vegatable – Create You Coaching

Chicken and veg bake, yum!

This dish is soooo good. Just saying, it truly is. It has all the food groups needed and somehow the combination is ridiculously tasty. Not even toddlers can deny it.

Ingredients:

Chicken breast or thighs cut into cubes	Whole milk
1 onion diced	Plain flour
Sundries tomatoes roughly cut	Rosemary sprigs
Butternut, courgette, aubergine cubed	Garlic
½ stock cube diluted in a cup ½ boiling water/ ½ milk	Mixed herbs
Cheddar cheese, grated	Butter
Mushrooms thinly sliced to top the dish	Pepper & salt

Method:

As always cut up your vegetables of choice, toss with olive oil and herbs that you like or have in the house. Roast it off and then when it is done put your sundried tomatoes in with the veg.

While the vegetables are roasting start with the chicken part of the dish. Fry your onions in a bit of olive oil, add a small pinch of salt, garlic and some butter, onions love that! Add a tablespoon of roughly chopped rosemary and let them mingle. Remove everything and add some oil to the pan, now get your chicken in there and sear on all sides. When the chicken has good colour add the onion back and take a heaped tablespoon of flour and sprinkle it all over the chicken and onions and stir for 1-2 minutes.

Scatter flour on the sealed chicken and fry off before adding the herbs.

Now remove from the heat and add the whole milk & stock slowly while stirring now return to the heat and add the last while stirring. It should thicken up to nice saucy mixture now add the vegetables, pour a little boiling water in the vegetable bake tray to loosen all the oil and herbs and add to the chicken mixture.

Add the liquid and stir till a thick suace forms

Empty it into a baking tray (make sure the chicken is distributed evenly) and top with the grated cheese and lay the mushrooms on top and bake for 20 minutes. If the top is not nice and brown get the grill on and watch it bubble! Served with couscous, bulgur wheat, potatoes or wraps whatever you got in the cupboard.

Arange the mushroom slices on top, you can be as creative here as you want. I just did rows

Aubergine & Chickpea Thai Curry

This one started off by us needing to use an Aubergine from the fridge, we love Thai food and the paste adds such great flavour, for the children we use just a ½ teaspoon of paste to add flavour. It really delivered and as we ate dinner last night, I could have really eaten that in a restaurant and not complained. Please see below for the image where I kept aside a portion of the ingredients to make for the babies separately.

Ingredients:

1 aubergine cubed and roasted	Coconut oil
1 can chickpeas drained	Fish sauce adult only
1 can coconut milk	Brown sugar or palm sugar adults only
1 onion chopped	Fresh coriander
1 carrot pre steamed	Couple canned peaches for children
Thai curry paste, we used green	Turmeric
Cooked rice

Method:

Add your oil to a frying pan once hot and melted add the onion, I wanted to get some nice colour on it. Once it has browned nicely add your steamed carrot and roast aubergine and fry for 2 minutes. I do this when cooking because it can happen without me being there, so we steam and roast our vegetables, also the roasting gives such great flavour it really gets the children enjoying the vegetables. A bit of prep in the morning or afternoon and there is much less to do at mealtime. With two babies you really want to avoid that ‘I am hungry’ screaming.

Fry off the curry then add the chickpeas

Add a spoon of the coconut cream and fry till the paste is fragrant

Remove a few spoons of the vegetables and set aside in a desert bowl to use for the babies. If you are making it now just do it in a small pan. Add a teaspoon or more of the curry paste to the adult portion and fry empty the chickpeas in the pan and about ¼ of the can in bowl, once fragrant add a spoon of the coconut milk cream and stir while that fries. Place a spoon of the cream in the children’s bowl and about a ¼ of the watery bit. Now empty the coconut milk can’s contents in the pan and stir. We added some fresh chopped coriander at this stage, it is not essential.

Bowl with children’s serving, if you making meals at the sae time just do so in a small pot.

We added a tablespoon of fish sauce and a teaspoon of sugar now, do this to your own taste stir and simmer for 10 -15 minutes stirring every so often. The coconut milk we use was so creamy that we needed to add some boiling water to loosen it I added a ½ -1 teaspoon of turmeric now it adds a nice colour and the stuff is good for you too. It should have a think soup consistency not gloopy when reduced. We always put our rice on 20 minutes from when we need it, we use a rice cooker and this is such a great help, you don’t even need to think about it.

