Coconut and banana ice cream

Guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of the most chicken pox-ridden small child.

You'll need:

a banana
2/3 of a tin of coconut cream/milk (here's the recipe that used the other third)
about 80g sugar

You'll also need the foresight to put the bowl for the ice cream maker in the freezer the day before...

Stick all the ingredients in a blender. Blitz until they're well mixed. Pour into your freezing cold bowl and churn for however long it takes (it's about an hour in our very aged ice cream maker - and inevitably it still needs a brief spell in the freezer after that).

You could also make this in container in the freezer - you'll need to remember to take it out occasionally and mix.

Coconut rice with peas

We made this as a sneaky treat because your Dad was out (he's an inveterate pea hater).

Makes enough for 1 adult and 1 small child.

You'll need:

coconut milk (I used about a third of a tin)
a handful of peas (defrosted)
basmati rice (about half a mug)

Chuck the rice in a pan. Pour the coconut milk into the measuring mug, and top it up with water until it reaches the top (you need twice as much liquid as rice!). Tip into the pan, bring to the boil, then simmer gently until all the liquid has been absorbed, and the rice is tender. You might need to add a little extra water - keep an eye on it.

The rice will take about 8-10 minutes to cook - so you need to add your peas in the last couple of minutes, so that they heat through.

If you want to be fancy, you could also add some chopped coriander before serving.

We ate this with some chicken and red pepper kebabs. The wooden skewers caught fire, so they weren't exactly a success...

Sausage, tomato and red wine pappardelle

Today was so beautifully warm that I spent the afternoon tidying up the garden. All the bulbs you helped me plant are just starting to poke through.

You helped me pick the recipe for tea too (you love looking through the food pictures in magazines, especially the cakes). It's based on one from Olive, but changed about a bit as I don't particularly like fennel.

You'll need:

some sausages (I used tiny chipolatas, which I chopped into small pieces)
a clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped (I also added a leek, because we're overrun with the things at the moment)
a glass of red wine
a tin of chopped tomatoes
pappardelle (these are big fat ribbons - oversized tagliatelle)

Fry the pieces of sausage until they're browned. You probably don't have to add any extra oil here, but keep an eye on them just in case. Add the onion (and leek) and garlic, and fry until they've softened.

Pour in the red wine, and let it bubble away furiously for a couple of minutes. Chuck in the tomatoes, and leave the whole lot to simmer for 15-20 minutes. You probably want to add some black pepper here too.

Cook your pappardelle in a large pan with lots of boiling water until it's al dente (shouldn't take long - maybe 8-10 minutes). Drain, and then tip it into the tomato and sausage sauce. Swish round, and serve with some curls of parmesan cheese.

Chocolate and beetroot brownies

This wouldn't have happened, apart from the fact that we had pile of beetroot in the veg box last week, and I can't stand the stuff. It made some very pink brownies, which pleased you no end.

It's adapted from a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, as I wasn't brave enough to come up with my own.

You'll need:

125g butter
125g chocolate (plain would be best, I ended up melting down all the rest of the Christmas tree decorations, which weren't)
125g sugar
2 eggs
1 heaped tablespoon cocoa powder
75g self-raising flour
125g cooked/peeled beetroot, whizzed in the food processor

Stick the oven on at about 170 degrees C. You'll need to line a baking tin (I used a square one, about 20cm across) with some greaseproof paper.

Stick the butter and chocolate in a bowl, and put in the microwave in short bursts (15-20 seconds at a time), until its all melted. (You could also do this by balancing a bowl over a pan of hot water, but that takes a lot longer).

Whisk the sugar and eggs together, until they're smooth. Pour in the chocolate/butter, and mix it all together. Add the flour, and fold in the beetroot. Mix - you should now have a bizarrely pink/brown mixture.

Tip into your tin. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until it starts to look slightly less pink. Leave to cool in the tin. Tastes mostly of chocolate...

Roasted beetroot soup

Bizarre, I know. But one way to use up the multitude of beetroot. You wouldn't touch the stuff, which was probably sensible, although the chocolate and beetroot brownies have been going down without a fuss.

