Joanne Roach (00:13)
Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. Today's episode is the January instalment of our monthly segment where I share some straightforward family-friendly recipes that use the fruit and vegetables that are in season right now in the UK.
The of this episode is to take away a little bit of the mental load of deciding what to make for dinner, while at the same time giving you some easy family-friendly ways to incorporate more seasonal produce into your meals.
In January we want comforting food for the cold weather and the short days, but we don't really want quite so much of the rich foods that we ate in December. Our bodies want warm and cosy hearty foods, and the seasonal fruit and veg in store in January really lend themselves to that. If you want a full rundown of fruit and veg to buy in January, head over to episode 63 where I gave a proper full list, but here I have picked out three family meals, one dessert and one snack that can use some of those midwinter comforters. So let's get to those recipes.
My first main meal idea is a root veg crumble, which I have been making various versions of on and off for about 15 years. I first saw it in an Ainsley Harriot cookbook many moons ago, and you can use the basic principles in lots of different variations to suit your family and the contents of your pantry.
You basically fry off some onions or leeks and some chopped up root vegetables and then when they're softened a bit you add in some flour, milk and stock to make a creamy white sauce. Then you put all of that into a baking dish and cover it with a crumble coating. The original uses breadcrumbs, nuts, seeds and cheese, but you can honestly make any savoury crumble variety that you like and bake it till it's golden. It sounds a bit weird, but honestly, it's really lovely and hearty and it's a great way to get kids to try different veggies because of the crumbly topping. If you want to add in some extra protein, you could put in some tinned white beans or chickpeas into the sauce before you put the crumble on top or you could serve it with some sausages. I will link in the show notes to an Ainsley Harriot fan page on Facebook that gave the original version of the recipe out and you can then adapt it to your family's preferences. It's creamy, it's hearty and it's really comforting.
My second main meal idea is a cauliflower mac and cheese. This is simply making a macaroni and cheese or any other pasta bake, but putting in basically a whole cauliflower in small floret pieces alongside the pasta.
Cauliflower cheese is brilliant as we know, and mac and cheese is brilliant too. So if you put them both together, you have whatever the word for double brilliant is. If you regularly make cheesy pasta, you can probably figure this out, but I will put a link to a recipe which can give you some of the cook times to make sure that it has good textures at the end. It's perfect with garlic bread and some sausages, chicken or corn.
If you fancy trying an alternative that has the proteiny bits built right into the sauce, I will link in the show notes to a recipe for a vegan cheese sauce that has beans and cashew nuts blended smoothly into it. The vegan version uses nutritional yeast, so if you're plant-based you can use that, but the same recipe would still work with grated cheese if you eat dairy. If you do that version of the sauce, you can have what basically just looks like a big plate of pasta, but it's got cauliflower, beans and nuts already added in.
My last main meal idea is a child-friendly mild curry that can use up any vegetables that you still have knocking around in the bottom of the fridge that are in too small quantities to go into a roast dinner. The recipe I will link to basically gives you the mild spices and sauce ingredients to be family-friendly that go alongside any two cups worth of vegetables that need using up. This recipe also has lots of suggestions for alternatives and additions for all kinds of children's preferences, so it's a great base recipe to keep up your sleeve.
For dessert this month, let's make the most of the oranges around and make an easy orange cake. The example recipe I'll link to is one that your child can be involved in making if they want to, as it's one of those where you put all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet ones in another and then mix them briefly together. So there's quite a lot of measuring to do and less to go wrong. It also has a lot of pictures on the recipe so they can follow along.
It makes a lovely moist orangey cake that you can use for a pudding with either custard on top or a scoop of ice cream on the side, or can just have a slice as a tea time snack. And while we're on snacks, the snack idea for this month is the rhubarb cookies that I mentioned in the seasonal food list episode.
They're fun for kids to make and they use the new season forced rhubarb to make bright pink jewels in an American style cookie. I'll link to the recipe on my website where there are full instructions for kids to cook.
So that's my roundup of five seasonal family food ideas for January. I'll put the links to example recipes in the show notes so you can find them easily. And as always, if you give one a try, I'd love to hear how you get on.
I'll come back with some more meal ideas in February, but I hope to see you next week for a two-parter episode about ultra-processed And in the meantime, happy eating!
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