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

boy’s birthday cake (#litres_trial_promo)

girl’s birthday cake (#litres_trial_promo)

playdough (#litres_trial_promo)

a bit about vitamins and minerals (#litres_trial_promo)

kitchen equipment (#litres_trial_promo)

acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

index (#litres_trial_promo)

copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

about the publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

introduction (#ulink_f9213599-8f49-56e8-98e5-6313736e09fc)

I must admit that I hardly cooked until I had children. Gordon was always working until at least midnight and I was working all day and studying for my teaching course in the evening – I became a Montessori nursery teacher. I more or less lived on quick and easy foods like beans on toast or breakfast cereal. My interest in food only really started when we had children and our first, Megan, began solids. Suddenly I was responsible for everything that went into her tiny tummy. Gordon was working and it was up to me to cook for her. That was when I started to really care about what was in the fridge.

I learnt how to cook as Megan’s diet became more interesting than vegetable purées. The fact that she was a good eater and showed excitement in what she ate, as subsequently did the other three, meant I actually enjoyed experimenting, too. So that is how I started cooking – never seasoning or overcomplicating, just simple, family food. I believe home cooking never needs to be any more sophisticated than this.

I’ve tried to keep the recipes in this book as real and accessible as possible. I’ve included all of my favourites that I use to feed the family, which also means that they have been given the thumbs up by the children. Some of the recipes are more child-oriented – like fish fingers, for example – but most of them are for the whole family to enjoy.

I’ve also tried to include tips on how to adapt some of the recipes to make them more adult. A splash of wine or a bit of extra seasoning is often all it takes. Not only does this save you the time and effort of cooking two different meals, but it also makes eating, especially at weekends, as much about being together as a family as eating good food. That for me is just as important.

The recipes are organized with most people’s weekly routines in mind. In the Breakfasts section, for example, I’ve included a mixture of quick and easy options for weekdays when you are rushing to get the kids to school as well as a few more leisurely recipes for weekends and holidays. The most popular with my children is probably the fruit gratin, so if you can’t quite squeeze it into a busy weekday morning, do indulge at the weekend. I’ve organized main meals into After-school Suppers and Weekend Lunches for the same reason.

I also thought a section on Cooking from the Cupboard was essential. If you are anything like me, sometimes you are just too busy, tired or disorganized to get to the supermarket and you end up staring at the contents of the fridge and cupboards trying to figure out what to feed everybody. I do try to keep a few staples in the house at all times, a few of which I have outlined at the beginning of that chapter. If you can get into the habit of keeping all of these in stock then you’ll find it actually quite easy to rustle up something delicious.

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.

breakfast (#ulink_2b827ed5-66d3-58ad-9d77-e6724e6512a1)

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!

school-rush smoothies (#ulink_2b0db96f-9ab4-5b50-99a2-1c96d3842292)

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

1 Wash, peel and roughly chop the fruit.

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

3 Blend 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.

fruit salad with oats and warm yoghurt (#ulink_07835f27-cea7-5886-9d8e-550a7eaf8614)

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