creative and make their own with other ingredients.
Ingredients
Six bagels;
For the egg mayonnaise with salad cress:
Two or three eggs, hard boiled, (six minutes in boiling water);
Three tbsp mayonnaise;
One tbsp snipped chives;
Three tbsp salad cress;
salt and freshly ground black pepper;
For the tuna and cheese:
One x 185g can of tuna in oil, drained;
50g grated cheddar;
Three tbsp mayonnaise;
Two spring onions, finely sliced;
salt and freshly ground black pepper;
For the decoration:
A strip of red pepper,
one stuffed olive, sliced,
cherry tomatoes,
halved chives
Method
Slice the bagels in half and then cut each half down the centre to form a semi-circle.
You will be putting each halved bagel half back to back to give a winding snake. Cut out the head of the snake from one of the pieces of bagel and the tail from another.
Mix the ingredients for the tuna topping and mix the ingredients for the egg topping. Spread half of the bagels with tuna and half with egg.
Decorate the tuna topping with halved cherry tomatoes and the egg topping with strips of chives arranged in a criss-cross pattern.
Arrange the bagels to form the body of a snake. Then attach the head to the snake’s body and arrange two slices of stuffed olive to form the eyes and cut out a forked tongue from the strip of red pepper.
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