Joanne Roach (00:13)
Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. Today's episode is the February installment of our monthly roundup of five straightforward family-friendly recipes that use up fruit and veg that are in season right now in the UK. The point of this quick list is to take away a bit of that 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.
February is still generally cold and pretty wet and grim too, so we want those comfort foods still, but we also want to feel like spring might be coming soon. So some lighter elements thrown in here and there means that we're still using those winter staple foods, but we're thinking ahead to brighter days. If you want a full rundown of fruit and vegetable in February, head over to episode 72 where I give a full list. But here I've picked out three family meals, a dessert and a snack that can use some of those late winter ingredients.
So let's get to those recipes.
My first main meal idea is using cabbage in a slightly different way than normal and making it the star of a comforting dish. So instead of shredding it or chopping it small, you cut a leafy cabbage into four or six wedges and fry it off or roast it in those wedges, which then gives you these lovely chunks of soft cabbage, but with slightly charred caramelised edges. And then you can add a sauce around them. In the recipe I'll link to in the show notes, she browns those cabbage wedges in a pan and then adds a spicy tomato sauce around the wedges to cook everything through. But that recipe would work just as well with a plain tomato sauce for those less spicy palettes and those who like some spice can add some hot sauce to theirs at the end. She also adds chickpeas and crusty bread to make it a complete meal but you could equally add in bits of leftover chicken, pieces of sausage, Quorn or tofu and it would probably be just as nice with rice or some potato wedges on the side if you don't fancy the crusty bread option. It's really a different way to present cabbage and it might make kids curious about it even if they only really end up eating the red sauce from around it.
The second main meal idea is a cheesy leek and potato pie with just a shop bought puff pastry top on it. This is a great way to use up leftover cooked potatoes or if you've got the end of a bag of potatoes that starting to sprout, just peel and boil them and put everything else together in a dish with a ready roll puff pastry lid. It has cheese and leeks in it, which is always a brilliant combo, but then it's got that potato in it to bulk it out and give it a comforting feel and a pastry lid to make everyone smile. It's that kind of warm hug that you get from a leek and potato soup, but in a pie form. I'll put an example in the show notes.
My last main meal idea is some kind of veggie burger with some fries or potato wedges and sides to make us look ahead to the summer, but using some store cupboard staples or winter seasonal veg to make up the burgers. If you want to make your own, I'll link in the show notes to a few different examples. There's a bean burger that uses tinned beans. There's a smoky roast carrot one, which is great for using that tip from the money saving episode where if you've got a roast dinner, lob in some extra carrots with it and you could use those carrots to make the burgers. The burgers use the carrots and some smoked tofu which you can get in any main supermarket now. And I'll also link to a more Caribbean toned one which uses plantain and beans, so that's a good way to get children to explore plantain in a more familiar meal format.
These are just some suggestions, but you could do a search for your own burger recipe based on what you have to use up or pick out a nice one from the shop. It's just a good way to feel like summer is coming eventually, but with those winter veggies thrown in. We always have homemade slaw on the side of ours, which uses three other winter staples, cabbage, carrot and onion, but add whatever your family likes. And don't forget that frozen corn on the cob was frozen in perfect season last summer.
For dessert this month, it's one you can rope kids into making, which is apple pinwheels. At this time of year, the stored UK grown apples are starting to get more floury in texture, so they're perfect for cooking because they'll be softened anyway. This recipe is a bit like the pizza pinwheel, but sweet. So basically you roll out a sheet of puff pastry and sprinkle very small pieces of chopped apple all over it, as well as some warm flavours like cinnamon and a little sugar. And then you roll them up into a log and cut them into slices and bake. Kids can really be involved to help sprinkle the fillings and roll up the log. Although slicing the log into neat discs is probably for an older child or an adult as they can get really squashed down if you've got a less skilled knife wielder doing it. But if they get the hang of making them, it's the same process as the pizza ones, which is our favourite all year round store cupboard lunch and snack. So that's doing the same process, but with tomato puree and cheese spread across and sometimes a bit of ham. And it comes out with a pizza kind of taste. So it's a good recipe format to nail down. I'll link to both of those in the show notes.
And speaking of snacks, the snack idea for this month is to try out one of those recipes you see online for energy balls or bliss balls or a lot of other names that get given on social media, which are basically processing a combination of ingredients together to make a soft cookie dough textured ball. You can get all kinds of these recipes with nut butters, fruit, vegetables, chickpeas and beans, dried fruit and nuts. The trick is to get a balance of texture and sweetness. So it's good to start with a recipe. I will link to one in the show notes, which is a carrot and oat one, which has a kind of carrot cake type feel about it. And you can make a batch of these and freeze half of them. But our other favourite one is a chickpea one with chocolate chips in it, which doesn't really taste like chickpeas, but has that cookie dough texture. So it's a bit like a chocolate chip cookie ball. Pick out one of these recipes to try this month and maybe freeze half of them. That way, if you then try a different one and freeze some of those, you'll have a variety of different ones building up to choose from.
So that's my roundup of five seasonal family food ideas for February. I'll put the links to example recipes in the show notes so you can find them more easily. And as always, if you give one of them a try, I'd love to hear how you got on. I'll be back next month with another set of seasonal ideas, but I hope to see you later in the week for another interview episode. So in the meantime, happy eating.
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