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Lazy because it’s less effort than ordinary fish cakes, and with fewer dirty dishes. Also: no frying in oil. That’s got to be good, right?
4 medium sized potatoes
1 Tbsp butter
about 150ml milk
2 eggs, beaten
2 tins tuna
1 slice bread
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp oregano
salt & pepper
Serves 4
Pre-heat the oven to 180 Celsius.
Peel the potatoes, cut into cubes and boil until soft – about 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of your cubes. Drain the cooked potatoes, then add the butter and milk. Mash it up so that you have mashed potato of fairly soft consistency (you might need to add more milk). Add salt & pepper.
While the potatoes are cooking, beat the eggs in a mixing bowl. Pull the slice of bread into small pieces with your hands (no need to use the mixer fixer), and add to the egg. Then add the olive oil, oregano and tuna, and mix together.
When the mashed potato is ready, add it to the tuna mixture and mix thoroughly.
Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray, then spoon the mixture into the tin. You should get 10-12 fishcakes, depending on how big your potatoes were.
Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. Eat with sweet chilli sauce. They’re also really good cold from the fridge the next day.
It’s really cold today. This will warm you up. I know it’s not exactly healthy, but it’s easy to make, and warm and comforting. And it’s got Viennas, so the kids love it.
1 onion
1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped
500g smoked Vienna sausages
30ml red wine
1 tin borlotti beans
1 tin chopped tomato
large sprig fresh rosemary
Serves 4
Finely chop the onion and fry in a little olive oil for about 2 minutes, until transparent. Chop the Viennas into small disks and add to the onion. Add the sprig of rosemary and the garlic, and fry it all up until the Viennas start to brown.
Add the red wine, the tin of tomato and the drained borlotti beans. Turn down the heat and let it simmer for at least 15 minutes.
This makes a stew, but if you add a cup of water you can call it soup.
Soupe au Pistou is a classic recipe from the south of France – veggie soup with pesto and cheese on top. I first ate this at my mother-in-law’s house and became completely addicted. This version is based on the family recipe, with some inspiration from the Cranks vegetarian cookbook. (Although obviously they wouldn’t have added the bacon. I guess my own inspiration comes from boerekos, where a meal isn’t a meal if it hasn’t got meat in it.)
1 onion
3 rashers bacon
3 tomatoes
2 carrots
1 red pepper
3 potatoes
half a cup of frozen peas
1 tin of borlotti beans
Serves 4
Finely chop the onion and bacon, then fry in a little olive oil until the onion is transparent. Chop up the tomatoes and fry with the onion for a few minutes until the tomatoes are cooked and turning into a sauce.
Peel and chop the carrots and potatoes, finely chop the red pepper and drain the tin of beans. Add these ingredients, and the peas, to the tomato mixture, then add just enough water to cover it all.
Boil together for 15-20 minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked.
When you dish it up, put one heaped teaspoon of pesto and some grated pecorino or parmesan cheese on top of each portion.
You can add all sorts of veggies to this soup. Baby marrow, cauliflower, green beans and mushrooms all work well. I don’t add any salt, garlic or other herbs, because the pesto and cheese are both strong flavours.
Our nanny makes this completely amazing play dough. It’s really soft and lovely, and it doesn’t dry out your hands like home-made play dough often does. It goes mouldy after a few days, but you’ll get much joy from it in the meantime.
Boil together:
2 cups water
1 cup salt
3 tablespoons cooking oil
1 teaspoon food colouring
Then add:
2 cups sieved flour
1 packet cream of tartar
A pretty good recipe when you need a meal in less than 2 minutes.
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
Break the egg into a big pudding bowl and add the milk. Whisk well with a fork or egg whisk. Microwave on high for 1 minute. (You’ll have to experiment – our microwave cooks it perfectly in a minute, but you may need more or less time.) Turn out on a plate and cover with grated cheese.
Using cream instead of milk makes it extra yummy.
