SPINACH LOAF

This works very well with a bowl of soup and it is easy for the children to help to prepare it.
You need:

- 150 g spinach (raw and chopped - pat dry them with a tea towel after you wash them)
- 175g self raising flower
- 3 eggs
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- two table spoons of yogurt
- two handfuls of walnuts or pine nuts (or both)
- salt

Preheat the oven at 175 degrees. Grease and line a loaf tin.
Mix all the ingredients. Cook for 35 to 40 minutes.

FROZEN STRAWBERRIES JAM

This is a really simple jam. It is much cheaper than fresh strawberry jam  - and you can do it with other frozen berries too. You need:

- 1Kg of frozen strawberries
- 1 Kg of sugar (jam sugar is best)
- juice of one lemon

Put the frozen strawberries and lemon juice in a big pan. Boil it over high heat for 10 minutes until the strawberries get mushy. My children like to find bits of strawberries in the jam, but not whole ones, so I mash the strawberries a bit at this point with a potato masher. Add the sugar and let it all boil for another 25 minutes (or 20 minutes if you are using jam sugar) It seems a long time, but since the frozen strawberries have a high water content it takes a while to get the jam to its setting point.

Once it is ready get rid of the scum with a spoon, let it rest for 15 minutes and put it into sterilised jars (easiest method to sterilise is to wet the jars with water and put them in the microwave for 2 minutes). If you use a jam funnel, you will not have any mess to clean afterwards. Cover the jam with a circle of waxed paper and close the lids. Put the jars upside down and let them cool overnight. It keeps for months.

ST VALENTINE's COOKIES

We spent St Valentine's lunch with a  large group of friends, so we prepared these for dessert.

You need:
- 200 gr plain flour
- 100 gr sugar
- 100 gr butter (room temperature)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- a teaspoon of baking powered
- a pinch of salt

And for the icing:
-250 gr icing sugar
- 2-3 table spoons of boiling water
- red colouring paste

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.

Beat the butter and sugar until they get a pale yellow colour.  Add the eggs, then the vanilla. Finally mix the flout, baking power and salt and add it to the mixture. You can do this all in a food processor. Wrap the cookie dough in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Put the mixture over a large rectangle of cling film. Cover it with another large rectangle and roll it until you get a pound-like thickness. Cut the cookies with a heart shape cutter and put them on a baking tray covered with a silicon mat or baking paper. Cook them for 13-14 minutes (you may meed to cook them in two batches). Get the cookies out of the oven and put them on a cooling rack so that they get cold before you ice them (this takes 10 minutes more or less)

For the icing: sift the icing sugar and add the water (a little bit each time) until you get a thick glossy paste. Do not make it too liquid. Add the red colouring, while reserving a bit of the white mixture for decorations. Cover the cookies with the red colouring using a spatula. Then put the white icing into a piping bag with a small nose and decorate the cookies. As you can see in the picture my sons do not have steady hands for decoration and mine are not any better (I did the white decorations with mixed results…) but that did not stop our friends eating them.

Needless to say you can use this recipe for any other kind of shape, colours, etc…

 

YOGURT SPHERIFICATIONS

One of my sons is taking the cooking rather seriously, so Santa brought him a small 'chef kit' for Christmas when we were in Spain. The kits are from HomeChef and they are great as they are both entertaining (it is like a chemistry experiment, really)  and cheap. The spherification is a technic that comes from the Spanish chef Ferran Adria. The yogurt spherification is probably the easiest one as it does not require any additional calcium.
You need:
- 100 g full fat yogurt
- optional: icing sugar  (to sweeten the yogurt to your taste- if you use a favoured yogurt you will not need any)
- 1 l of water
-7 g of sodium alginate (HomeChef does not seem to sell in the UK, but Amazon sells alginate for around £7)

Mix the water and alginate with a blender and wait for at least 20 minutes (even better if you wait overnight). Drop small spoonfuls of yogurt into the alginate mixture. You may need to discard the first ones as they make come in weird kidney-like shapes, but once you do two or three it is easy to get the hang of it. Wait for a couple of minutes and you will see that a thick membrane has formed on the outside of the yogurt. Remove the yogurt balls carefully from the alginate solution and 'clean them' by dropping them in a bowl with clean cold water. Remove them from the water and put them on kitchen paper to get rid of the excess moisture. That is all.

