Master Chef, family style

Sometimes it’s fabulous to spend a couple of hours on the weekend cooking. Sometimes there just isn’t enough time. Sometimes you still want dessert, even when there isn’t enough time.

We cooked “Peta’s apple betties with cream” – quick, children-in-the-kitchen-friendly and most importantly, delicious. Apples, brown sugar, butter, rolled oats – a wonderful combination. The recipe comes from Stephanie Alexander’s “Kitchen Garden Cooking with Kids”. We have made so many of her recipes – Cauliflower with cheese sauce and crusty topping, Lemon delicious pudding, Baked potatoes with grilled cheese and spring onion, Rhubarb and scented geranium crumble tart, Zucchini slice, Chargrilled Middle Eastern lamb burgers with pita breads … mmm. Definitely a feast for a family, but without too many fancy ingredients or fussy techniques.

The recipes are written for children to follow, with adult supervision. There are clear lists for equipment and ingredients, and the instructions are easy to follow. Stephanie explains how the first school kitchen garden started, and writes very passionately about the connection between garden and kitchen. You can find out about her subsequent school kitchen gardens here. This book helped to inspire us to create our own vegetable garden.

I always thought that Master Chef should have had a pressure test with three children in the kitchen – follow a new recipe while simultaneously listening to a six-year-old practice reading, preventing a three-year-old from chopping her fingers off and dancing around a crawling one-year-old getting into cupboards. I might have nearly ‘plated up’ with this apple bettie!

What are you 'plating up' in your kitchen at the moment?