Roast chook LFW stylee

I usually do a large roast chicken every other week or so. We try and avoid all processed meats... can't remember the last time I brought any. Too full of crap. So doing a big roast chook makes for supper that night and then sarnies and/or salads the next day or two if having a lunchtime meat craving.

Sooo I have a bit of a fav way of doing a roast chicken and it goes along these lines:

Ingredients 

1 large free-range chicken (anywhere between 1.7-2 kilos)
1 onion cut in half
5 tbsp of tomato sauce
Lots of chopped fresh herbs (I usually pick a big handful of basil, parsley - flat leaf and curly and sage from the garden), or can use mixed dry herbs
Small glass of red or white wine
1 or 2 tomatoes sliced
Knob of butter, plus a little extra
Celtic sea salt & freshly ground pepper

Recipe

First off, preheat oven to 190 degrees.

Wash your chicken and pat dry with paper towel and transfer to oven dish. 

Stick the two onion halves up its bum with a knob of butter and some seasoning. Gently lift up the bird skin, careful not to tear it, and gently massage a little butter under the skin and into the flesh, leaving some little chunks there along the way.

Dollop most of the tomato sauce on top of the skin and spread evenly over the bird. Next sprinkle half of your herbs on top. Add your small glass of wine to the oven dish, and then cover with foil.

Cook for an hour and a half, basting every half an hour or so.

Remove the foil, add the remaining tomato sauce on to the skin and your thinly sliced tomatoes to cover. Drizzle with some olive oil and put back in the oven for a further half an hour.
Take out, check cooked and then sprinkle with remaining herbs before carving.

I always drizzle the juices from the dish over the meat. It's pretty yum and always lovely and moist. Nothing worse than a dry bird!

Tonight we had this with mini jacket potatoes and peas.

Do you have any fav ways and flavours for roasting a chicken? Love to hear!

Perfecto Pesto

Got asked this morning, how I do this, so thought... geeeeez, I better remember now and would share with y'all.

Have recently started making up some yummy big batches of pesto as we've had an abundance of delicious basil growing in the garden. We all love it in this household. I've mixed up the recipe a bit and instead of pine nuts (which I LOVE) have been using cashews instead (which I also LOVE). Reason? The good old cashew is delicious and creamy and cheaper then a tiny pack of pines.

Also started adding some parsley to the concoction, which adds another flavour and is packed with goodness. I read somewhere the other week that parsley offers as good a punch of nutritional good stuff as kale. Go parsley! I usually use a combo of flat leaf and curly as we have both growing here.

So, it goes something like this:

Ingredients

1 & a half cups of fresh basil (completely stuff it in the cup... use LOTS)

Half a cup of parsley (same principle as above)

1 cup of cashews

2 small garlic cloves (some peeps might omit this, but we like a little)

Lots of shredded parmesan* cheese. Approx 70gms

* Try not to buy your parmasen already shredded...it usually has horrible preservatives added to keep it 'fresh'

About quarter of a cup of good quality, first cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil

Good quality sea salt to taste

Recipe

Stick your leaves, garlic, nuts and cheese in your food processor or good blender (if you like me don't have a food processor!) and blitz it up, gradually pouring in your oil with a pinch of salt to taste. From here I might add in a bit more oil, nuts, leaves..just taste and adjust to your liking.

If you have lots of basil and parsley, I'd recommend doubling the batch, which is what I did last Saturday, to be used throughout the week. We've had it on pasta, on sourdough, in cheese and salad sandwiches, with salad and straight on the spoon. Yes we love it :)

Enjoy and let me know how it turns out! Love to hear any other ways as well, that you make yours?

Pesto on sourdough. The Bear's lunch yesterday

Sweet and sour meatless Tuesday

It’s been a little while. Sorry for the absence, we’ve been back in London. More on this later. Just wanted to share tonight’s dinner a la Wolf - Sweet and sour red pepper/capsicum, courgette/zucchini and feta with brown rice - and throw in the recipe, in case anyone fancies it.

It goes something like this and is adapted by moi, from an old English Good Food mag, that’s decades old:

Shopping list:

Visual ingredients list!