We decorated them with pomegranate, honey and mint. We are not really into 'nouvelle cuisine' but the result is interesting as the balls 'explode' in your mouth and whole thing looks like 'edible chemistry' to the kids, so it is fun to make.

You can also do this with fruit or vegetable purees (though you need to add calcium to the puree first) but we have not tried this yet…

SIMPLE FRIED CLAMS

The only problem for this recipe is that you need really good clams  - basically the rule is this: the worse the ingredient, the more you needs to process it, add to it and make the recipe  'full packed of flavours' as many chefs now say…but when you get hold of a really good ingredient the less you do to it the better.

You need:
- 750 g of good clams
- olive oil
- two cloves of garlic
No need to add salt.

Clean the clams either by hand or by putting them in a  big bowl of water and salt for at least two hours. Fry two cloves of garlic in three table spoons of live oil, when the garlic is soft, add the clams. As soon as they open up they are done. It should only take 3-4 minutes. Discard any clams that do not open up. Eat immediately.

The children find it interesting to see show the salty water makes the clam loose any sand, and also watching the clams open up.

CHOCOLATE MADELEINES

Since we now have a madeleines tray we have tried a few different recipes.
You need
- 3 eggs
- 125 g sugar
- 165 g plain flour
- 60 ml milk
- 220 g butter (200 for the madeleines themselves and 20 gr for brushing the tray)
- half a teaspoon of baking powder
- a pinch of salt
- 18 small pieces of chocolate (more of less half a square - we did it with milk chocolate as it is my children's favourite, but this should taste better with bitter dark chocolate)

Preheat the one at 220 degrees.

Mix the sugar ad eggs and beat well. Add the milk. Mix separately the flour, salt and baking powder and fold it into the sugar and egg mixture. Melt the butter (200 g) and add it to the mixture as well. Put it in the fridge and wait for 30 minutes to an hour.

Melt the 20 g of butter and paint with it the madeleines tray. Put a little bit of the mixture in each madeleines mould until they are half-filled. Put the piece of chocolate in and cover it with the rest of the mixture (you may need to press the chocolate down a bit with your fingers so that it is covered by the mixture).

Put the tray in the oven and lower it to 180 degrees. Bake for 12 minutes and unmould immediately as soon as you take them out of the oven. Eat them warm.

The children liked trying different recipes, but all agreed that the classic lemon madeleines (see recipe that we published a couple of weeks ago) is best by far.

ONION SOUP

Another French classic that children love in the winter. You need:

- 500 gr onion (sliced thinly)
- a table spoon of olive oil
- 50 gr of butter
- a pinch of thyme leaves (we used dry thyme)
- a bay leaf
- a glass of white wine
- two teaspoons of sugar
- a tablespoon of flour
- bread (sourdough or baguette): one slice per person
- grated cheese (around 250 gr)
-water (around 750 ml)
-salt

Heat the butter and olive oil in a frying pan and fry the onions over medium to high heat for 5 to 7 minutes. You really should use a frying pan for this, as if you try to do this in a soup pan the onions will not fry properly ( they will produce moist and therefore they will 'boil' instead of fry)The trick is to get the onions golden-brown (keep watching the onions while they fry as it is really easy to burn them). Then add  the sugar and flour and mix well. Add the white whine and wait for 2-3- minutes until it starts to evaporate. Transfer it all to a soup pan, cover with water, add the thyme, bay leaf and salt and let it all boil over low heat for 40 minutes.

Before serving the soup, toast the bread. Put the soup in the bowls, add the bread on top and then sprinkle generously with the grated cheese. Put the bowls under the grill  and wait until the cheese gets golden (3-4 minutes, depending on the strength of your grill) Serve immediately.

It is a bit difficult to get the children to help much on this as slicing onions is no fun (supermarkets now sell sliced onions  though). Also, be careful if they help you to put the bowls under the grill (in fact, put the bowls on a tray or you will burn yourself).