For the children’s meal I took the bowl set aside out of the fridge, warmed some oil in a pan and added a ½ teaspoon of paste to the hot pan let it fry and add a spoon of the coconut cream and fry off. You are replicating the adult meal just less spice, salt and sugar. Empty the rest of the ingredients into the hot pan and stir, I also added some boiling water, turmeric and a few chopped tinned peaches to theirs stir and reduce for just under 10 minutes. Add the rice to the mixture to warm through, turn off the heat and add some natural yogurt for creaminess and to reduce any heat there may be from the paste. My children just love it! I served theirs with some steamed frozen veg such a blessing as a Mom.

Butternut Pasta Sauce

This one it absolutely amazing and we all enjoy it, too much really. It is finger licking delicious. It is a great way to get some added goodness into a pasta dish. Our twins love pasta, they seem almost Italian! You can add any veg you enjoy just fry it off and add to the pasta and sauce at the end, we use courgetti this time but mushroom, broccoli will work too.

Ingredients:

Pasta (half a bag makes enough for all of us)
½ Large Butternut, sweet potato works too	Mixed Herbs and Rosemary
1 onion	1-2 tbs Plain flour
Whole milk about a cup	Paprika
Cup of grated cheese or your choice	Pepper
1 Medium Courgette	Olive oil
Mushrooms if desired

Method:

Chop your vegetables into large chunks and drizzle with olive oil and herbs of choice to roast. I have a roast veg mix that is super tasty, it is from South Africa and I have not come across one here, but anything will do. Roast your butternut till cooked and delicious looking, the one we used was a bit young I think so didn’t have that deep orange but was tasty none the less.

While that is roasting fry your onion and the other vegetables you want to put in the dish, season to taste. Once the roasting the done remove the and place the roast vegetables in a container, add the milk and blend. This can be set aside until the evening when you are ready to cook.

Cook your pasta 15 minutes before you need the dish to be ready. While that is cooking put 2 tablespoons of oil in a pan and the same of flour, mix it a bit and let the flour cook for a minute or so. Remove this from the heat and add your butternut and milk mixture while stirring. Once it is stirred in well return it to the heat and stir while it thickens, turn off the heat once it is the desired consistency. If it thickens too much add a bit more milk. Crack some pepper into the sauce.

Once removed from the heat add your cheese and stir until it is combined, it may be a bit stringy, but I don’t mind that. You can use cheddar or parmigiana and you can use less if you don’t want to add too much either, it is your dish. Once your pasta is cooked and drained you can add your sauce and fried vegetables to it and stir. I always have enough sauce to keep some for when I do not have time to cook and usually, I only cook the adult portion away the kids have gone to bed but everything is ready to go.

Finely sliced sundried tomatoes or crumbled feta will be nice on top. If you enjoy this recipe our Red Pepper Pasta is just as good.

Veg bake for the whole family

The thing that has been the trickiest for us is making food for the babies that we can also eat. We need flavor and so do they to get used to eating food that is not just bland. As we have twins it needs to be easy for me to prepare whilst on the move or they are eating their lunch.

So, I did this yesterday and it worked a treat and was something I have never tried before. I hope you like it let me know.

Easy vegatable bake

Ingredients:

Vegatable base Sauce

1 medium onion	1 medium carrot -grated
Red pepper and green chopped	250 ml Passata
½ punnet of mushroom cubed	2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
1 sweet potato chopped	Mixed herbs
Cubed Butternut 1 cup (more if you like)	1 Garlic clove – minced
Smoked, paprika, pepper	Teaspoon Worchester sauce

Method:

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cut all your vegetables into 1.5cm pieces, cover in a couple glugs of olive oil. Sprinkle in spices of choice, I used a roast vegetable mix and pepper. I also added smoked paprika and a little graham masala just to lift it. Roast for 25minutes and stir and leave a further 20minutes or until the veg have some colour and are cooked.

While the veg is roasting fry off the 2 tbsp of onion with some olive oil for 2 minutes then add the carrot and some mixed herbs and fry for another 2 minutes. Once the carrot has changed colour add the passata, Worcestershire sauce and something sweet I used carob maple syrup just to balance the tomato sauce. Add salt if you want.

Once the veg is ready remove from the oven and add the sauce mix through. Sprinkle with cheese and back for a further 20mins till brown, grill if needed. If you are only eating it later only sprinkle cheese once cool and keep in the fridge.

Tip I split the children’s and ours and sprinkled some chili on ours. Serve with couscous or mix through pasta or on a toasted ciabatta or sour dough bread. This is rather rich so for the children I also mixed some yougurt through with the couscous. Enjoy! Let us know how it works for you!!