Home-grown parsley

Extra virgin olive oil

1 red onion roughly chopped

2 red peppers/capsicum, cut in to chunks

25g sultanas

3/4 tsp Celtic sea salt

1/4 tsp chilli powder (I usually add some chilli flakes too, cos I like a kick... but this one was for Essie too, so I bypassed the flakes this time)

3 garlic cloves crushed

3 courgettes/zucchini cut in to cubes

2tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 and a half tbsp of rice syrup (or could use raw honey)

Big handful of freshly chopped parsley 

Packet of feta cheese, crumbled

Half teaspoon of Harissa paste at the end of cooking (optional and not for bubbas!) 

What to do...

Heat your oil and add your onion, cook for 5 mins.

Add the red pepper and cook for another 5 mins.

Add your sultanas, Celtic salt, chilli powder, garlic and courgettes and cook for 10ish mins - keep an eye on it and make sure you give it a good stir every now and then to stop it from catching

Add the balsamic vinegar, rice syrup and 200ml of cold water to the pan and bring to the boil

Reduce the heat and simmer the mixture for 10 mins

Remove the pan from the heat and add the parsley and feta cheese

We then had ours with pre-soaked brown rice, but also yummy with couscous. PW and I then added a tinsy dollop of smoky Harissa paste and mixed it through. OMG! This is also yummy with aubergine/egg plant. Enjoy! x

Day in the life & new recipe tries: silverbeet bake and nutty seedy slice

Ok, so I'm getting a quiet moment now. Finally. Kitchen's clean, baby's asleep (since 7pm actually), mumma and papa bear fed and Masterchef half watched.

Been quite a day really, much like all the others. Lunch pulled together at 6am for me and Mr Wolf (left over roast pork sarnies with salad and wholegrain mustard). Washing (that's pretty much a staple) - today changed the beds. Made sure bubba bear fed: organic baby cereal with stewed dried apricot and apple, plus raw pear puréed for brekky. Sardine pâté and steamed broccoli for lunch. Mashed parsnip, carrot and egg yolk with fresh paw paw for supper. Riveting reading: The Gruffalo's Child (borrowed from the library), No Matter What & Puppy's Garden Game (an Essie FAV!), coffee with a girlfriend, quick dash to the supermarket, naps x2 - Essie, not me (unfortunately), a quick game of ball. Kitchen chaos as I cooked up a couple of new recipes, in between all of the above.

We'll start with something sweet...afterall, this was my order of doing things. Yesterday I discovered (thanks to another fav blogger of mine: Mamacino - check her out!) Marinya Cottage Kitchen and some of her lovely recipes. I've been wanting to pull together some sort of raw nutty slice or bliss type balls that I keep hearing about and M's Cottage Kitchen had just the thing. Not nutty, but seedy: raw choc-mint slice, plus I had some coconut cream that I needed to use up which was called for in this recipe (see link). Big win win for me.

I followed the recipe almost exactly by throwing together in short: dates, plus raisins (didn't have enough dates!), pumpkin seeds, cacao powder, coconut - oil and desiccated, vanilla bean, peppermint essence, honey and almonds - didn't have sunflower seeds. My version was also a lot more chunky and less blended. Next time, I would probably whiz it up a bit more.

The results... super special and healthy lunchbox treat. Sooo much nicer, if you have the time, than any store brought version. Know what Papa Wolf (and moi) will be having for morning tea tomorrow! Note to self: don't eat it all.

While pulling together my seedy slice, I also worked on my silverbeet bake, well I put the rice on! I know I'm a woman and I'm supposed to be great at multi-tasking... not me in the kitchen though. Maybe one day. So, once my sweet treat was sorted, it was on to the main course: Jude Blereau's chard, mushroom and rice bake. I didn't have chard and Jude said it was fine to use silverbeet. I pre-soaked my rice last night, to help make it more digestible and then it was a case of a bit of chopping: onions, garlic, mushrooms, my 'beet, sautéing it off and then mixing together with cheese: parmesan and ricotta, lightly beaten eggs, salt and pepper and baking in the oven, with sliced tomato and sprinkled pine nuts on top. Bloody yum!