You'll need:

beetroot (lots - around 5 or 6)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 large carrot, finely chopped
500ml stock (mine was vegetable, but I suspect chicken would be good here)
1 teaspoon sugar
lots of salt and black pepper
plain Greek yoghurt

Wrap the beetroot in foil, and roast in a hot oven (about 180 degrees C) for an hour or so - until they're tender. Let them cool down, then peel, and blitz in a food processor.

Fry the onion and carrot in a little olive oil, until they're soft. Add the beetroot, stock and sugar, and bring to the boil. Simmer for as long as you've got - 20-30 minutes would be good.

Leave to cool, and then blend in the food processor. Season to taste with salt and black pepper, and maybe a little lemon juice.

Serve chilled with a dollop of Greek yoghurt and some crusty bread. You'll be surprised - it's actually not bad!

Cannelloni with squash, feta and tomato

You've spent most of the afternoon racing cars down the loop the loop track. We've discovered (a) the lighter they are the better and (b) when you hang the track off the door, they fairly zip down.

It was a bit of an experiment for tea. You hated it, and had a banana, followed by bread and marmite. At least you tried a couple of mouthfuls...

Makes enough for 4.

You'll need:

a squash, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces
half a small(ish) pack of feta cheese (you could also try ricotta)
a tomato sauce or passata (I made my own from half an onion and a tin of tomatoes)
an onion, finely chopped
dried thyme, black pepper
grated cheese
cannelloni (or lasagne sheets)

First of all you'll need the oven on, at about 200 degrees C. Chuck your squash into a roasting tin, and splosh some olive oil over it. Bung in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until the squash is tender. (Keep the oven on when the squash are done - you'll need it later on.)

In the meantime, make a tomato sauce (saute some onion in a frying pan until it softens, then add a tin of chopped tomatoes, some black pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar, and leave to simmer for half an hour).

Fry the onion in a little olive oil, until it goes translucent. Put it into a blender with the feta cheese, some thyme and lots of black pepper. Once the squash is tender, take it out of the oven and stick it into the blender too. Smash the lot together, until it forms a thick paste.

You then have the delightful task of filling the cannelloni, which is a right pain. There's probably a technique to it - Jamie Oliver does it by cutting off the corner of a bag, and squashing the stuff in, or an icing bag would also be a good plan. I shoved it in with a small teaspoon, which was a bit messy. If you hate the idea of all this, you could just sandwich the squash mixture between some layers of lasagne.

Once your cannelloni are filled, place them in a roasting dish (the one you did the squash in would be a good move), and pour the tomato sauce over the top. Liberally sprinkle your grated cheese over the top, and bake in the oven for 40 minutes or so, until everything is bubbling furiously and the cheese on the top is golden.

Cheesy feet

Because you were given some foot-shaped cutters for Christmas, and were so tickled by the idea.

You'll need:

150g cheddar cheese, grated
100g plain flour
100g butter
1 egg yolk

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C.

Mix together the cheese and flour in a large bowl. Rub in the butter (it's probably easiest if you cut it into smallish cubes first).

Add the egg yolk, and mix everything together - it should come together into a stiff-ish dough.

Tip out onto a floured worktop. Roll out the pastry to 1cm deep or so, and get cutting. We've got three sizes of foot, which is very pleasing. Place them on a baking sheet, which has been lined with greaseproof paper or a silicon sheet.

Bake in the oven for 8 minutes or so - they really don't take long so keep an eye on them. Whip the feet out when they're a light golden brown colour. You might want to leave them on the tray for a few minutes before decanting them onto a cooling rack - they're rather fragile.

Eat as soon as possible - they're gorgeous when warm.

Purple sprouting broccoli, lemon and tuna pasta

You'd been at nursery all day, pootling about, and were starving. So this was a variation on an oldie (but a goodie).

You'll need (for two adults and one small person)

a couple of handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli
a tin of tuna in sunflower/olive oil
a clove of garlic, finely sliced/smashed
a lemon
lots of parmesan cheese
pasta

Stick the pasta on to cook in lots of boiling water.

Drain the oil from the tuna into a frying pan. Once it's heated up, add the garlic, and cook for a minute or so. Add the purple sprouting broccoli, and swish round and round in the pan for 3-4 minutes, until it's turned a dark greeny-purple colour. Add the tuna to the pan, breaking up any large chunks. Squeeze the juice of a lemon on top, and let it heat through. (If you like it really really lemony you could add some lemon zest at this point too.)

