Tana Ramsay - Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen - Simple and Delicious Recipes for Every Family

I actually find cooking ad hoc makes me more creative as I match flavours and ingredients that I might not normally. With this chapter, if you don’t have a particular item you can often substitute it for something else. I have tried to include notes on how you could do this in a number of the recipes throughout the book. For example, I really enjoy cooking with pancetta, but if you can’t get hold of it, you can substitute unsmoked streaky bacon or bacon lardons. Don’t be afraid to experiment! It’s how we all learn and more often than not it’ll go down well.

This is also why I’ve included a section on Trying New Tastes. Children – and mine are no exception – can have very fixed ideas of what they think they like and dislike, when quite often they only need a food presented to them in a different way or just as a sneaky aside to other things they know they already love. The recipes in this section are designed to be made in combination with each other so you can end up with a wide variety of flavours on your plates. We tend to use our fingers for these informal pick and mix sessions and they always end up being great fun.

The section I found the most fun to write was Party Foods. I think the children enjoyed it most too as I was testing the recipes to make sure they would work when I wrote them down! I’ve tried to include ones that have worked well at my children’s parties. Most of them are very quick and easy to make and will help you cut as many corners as possible. There is always so much to think about when you have to organize a children’s party that I find every extra minute counts.

Above everything else, I really hope you enjoy using this book. From being a complete novice I’ve come to love cooking for my family – yes, even for Gordon! I also like to know that the children are getting all the nutrients they need. (I’ve included a chart with basic nutritional information at the back of the book as I always find them handy.) When I was little it was such a comfort coming home to my mum’s cooking. I hope that my children and yours will grow up with the same feelings of love, comfort and satisfaction around food.

The most important meal of the day!

Weekday breakfasts are tough ones. Like most people with young children, my house is always completely chaotic between 7 and 8 a.m. on a weekday. The children are all still fast asleep at 7 and have to be literally dragged out of their nice warm beds. Then we have one hour to get dressed, eat, clean teeth, wash faces, do several sets of plaits/bunches/ponytails, persuade my son to introduce his hair to a hairbrush and get out the door. I also have to make sure the beds are made and curtains open if it is a work day, as I don’t want to come home to a mess in the evening. They do this themselves, but often need a reminder (or two or three!) – a little treat is always a good incentive!

Smoothies are the most fantastic way of making sure that even a reluctant eater starts the day with a good percentage of their recommended daily intake of fresh fruit inside them. There are no hard-and-fast rules about what makes a good smoothie (although you will obviously need a liquidizer), but the ones I’ve included here always seem to go down well with my lot.

These are the combinations of fruit I often use, but you can vary the quantities according to your needs (and the contents of your fruit bowl).

Mango mania

1 mango

1 banana (preferably ripe)

orange juice

Berry blast

1 cup frozen berries

1 mango

orange juice

Green monkey

4 kiwis

1 banana (preferably ripe)

apple juice

1Wash, peel and roughly chop the fruit.

2Put into a blender and pour over enough juice to cover the fruit.

3Blend until smooth. Enjoy!

Tips

• You can of course make your own fresh orange or apple juice, but I always ‘cheat’ by using a good-quality fresh fruit juice as a base. It’s much easier and quicker.

• I find it incredibly useful to keep a bag of frozen berries in the freezer just for making smoothies.

This is one of those breakfasts that is a bit fiddly, but in spite of this I try to prepare it once a week because the children love it, it is incredibly healthy, and my being lazy is a terrible excuse!

4 tbsp oat flakes

4 tbsp blueberries

4 tbsp raspberries

2 tbsp water

golden caster sugar

4 round tbsp natural organic yoghurt

4 tsp runny honey (1 tsp per portion)

Serves:4 children

Prep time:15 minutes

Cooking time:5 minutes

1Lightly toast the oat flakes in a small frying pan until golden brown. Take care not to burn them. Take off the heat and remove a few oat flakes and put aside. Meanwhile, place the blueberries and raspberries into a small saucepan, add water and a sprinkle of golden caster sugar and heat gently, stirring occasionally.

2Add the yoghurt to the pan of toasted oat flakes and gently stir through.

3When the fruit is nicely warm, serve the yoghurt and oatmeal into a small bowl, spoon on the fruit, drizzle over the honey and sprinkle over the reserved oat flakes.

Tips

• This is really tasty with banana, and a good way to use up any over-ripe ones laying in the bottom of the fruit bowl. Simply slice them into the yoghurt when it is in the frying pan.

• To serve this as a dessert you can simply leave out the oat flakes and crumble digestive or ginger nut biscuits into the yoghurt and add fruit.

• You can also toast some flaked almonds with the oats.

I measure the ingredients in spoons – it’s too early in the morning for weighing!

This is a delicious sweet treat for breakfast. I mix the wholemeal flour with some plain white flour, as using just wholemeal flour makes the pancakes too heavy.