SPEEDY PITTA PIZZAS

These pitta pizzas are so quick and easy to put together, making them perfect for an after-school dinner or a weekend family lunch. If you're particularly hungry, you could cook some oven chips to serve with them or add some vegetable sticks or salad on the side.

You can use whatever toppings you like - well, any that are child-approved anyway! I've given a recipe for a simple vegetarian topping here, but have included suggestions for alternative ingredients below. My girls' favourite topping is sweetcorn and pepperoni.

My kids love to help to make these and I usually set out the prepared toppings in little bowls so they can choose whichever they want (any leftovers can be tossed into a salad). This is a good activity to do when your child has a friend over and you're not sure what toppings the visiting child likes, plus it seems to be something the kids enjoy doing and it produces a fairly minimal amount of mess.

Speedy Pitta Pizzas

Makes 2

2 white or wholemeal pittas
2 tbsp frozen sweetcorn
1 tbsp chopped red onion
¼ green pepper, deseeded and sliced
4 button mushrooms, sliced
55g grated mozzarella and Cheddar cheese

Tomato pizza sauce
1 tbsp tomato purée
2 tbsp passata
½ tsp dried oregano

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.

In a small bowl, mix together all the ingredients for the tomato pizza sauce.

Place the pittas on a baking sheet and top with the tomato pizza sauce, spreading it right to the edges. Arrange the sweetcorn, onion, green pepper and mushrooms on top, then cover with the grated cheese.

Transfer to the preheated oven and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cheese is melted and slightly browned.

Our favourite toppings:

• Cooked chicken, red peppers, mushrooms and sweetcorn
• Pepperoni, green peppers, onions and black olives
• Pepperoni and sweetcorn
• Ham, pineapple and sweetcorn
• Ham, mushrooms and black olives

This is a great recipe for getting some veggies into your child. Even if they're not keen on vegetable toppings, just one tablespoon of tomato purée counts as one of their five-a-day. Add vegetable crudités on the side or perhaps some sweet potato fries and you're on to a winner!

CHICKEN FAJITAS

 

I must admit that I'm not exactly at the forefront of culinary trends these days, but it hasn't escaped my notice that tacos are a big thing right now. In our household we don't really do tacos but fajitas have long been one of our favourites. And that got me thinking - exactly what is the difference between a taco and a fajita?

I did a little research (where would we be without Google?) and have discovered that the term fajitas (which is Spanish and translates as 'little belts') actually refers to the meat (traditionally marinated, griddled skirt steak cut into strips) rather than the dish itself. A taco on the other hand is more a method of presentation where a filling - which can be anything really - is placed on a tortilla and served either open-faced or folded. Apparently, those hard taco shells you can buy in the supermarket are not traditional in Mexico, where corn or flour tortillas are used in tacos (although the tortilla may be fried to make it crispy). The really interesting thing about all of this is that it means that a fajita can be a taco but a taco can't be a fajita - so it turns out that I've been making tacos all along!

You might not think of spicy food as family food, but actually my 5-year-old will happily eat fajitas. She doesn't like peppers or onions, so she'll have her chicken cooked in a separate pan with some sweetcorn. She enjoys making up her own fajita (or  should I say taco?), adding the grated cheese and dollops of yogurt, and rolling it up. I'm still working on the 2-year-old - she likes the tortilla, sweetcorn, cheese and yogurt so far. I think it's definitely worth persevering as I've found that other foods have been accepted eventually if I just offer them enough times.

Chicken Fajitas

Makes 4 fajitas (enough for 2 adults as a main meal)

1 tbsp vegetable oil
300g chicken breast, cut into strips
2 tbsp fajita spice (follow link for my Home-made Fajita Spice Mix)
½ green pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
½ red pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
juice of ½ lime

To serve
4 flour tortillas
1 small or ½ large avocado, peeled, diced and tossed in the juice of ½ lime
55g Cheddar cheese, grated
125-g pot full-fat natural yogurt or soured cream

Heat the oil over a high heat in a large saucepan. Add the chicken strips and fry, stirring frequently, for 5-8 minutes, or until the chicken is sealed. Add 1 tablespoon of the fajita spice, stir to coat the chicken in the spice and cook for a further minute.

Add the peppers, onion and the remaining fajita spice and stir until everything is thoroughly mixed. Pour in the lime juice and continue to cook, stirring frequently, over a high heat for 5 minutes, or until the vegetables have softened and the chicken is cooked all the way through.

Divide the chicken mixture between the tortillas. Scatter over the avocado and grated cheese and top with dollops of yogurt. Fold in the two opposite ends of each tortilla, then roll up to fully enclose the filling. Cut in half and serve.


Tips

• For beef fajitas, use strips of rump steak instead of the chicken.

CLASSIC MACARONI CHEESE

Macaroni cheese is a staple meal in our household. My eldest daughter ranks it as her joint #1 meal (along with fish and chips) and my husband is a massive fan too since it was his favourite dinner as a child. Therefore, I thought it was about time that I shared my recipe for a classic macaroni cheese. I've called it 'classic' because it is a fairly basic version that could easily be adapted to include other ingredients. I like to mix in cauliflower and broccoli florets, and my family enjoys it with sweetcorn and ham. To be honest, I don't always add the crunchy topping because the kids are often screaming (literally!) for their dinner and don't want to wait the extra five minutes it'll take to sort this out. It is a nice addition on those occasions when mealtimes aren't quite so fraught though.

