Baby catering

When we didn't know what to do with a squash a couple of months back, Terry consulted his oracle, the River Cafe cookbook green. He made the pumpkin and cinnamon risotto (risotto alla zucca e cannella), which was delish for us and Babs, and particularly good for getting some weight on the baby, because we could slather on the olive oil and parmesan at the end. It's been a complete failsafe for Babs, whose interest in individual foodstuffs is difficult to sustain.

Anyway, last week's grocery order included an organic butternut squash, which I made into squash and cinnamon risotto yesterday. We were missing oregano, but it doesn't seem to have harmed it much. And instead of chicken stock, our pescetarian and salt-fearing family demands Marigold vegan salt-free vegetable stock. Which again, doesn't seem to have harmed it any. My mum was visiting, and she really enjoyed it; Babs liked it, and scoffed everything on her plate; and Terry was very complimentary when he came home. Two adult portions and a tiddly baby size down, there was enough left for 4 ice cube trays and a two-person portion for the freezer. And it's vegan. If you don't serve with cheese.

So, by way of recommendation (modified a little bit for convenience/vegetarianism/babyfeeding):

Risotto alla zucca e cannella ('serves 6')

1kg butternut squash, pumpkin or onion squash
1 cinnamon stick, about 5cm (book says crushed, but I left it whole so I could fish it out)
1l stock
1 tbsp dried oregano (though it really was fine without)
4 sticks of celery, finely chopped
2 small onions, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic
pinch of dried, crushed chilli
400g arborio rice (they say carnaroli, but the only organic risotto rice I could get was arborio. And truthfully, I don't know the difference.)
400g tin chopped tomatoes

extra virgin olive oil and parmesan (they say pecorino) to serve.

Pre-heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas 7, and heat stock.
Cut the squash in half lengthwise and widthwise, remove the seeds, and cut into wedges. Season with salt, pepper & half the oregano (or none of them - that was fine), place them on an oiled baking tray and cook for 30-40 minutes (until browned and cooked).

While the squash is roasting, heat a good glug of olive oil in a large, deep, heavy-based pan, and cook the onion and celery for 5-10 minutes, until softened. Add the chilli, remaining oregano and cinnamon. Fry these together briefly, and add the rice. Stir to coat each grain with oil, and cook til opaque - 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and allow this to reduce - a couple more minutes, stirring. Then add the stock, a ladleful at a time - allowing all the stock to be absorbed before adding the next ladleful, stirring all the time. It really will catch if you don't keep stirring, risotto novices! Continue until the rice is al dente - about 15 minutes - then add the squash.

I add the squash peeled, in small-ish cubes; the book says to pass it, skin and all, through a mouli first (we just don't have one). Test for seasoning (add salt v cautiously if this is for a tiddler, and not at all for under-ones) & serve drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and freshly grated parmesan/pecorino.

Modified by me, but probably copyright Rose Gray & Ruth Rogers (2000) River Cafe Cook Book Green. London: Random House.

Really, really yummy. And half of it made 48 cubes, which at 6 per meal will do Babs about 8 meals.

Chocolate Krackolates

What a name! That's the 60s for you. They're just cornflake cakes. By popular demand, from the Woman's Own Cookery Book, 1968: makes 12 small (kiddie size) or 6 adult size. (I tend to double the quantities).

7 tablespoons corn flakes (that's 34g if you have electronic scales)
1 tablespoon icing sugar or caster sugar
1oz vegetable fat or shortening (I use Pure or Sainsbury's 'Free From' marge to keep them vegan)
1 level tablespoon cocoa powder
1 tablespoon golden syrup (heat the spoon to keep it from sticking)
2 tablespoons dessicated coconut or 1 tablespoon grated orange peel

Melt the fat and syrup slowly in a saucepan; do not boil.
Add the cocoa, remove from heat and stir in the sugar.
With a metal spoon, quickly fold in the cornflakes and coconut/orange peel until well-coated.
Spoon onto a greased baking sheet (I use paper cake - not muffin - cases) and cool.

I seem to remember them coming out of the fridge hard, but recently they've been quite squidgey still. Possibly this is because I'm slap-happy with the syrup - they have been tooth-achingly sweet. To counter the sweetness, though, I'm tempted to halve the sugar; I think they need the stickiness of the syrup to bond.

Yummy.