By this stage, your pasta should be cooked. Drain, mix the whole lot together and serve with lashings of parmesan cheese.

Salt and pepper pan-fried fish

These are glorified fish fingers, I suppose. Curiously appropriate for an afternoon in which you've pretended to be a mermaid and built a cardboard boat with a paper sail.

You'll need

a couple of fillets of fish (we had basa, which I've had in France under the name of panga)
an egg, beaten
3 or 4 tablespoons of flour
lots of black pepper, a little salt
a little vegetable oil, or butter for frying

You can either slice your fillets into chunks (basa has fairly firm flesh), or do the whole fillet if you have a pan big enough. I suspect you might have to cook a whole fillet for longer than the small pieces.

Mix the flour, black pepper and salt together, and place in a large flat bowl. Dip each fillet (or piece) of fish in the beaten egg, and then dunk in the flour mix. Your Dad reckons that cornflour produces a lighter batter, and is particularly good if you're doing small pieces.

Heat the vegetable oil or butter in a frying pan until it's sizzling. Add the fish (you might have to do this in batches), and turn each piece over after a couple of minutes. You'll be able to see how well it's cooked by the colour of the fish. Fry for another couple of minutes until the outside is golden, remove, and eat asap.

We had ours with some homemade oven chips, and a green salad. The mermaid ate most of the fish, but thought that the chips were the best bit. C'est la vie.

Purple sprouting broccoli with sesame sauce

You could put this sesame sauce with anything green I suspect - spring greens, pak choi, ordinary broccoli, red Russian kale...but maybe not peas.

You'll need:

enough purple sprouting broccolli for 3 (a couple of large handfuls - it doesn't half reduce in size when you steam it)
a couple of tablespoons of sesame seeds
half a clove of garlic, crushed
a teaspoon of dark brown sugar
a tablespoon or so of soy sauce
some sesame oil

First of all, you need to toast your sesame seeds in a dry frying pan. Swish them about on a high heat (quickly, so the ones on the very bottom don't get burnt). Once they start to brown (maybe a minute or two), fish them out. Plonk the lot into a pestle and mortar, together with the crushed garlic, brown sugar and soy sauce.

Take out your frustration on the pestle and mortar. Yes, you could do this in a little spice grinder, but it wouldn't be as much fun. The mixture should turn to a paste - you then turn it into a drizzling sauce (of whatever consistency you fancy) by adding more (or less) sesame oil. I probably added another tablespoon of soy sauce as well, because I quite like the salty effect with the greens.

We steamed our purple sprouting broccoli on the stove, using a steamer (essentially a glorified colander with a lid that you balance over a pan of boiling water), but you could equally do it in the microwave.

Once the broccoli's done (which should take a couple of minutes, tops), drizzle the sesame sauce on top, and serve immediately. We ate this with some grilled pork steaks and root vegetable mash. But beware - it's quite a garlicky way to eat your greens!

Chicken and root vegetable soup

This turned curiously solid in the fridge (to much merriment) but was authentically soupy by the time we'd reheated it for tea.

You'll need:

chicken stock, preferably with some nice largeish pieces of chicken in it
half a turnip (you can tell it's winter at the moment)
a couple of sticks of celery
an onion, sliced
a potato or two, chopped
a carrot or two, ditto
a handful of pearl barley
lots of black pepper and dried thyme

Sweat the onion and celery gently in a pan for 5 minutes with a little olive oil. Once the onion's softened, add the potato, carrot and turnip, and swish about for a minute or two. Pour in the stock, add the pearl barley, and season with thyme and black pepper. Leave on the hob for however long you've got - you need at least half an hour or so until the turnip and potato has cooked right through.

I stuck this in the blender, but that's just because I much prefer drinking soup to eating it.

Chocolate cherry muffins

Too much work at the moment, so I've not done much baking. But we did manage to make these muffins on Sunday, as they take about five minutes.