I feel I should apologize for posting yet another pasta recipe but the truth is that my family eats a LOT of pasta. I have to make a conscious effort to limit pasta to just three dinners a week, such is my small girls' appetite for the stuff! I am yet to meet a child that doesn't like pasta (although I'm certain they must exist) but when I was growing up in the 1980s we only ever had pasta as spaghetti Bolognese and canned spaghetti in tomato sauce. I often wonder how my mother coped without this fantastic fallback ingredient, which is so cheap, easy to store, quick to cook, and versatile.

For ages, I didn't think I could make cheese sauce – I remember using cheese sauce granules that you mixed with boiling water when I was a student. It was pretty artificial-tasting! I finally got the hang of making cheese sauce when I was cooking baby purées for my oldest child – she developed a taste for a particular purée that was made from cheese sauce mixed with mashed cod and vegetables, which I ended up making countless times. I discovered that warming up the milk before adding it to the butter and flour mixture made the process a lot easier, not to mention quicker, and I've never looked back!

Classic macaroni cheese

Serves 2 adults and 2 children (generously)
300g dried macaroni

Cheese sauce
30g butter
30g plain flour
300ml full-fat milk
good pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
90g vegetarian extra-mature Cheddar cheese, grated

Crunchy topping
20g natural dried breadcrumbs (I like to use panko)
30g vegetarian extra-mature Cheddar cheese, grated

Bring a medium-sized saucepan of water to the boil. Add the macaroni, bring back to the boil and simmer for 10–12 minutes (I find that macaroni takes longer to cook than other pasta shapes), until tender but firm to the bite.

Make the cheese sauce while the macaroni is cooking. Put the butter in a small saucepan and melt over a low–medium heat. Pour the milk into a jug and microwave for 2 minutes to warm through. Once the butter is bubbling, add the flour, stir to make a paste and allow to bubble for 1 minute. Start adding the warmed milk to the butter and flour mixture, a little at a time, stirring vigorously until each addition has been incorporated. To start with, the mixture will form into a lump but just keep stirring frequently and once you've added enough milk it will transform into a smooth sauce. When you have added all the milk, increase the heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring frequently, for a further 2 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and add the nutmeg and cheese, then stir until the cheese has melted and the sauce is smooth.

Meanwhile, preheat the grill to medium.

Drain the macaroni and tip it into the saucepan containing the cheese sauce. Stir until the pasta is thoroughly coated in the sauce. Transfer to a 1.5-litre baking dish.

Mix together the breadcrumbs and the remaining cheese, then scatter over the macaroni and cheese sauce. Place under the preheated grill and cook for 5 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown. Serve with freshly cooked vegetables (frozen sweetcorn and peas are our favourites) on the side.
    

CAULIFLOWER CHEESE SOUP

I've been wanting to make this soup for a few weeks but couldn't quite bring myself to do so because it would be like admitting that summer was over. I know that there are lots of lovely summery soup recipes out there, but for me soup will always be an autumn/winter meal – a cosy, comforting kind of food that is as synonymous with the chillier months of the year as falling leaves, winter woollens and crackling log fires. Well, it's now (as of yesterday) officially autumn here in the UK, so I figured that there could be no better way to mark the changing seasons than by cooking up a batch of one of my favourite soups.

I think this recipe started out as a broccoli and Stilton soup (which, in my opinion, is equally tasty) and evolved from there. If I'm perfectly honest, no-one in my family eats cauliflower (although I persevere with offering it to the kids) and my oldest child doesn't eat soup, so I'm not exactly on to a winner here with my family. It's no great hardship – all the more yummy soup for me!

It's important to use a good strong Cheddar cheese in this recipe. I like to use a bit of butter when I'm making a creamy soup because I think it adds to the flavour, but you don't have to – just use a little more oil. This is not a slimming soup (although there's no reason you couldn't enjoy it while dieting if you watch the portion size) but given that my body is going to be spending the next few months shrouded in layers of winter clothes I couldn't care less!

Cauliflower cheese soup

Serves 4

10g butter
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped
150g (peeled weight) potato, peeled and cut into 1-cm cubes
1 head of cauliflower, separated into florets (about 600g prepared weight)
750ml vegetable stock (I used Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon Powder)
115g extra-mature vegetarian Cheddar cheese, grated
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Heat the butter and oil in a large saucepan over a low–medium heat. Add the onion to the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8 minutes, until softened. Stir in the garlic and cook for a further minute. Add the potato, increase the heat a little and cook for 5 minutes.

Put the cauliflower into the pan and pour over the stock - don't worry if the stock doesn't quite cover the cauliflower. Bring to the boil, then partially cover the pan and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the cauliflower is very tender.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the cheese, stirring until melted. Season to taste with grated nutmeg. Using a hand-held stick blender, process the soup in the pan until smooth (or leave the soup a little chunky if you prefer).

Transfer to bowls, sprinkle over extra grated cheese and nutmeg (if you like) and serve.