Jamie Oliver has won this year’s TED prize. He gets some cash, and he’s granted a wish for changing the world. He says, “I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” I think this is very cool.
This is a really easy dish that you can cobble together with pretty much whatever veggies you can find in the fridge. And a tin of lentils.
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
half a red onion
1 clove garlic, finely sliced
1 tin lentils
1 disk feta cheese, crumbled
handful of black olives
oregano
Serves 2
Roughly chop the peppers, and cut the onion into half slices. Put in an ovenproof dish with the garlic and lots of olive oil. Mix well to make sure the olive oil coats all the veggies. (Add some salt too if you’re not cooking this for kids.) Roast the veggies at 180 deg C for 30-40 minutes, until they are soft and well cooked. You’ll need to stir them every 10 minutes or so.
Drain the lentils and add them to the roast veggies. Add the feta, olives and a sprinkling of oregano and mix it all up. Put the dish back into the oven for about 10 minutes. Serve on its own or as a side dish for a braai.
You can do loads of variations on this, depending on what’s in your fridge:
- Add butternut or mushrooms to the roast veg.
- Add a cupful of brown rice.
- Sun-dried tomatoes are also good.
It’s a little worrying that the biggest word in my tag cloud is CAKE. It’s not that I feed cake to my kids every day, it’s just that making cakes is so much more fun than any other kind of cooking. This is my mum’s recipe for baked cheese cake. Really easy and totally delicious.
Base
150g Marie biscuits or Tennis biscuits
125g butter
Filling
2 x 250g cream cheese or smooth cottage cheese
125ml cream
3 extra large eggs
200ml white sugar
5ml vanilla essence
Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
Chop the biscuits in a food processor to make fine crumbs, and mix with the melted butter. Use the back of a spoon to press this mixture into your pie dish.
Mix the eggs in a food processor, then slowly add the sugar while continuing to mix. Mix in all the other ingredients.
Now pour the filling onto the base. To avoid pouring a large hole into the base, hold a spoon just above the base and pour the mixture onto the back of it, rather than directly onto the base.
Bake at 180 deg C for 15 minutes.
Now turn down the oven temperature to 150 deg C and bake a further 15 – 20 minutes.
Switch off the oven, leave the door slightly open and let the cake cool in the oven. When cooled, put it in the fridge for a while before serving.
Last time I made this I forgot to buy cream, so I made it without. The cake had a slightly less firm texture, and to my mind was a bit more delicious.
My daughter can go from angel to monster in seconds when she reaches a certain level of HUNGRY. So I have a few dishes up my sleeve that take just minutes to cook. I count this as one of them, even though cooking brown rice takes 40 minutes, because I almost always have a stash of brown rice in the fridge. (I have rice salad for lunch most days. It’s yummy. Will post the recipe some time.)
Serves 1 hungry 6-year-old
1 egg
1 tablespoon pesto
3 heaped tablespoons cooked brown rice
Combine the egg and pesto in a bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork or egg beater. (You don’t want any yukky white egg bits.) Mix in the rice. Heat up a dash of olive oil, and when hot, pour the rice mixture into the saucepan. Stir quickly with a wooden spoon – much as you would for making scrambled egg. When the egg is cooked, serve with grated cheese.
You can do exactly the same thing with pasta instead of rice. You can also add a little cream to the egg – and like any savoury dish, this one will only be improved with the addition of ham or bacon.
We love pesto, so I use a generous tablespoon of the stuff, but if you find the taste very strong, just reduce this amount.
This year, Maya had a science party. Phil dressed up as a mad scientist and they did experiments like making a volcano, making sherbet and playing with magnets. If you google ’science party’ everyone always seems to do a volcano cake, but Phil had the bright idea of making an exploding cake instead. It is just a square Victoria sponge cake, with bits cut off the side to make it look like it’s exploding. Decorated with butter icing, and the speckled eggs were stuck on with butter icing too.
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