You'll need:

150g self-raising flour
75g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda
220g brown sugar
45g dessicated coconut
125g chopped glace cherries (the natural ones are lovely, but even the bright red ones go well in this)
95g dark chocolate chips (or smashed up pieces of Christmas tree decorations - whatever you've got really)
1 egg, lightly beaten
20g butter, melted
125ml milk
125ml boiling water

First of all, stick your oven on at 180 degrees C, and find your muffin or jam tart tins. Line them with paper (or silicon) cases (three-year-olds are very good at this bit).

Put your flour, cocoa and bicarb into a large mixing bowl, and swish everything about until it turns a nice shade of brown. Stir in the rest of the ingredients (obviously don't mix the egg and the boiling water together or it'll start to cook...do these two separately). Mix well - it'll be quite a sloppy, dark brown batter. Looks disgusting, will taste divine. Trust me.

Spoon the mixture into your cases (I think this amount made about 16 small fairy-cake sized muffins). Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Wait until they've cooled before you eat them. This may take some willpower.

Stir-fried pork with vegetables

We attempted to eat this with chopsticks. Lots of noodles went on the floor, but you had great fun.

You'll need:

a couple of boneless pork steaks, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
2 teaspoons cornflour
vegetables - we used peppers, onions and carrots (yes, not particularly Chinese I know, but it was whatever we had in the fridge)

First of all, stick your pork, a teaspoon of soy sauce, sugar, rice wine and cornflour all in a bowl, and leave to marinate. You could do this a while before you need it (overnight even), and just leave it in the fridge.

Slice your veg into strips. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil (preferably sunflower or vegetable) in a frying pan/wok on a very high heat, and then stir fry the pork for a couple of minutes (or until it colours). Take out, set aside and keep warm.

In the meantime, add the veg to the wok, and stir fry for another couple of minutes. Chuck the pork back in, add a little water (or stock if you have it to hand) and cook for a minute. Pour in the rest of the soy sauce, mix well, and then serve.

We ate ours with noodles, but it'd be equally good with rice.

Giant sausage roll

I can't really claim credit for this one - your Dad made it while I was on a trip to London. You both spent ages playing in the snow on Grandma's sledge today (the sledge is a doozy of a thing, a wooden bench on cast iron runners that's large enough to seat at least four small children, and goes like the clappers downhill).

You'll need:

200-300g sausagemeat (either split some sausages and remove the meat from the casing, or buy some sausagemeat - ours was pork and apple)
half a block (about 250g) of puff pastry
a little beaten egg

Making a sausage roll (or rolls, if you make little ones), is dead easy. First of all, you'll need to stick your oven on high (about 180-190 degrees C).

Then roll out your puff pastry, to A4 size. Assemble your sausagemeat along one side (in a long roll/sausage shape), then carefully roll up in the pastry. You'll need to seal the edge with a little water, or beaten egg.

Place on a baking tray (preferably on a silicon sheet, or sheet of greaseproof paper). Brush the top of the pastry with beaten egg. If you want it to look really fancy, you could slash the pastry top with a knife.

Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until golden brown. Obviously if you make small sausage rolls, these will cook quicker. You could get all poncey and start doing things with plaits of pastry, but to be honest the plain ones always taste the best.

Prawn, pepper and tomato pasta

We spent this morning filming for your Dad's promo video, in a freezing cold alley. You were surprisingly amenable...

Tea was unsurprisingly swift.

You'll need:

a tin of tomatoes
a large onion, finely chopped
a red pepper, diced
a green pepper, diced
a slug of balsamic vinegar
lots of black pepper, and dried oregano
half a bag of frozen prawns, defrosted (the larger the better - ours were definitely on the shrimp side)
pasta (bows are good)
capers (to garnish)

Gently fry the onion in a little olive oil, until it softens and goes translucent. Add the peppers, and cook until they've softened too. Chuck in the tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, oregano and black pepper, bring to the boil, and simmer (you'll need to leave it for a good 23-30 minutes if you want a nice tomato-y taste).

Stick your pasta on to cook (at the regulation three handfuls per person). After a couple of minutes, slide the prawns into the tomato sauce, and let them cook gently for 5 minutes or so, until they're hot.

Drain your pasta, and tip into the sauce pan. Swish it all about until all the pasta's coated with the sauce, and drop a few capers on top. Ladle out into some bowls, and away you go. A little grated cheese/mature cheddar/parmesan on top would be a bonus.