Joanne Roach (00:00)
On today's Food for Kids, I give you five family-friendly meal ideas that you can make this month to use seasonal June fruits and veggies and suggestions on how to adapt them for any less confident eaters.
Joanne Roach (00:26)
Hello and welcome back to the Food for Kids podcast. Today's episode is the June instalment of our monthly roundup of five simple, fairly family-friendly recipes that use the fruit and veg that's in season right now in the UK. The aim of this quick list is to give you some ideas that might take away a bit of that mental load of deciding what to make for dinner and at the same time you some family-friendly ways to introduce more seasonal produce. They're straightforward enough that you might actually get round to making them during a busy week.
We're in June now and honestly it's such a great month for fresh fruit and veg in the UK. Everything's starting to be available now from peas and broad beans to strawberries, rhubarb, new potatoes and it's the last few weeks to get that fresh asparagus. If you want a proper rundown of fruit and veg to buy in June, head over to episode 106 where I gave you a fuller list. But for now, as always, I've picked out three main meals, one dessert and one snack using a mix of fresh produce that's in season from the shops or your garden so you can make something practical with it.
First up for main courses, we've got a frittata with new potatoes and asparagus. Although, of course, you can sub either of those for something else if you want to. These early season new potatoes are just heavenly. They've got a lovely waxy texture and potatoey flavour. So here we're showing them off with the last few weeks of asparagus. It's basically an oven baked omelette that you can whack in the oven and then get some of the bits and pieces ready. You then slice it up and serve it hot or cold. It's nice with salad or some crusty bread or just on its own and the leftovers keep really well for lunch boxes.
The only things you need to do really before it goes in the oven is parboil the potatoes. I would personally do them in the microwave with a splash of water rather than get a pan on the stove, but you do you. Add in some chopped asparagus and spring onions. If the asparagus stems are really thick, then give them a steam blast too before adding them. Pour over some beaten egg that's got some salt and pepper in it and pop it in the oven. You can sub out the asparagus for broccoli or peas or anything that your family likes, you can also add in some cheese or some cooked bacon if you like.
So play around with that frittata idea to add in anything that you fancy, but try and have the new potatoes in because they're really gorgeous right now. If your child's hesitant with things that include egg alongside other textures, then when you pour over the eggs, don't mix them in with the veg or do a mini one where they're not mixed and mix the rest for the family. That way they have effectively two layers and they can separate them off on their plate if they want to and eat the bits they want, while still having essentially the same as the rest of the family. I'll put an example of this frittata with quantities and things in the show notes.
The second main meal idea is a really easy, creamy courgette and pea pasta. So courgettes are just starting to come into season now and this recipe is really child-friendly because of the pasta. You can grate the young courgettes so it cooks quickly and blends nicely into the sauce if you want to, or if your children don't mind courgettes, you can put in thin slices instead. You're just cooking them off gently and then adding some peas. If you can't find any fresh new peas yet, then frozen is fine or tinned. Add a bit of garlic if they tolerate that and a spoonful of something like cream cheese, creme fraiche or coconut cream just to bring it all together. It's quick and fresh and one of those lob everything into the pan kind of meals that you can make on autopilot at the end of the day.
If cheese is the gateway to getting foods accepted, then by all means, add in some grated cheese or some nutritional yeast. And if your child likes helping with cooking, this is a great recipe for them to add things in or stir them. I'll link to an example with suggested ingredients and timings to follow.
My third main meal idea is a mild family friendly chickpea and spinach curry. If you've got anyone with texture issues around pithy sorts of textures like chickpeas, then you can sub the chickpeas out for petty pois or small garden peas. This curry is not too spicy. We're just talking about a mild tomatoey sort of base and you can up or down the spices to suit. You could also add in some soft-cooked carrots or potatoes if you want to. You can use tinned chickpeas and if you're going to use peas instead then tinned or frozen are fine if you can't find any fresh ones locally. And then your main seasonal element here is a few handfuls of new season spinach stirred in at the end. Let your child see how much the huge handfuls of spinach wilt down to hardly anything. They might enjoy piling handfuls onto the pan for you. This is really great with rice or flatbreads and it can freeze really well too, so you can double up the recipe if you want to. I'll link to a recipe example, but there are loads of similar ones out there for families, so find a variation that works for your family.
This month for something sweet, I've gone for a classic, which is strawberry and rhubarb crumble. We're getting towards the end of the rhubarb and the beginning of the strawberries. So it's this short crossover window where you can harvest both or buy them locally. So it's a really nice time to try recipes that use them together. The rhubarb gives it a lovely sharpness and then the strawberries add natural sweetness. Make it in one dish, pop it in the oven and have it with yogurt, custard, ice cream, whatever you fancy. You can also double up the recipe for the crumble topping and keep half in the freezer if you want to. So next time you want to make a crumble, you've already got the topping ready. That's great when you've got fruit going over and you want to make something quick. I'll link to an example of the rhubarb and strawberry combo.
Bear in mind that lots of children have phases of having issues with stewed fruit texture and rhubarb can be very challenging because of the stringiness. So it's best to serve this in the bowl with the fruit filling mostly to one side and the crumble leaning to the other side so that they can eat the crumble, which might have some juicy bits on the bottom, even if they can't tackle the fruit filling just yet.
And then finally, a quick June snack. This might sound a bit strange, but bear with me. Strawberries and cream cheese in a wrap. This was a fan favourite at our local school's tuck shop. You can either use mini wraps for quite a large portion or you can quarter a large wrap and make them into sort of cones. Basically, you just smear some cream cheese on and then slice strawberries and roll it up. It doesn't sound like it should work, but it really does. You can add honey if you like and your child's over one year old. But honestly it doesn't need it if the strawberries are ripe. This is especially a really good way to use up overripe strawberries that have gone a bit gooey because it's quite nice to squish them between the wrap. It's a really quick after-school snack and children can make it themselves if they want to practice their spreading skills either with a knife or with the back of a teaspoon. I don't have a recipe per se to link to for this, but you get the gist. Use whatever ratio of cream cheese to strawberries that you think will work best for your child or let them make their own combo.
So that's my roundup of five seasonal food ideas for June. I'll pop links to all the recipes I mentioned in the show notes so you can take a look. And if you do try any of them or you have your own seasonal ideas to tell me, please send me a DM on social media or by email. Next month, I'll bring five more recipes for easy meals with July foods. But for now, I hope to see you on the next episode. And in the meantime, happy eating!
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