Christmas Crocker

Well, Christmas passed without major incident. Flesh and M and little Weaver came for dinner and vegan mince pies on the 20th, in a nice boozy evening that involved Christmas bubbles and ended with us taking a hundred photos and me, Flesh and R practising photo faces with varying degrees of ineptitude.


On the 21st, Terry's sister and her family came over an hour earlier than expected, as we were finishing lunch and trying to coax 'just a little more, please' into Babs. They were invited 'after lunch', but when I asked if they'd eaten (stupid, stupid me) R said no and threw me into panic, since we had nothing in. They ignored the mince pies I put in front of them as we all had tea, and I finally cornered Terry in the kitchen and hissed at him to address the lunch situation. Thank god, we had bread in because F&M had stayed over and so Terry had been out for bread for breakfast. Sister agreed to sandwiches but for someone so direct was bizarrely vague about what she wanted, then laboriously picked out all the cheese in her cheese sarnie; niece didn't like any of the options I ran through, so sister told us she'd be happy with bread and butter. Well, sorry, but no-one comes to my house and has only b&b and water. Fortunately she does eat tuna and sweetcorn, so we rustled up a sarnie for her too and while they ate 3pm lunch I tried not to feel uncomfortable about our apparent rubbish hospitality. Babs handled all the passing and the prodding very well but was very happy to go off for an afternoon nap. Although the conversation was fluent (sister is very talkative, unlike father), it was still a taxing afternoon and I was very relieved when they left.

On Christmas eve we took the baby to be weighed, because I was convinced she'd been eating better and must surely have put on more in these three weeks than the pitiful 100 grams in the fortnight before. Well, my mistake: no weight gain whatsoever. So our 10 minute pop was an hour long visit, as they made us see yet another health visitor to tell me something different from the health visitor before. (Conclusion: lack of continuity means lack of tailored and meaningful advice. No single health professional has a real grasp of our habits, routine, or my efforts to get more food into the baby; since they don't read each others' entries in my hand-held notes they don't even get to build up a picture that way. They recommend vitamins almost every time I visit, as though lack of weight gain equals lack of nutrients. She'll eat broccoli for breakfast, for Christ's sake, and she eats better than we do.) To be fair, we did get some reasonable tips: give water when she wakes up at night to reduce the reward and feed her from our plates so she'll eat more, but they did nothing to stop me worrying, in fact they probably made me worry more.

Mummy arrived in the afternoon with fish pie for supper. After a smoked salmon and bagel breakfast we opened pressies on Christmas day until Babs was overwhelmed enough for us to decide to hold stuff back for boxing day, and then we cooked. Terry pulled off a yummy and seriously meaty meat-free stuffed cabbage with mushrooms and chestnuts. I wished I hadn't decided lunch would be at tea-time and was a bit stroppy by the time we sat down at 5 o'clock when I should have been on the sofa for two hours already; the same old bloody red wine/onion gravy was a bit disappointing given it was a special occasion and the potatoes were just a touch too floury to be brilliantly crisp roasties. But, in our usually meat-free household, we had fantastic pigs in blankets - Waitrose perfectly seasoned and traceable pork chipolatas wrapped in their similarly traceable streaky bacon - and Crocker-tastic stuffing balls: seasoned pork sausagemeat combined with the fantastically packaged Kraft (R) Stove Top Stuffing Mix from - where else? - me dad's house! Feeel the quality.


On Boxing day mum and I spent the morning making feta filo parcels (surprisingly easy), vegan sausage rolls and hot spiced nuts, then we all went to join Flesh and M and their families at their house, which meant more pass the baby and yet more confusion for poor Babs. She did a very good job of holding it together while being thrown around by over-enthusiastic wannabe grandparents and had a nap with her new alligator on Flesh's bed.


Meanwhile we got to try the infamous vegan cheesecake, which was good but very sharp; M's dad made me laugh and laugh as usual (makes me feel like a young child and he's the funny uncle); M's granny was good value as only deaf and slightly batty old folk can be; and we got to make off with some decent leftovers for supper. Perfect.

So that was baby's first Christmas. Hopefully next year we'll get Terry's dad as well as my mum, and maybe uncle monkey & mj might make it too. That way it won't pass without incident, I'll get to revert to tradition and cry on Christmas day, and we'll get some decent - turkey - gravy.