And, what I love the most is that there's enough for lunch tomorrow. Now, that's my favourite kind of multi-tasking. Off to bed now. Goodnight! x

Healthy cookbook cooking for kids

It's been a pretty exciting week, foodwise, in the FW household if you're a baby bear. We've been cooking up a storm. Could be, due to feeling somewhat guilty, after our Easter break and Essie eating chicken, tomato and sweet potato every day and roast squash done 2 ways, plain and with spinach while away. Hard catering for babies when on holiday and if not wanting to feed them any processed food. So our first day in Hervey Bay, we dashed to the supermarket brought some bits and then came home and cooked them for that day and the week ahead. Since we started Essie on solids I've really tried to give her lots of variety. If she's anything like her mummy she won't be keen on eating the same things over and over. Variety's the spice of life hey? Meanwhile mumma and papa bear were Easter feeding on steak, scallops, prawns, fish... but bubba bear did get to try the later too... uncle Tony's freshly caught reef fish. We were all spoilt there and I was excited that Esme's first taste of the sea was caught freshly by Uncle T.

Uncle T prepping the fish and Essie and cousin Jess taking note

So, where was I... oh yes, Essie's food menu this week. Our aim really, I guess, is to work towards baby and adult all eating the same and although I've been known to snack on the odd single baby purée now they're around and in abundance we do like a bit more complexity in our food. So, first shared proper dish I cooked up last Friday was a Hungarian Goulash that went down well for lunch on Saturday. Recipe was from an old cook book, Conrad Gallagher's One Pot Wonders.

One Pot Wonders

This is sooooooooooooo my type of cooking. One pot, you stick everything in and cook with limited washing up. Ingredients: butter, beef topside, onions, paprika,  flour, carrots, potatoes and parsley. It also called for stock which I didn't have apart from the ready made cubes which are heavy on the salt and crappy additives, so omitted this for thyme and bay leaf soaked in hot water. Not quite as nutritious and tasty, but you know, kinda creative I thought. I also left out the seasoning although I have read a small amount of good quality salt might be ok. Recipe also called for tomato purée which I didn't have to hand and so skinned and diced a tomato instead. Not quite as rich, but it worked. This was Es's first taste of paprika and I've been slowly introducing her to different herbs and flavours. So far, so good.

Hungarian goulash

Essie has had chicken done a number of ways now, poached, casseroled and Sunday she had her first family roast. Not only did I want to try another dish we could all eat,but I wanted the carcass as I bravely decided to make my first EVER stock. What's happening to me??? This baby girl just brings out the Nigella in me.

Since Essie was born mumma and papa bear have been quite concious I'd say... mumma maybe a bit more anxious too, about the delving in to solids. We are a family of foodies and I guess the thought of having a fussy eater fills us with nervousness. Am hoping that little bear will see what great piggies her parents are - and join in - and have the love for food we do. So, that's why I've very consciously been trying to, in the foods we give, make them tasty and not just sludgy lumps of blandness. Fresh veges and fruits were steamed at first to retain the lovely flavours and vitamins. Once the single tastes were accepted, we began mixing it up, combining veges and then proteins and then started adding stronger flavours with leeks, onions, herbs such as thyme, sage, parsley and bay leaves, and a little garlic now.

This whole cooking up a storm thing, I might add, does not come easy peasy to me. I'm not a natural cook. I'm not one of these wonder woman/men who can whip up yummy things from nothing. Usually I have to follow a recipe, pretty much to the T. And, I can find it all quite stressful. Simple is so the way to go for me. I am not in to showing off complexity - well, maybe I would be if I could!

Another one of the stresses I think is planning. The big old P. Planning what to make. Planning is sooooooooo boring, as if we don't have enough to do. So, to get lots of fresh ideas I did some research before the looming solids started, and spoke to friends to get some reccos on any good books and Annabel Karmel was suggested to check out. SO, I did some research and found one of her books, New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner. It seemed to have lots of great reviews and so we quickly picked one up off Amazon. If you're like me and are just starting out and have no clue, I'd really recommend this book. It's like an idiots guide, not that we're idiots of course. As if! It just spells it all out for you and I found it really supportive.

New Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner

The book has some good info and advice on how to begin weaning, first foods to try with menu planners... which I LOVED. Hooray, you don't have to plan yourself. There in the book, you have the first three weeks mapped out which means you just concentrate on the feeding itself. You'll be starting off with one little taste a day in week one. Week two and three, Annabel suggests increasing to two little tastes a day and so on. After getting you through the first stages of weaning, she takes you on the second and then there's a chapter for nine to 12 months and up to toddler. So far, I'm about half way through the book and have used a fair few of her recipes from the super simple single purées to the more interesting combos. For example, braised beef with sweet potato, liver special, lovely lentils, trio of cauliflower, red pepper and sweetcorn etc. There's no great revolution here in recipes, but you've got lots of ideas in one simple book to get you going.

My newest book which I've mentioned before is Jude Blereau's Wholefood for Children.

Wholefood for Children

Have had a bit of a love hate relationship with this book so far. Honestly at first, I just noticed sooooooooooooooooooo many words. In fact a few friends did ask, 'Where are the pictures?' You don't actually even get in to recipes until something like page 84 and that's just starting with how to cook beans. However, after I got over my initial overwhelmedness with info, I'm really starting to love this book. The key is, well for me, to take it slowly and to keep referring back. It's a really great resource, packed with information... the starter tools on how we can feed our bubba's nutritious and delicious foods to help their little bodies develop healthily and happily. It was Jude who inspired me this week to make my first ever stock... chicken. I truly think this was a bloody good effort on my part, but actually when I got down to it and stopped stressing, thinking I don't have the time to be making stock, it was so easy and simple to do. In fact the hardest bit was transferring it in to my Wean Mesister pods to freeze. Note to self, next time don't use such a huge jug to pour.

Anyway I was inspired to make the stock after Jude pointed out that it's one of the most nourishing foods you can offer a child. Ok, that got me! It's easily digestible nutrient dense and a rich source of minerals. Plus, all I had to do was use the chicken carcass I'd made for dinner on Sunday, stick it in a large pan with water, carrots, celery, onion, thyme, bay leaves, parsley, sage and peppercorns and leave to simmer all day. I didn't actually do the recipe fully to the T, as I didn't have any apple cider vinegar, but I do now for next time, and I didn't have extra chicken wings as they'd sold out in our local supermarket, nor did I have any chicken feet.

chicken stock

Still, I thought I did a pretty good job. Realistically though I know not everyone is going to have time to be making up stocks so if you are buying ready made ones, there are some on the market that are salt reduced, so look out for those.

So as well as my chicken stock, other recipes I've tried out this week from My Wholefood for Children book is ghee, baby kichari, apple and blueberry rice and pear with vanilla extract. Each one easy to do... which is always a winner for me, as you know, and packed with goodness.

Your ghee is so simple to make and it's great for cooking and adds a lovely flavour to your food, I know this as I tried it out when making the kichari.

The making and filtering of my ghee

Baby kichari was Essie's first taste of quinoa - total superfood, which I soaked as instructed for 6 hours before hand... you don't need to do this, but apparently it releases even more of the good nutrients, cooked with split red lentils, pumpkin, carrot and then a pinch of ground ginger, cumin, coriander and tumeric in my new chicken stock. Recipe though did say vege stock, but sometimes I will go a little off piste when I have to (i.e when I haven't got what's needed!). This was yummy and I made a batch for the oldies as well... great hit with papa bear.

Baby and adult kichari in prep

Mouli'd bubba kichari purée

Apple and Blueberry rice again was another winner and Essie's first taste of rice, which happened to be brown.

Apple & blueberry purée (left) and rice in the making

It really has been a big week of new tries as bubba also got to try her first spagbol, courtesy of daddy, who does a killer bolognese, part beef, part pork, served with buckwheat pasta. Yummo!

Pasta (from right to left), apple & blueberry rice, baby and adult spagbol on the go

We on the other hand haven't probably eaten quite as well as Essie this week. Half and half. I'm not even going to tell you what we had for dinner! x