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!

HOME-MADE FAJITA SPICE MIX

For many years, I used a store-bought fajita spice mix whenever I made fajitas. It was pretty tasty, but I worry about salt content when it's food I'm giving to my kids so I decided to try making my own. It took a few attempts, but I'm really happy with this version and I won't be going back to buying expensive ready-mixed sachets. Other than the garlic and onion granules, I already had all the ingredients I needed for this in my cupboard.

I tried making this without any salt all but it lacked the flavour punch it needed. I don't think one teaspoon of salt is too bad though, not when you consider that this amount of spice is enough to flavour the filling for eight tortilla wraps.

Home-made Fajita Spice Mix

Makes about 35g/4 tbsp
1 tbsp mild chilli powder
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp garlic granules
1 tsp onion granules
1 tsp salt
½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp dried chilli flakes

Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl. Transfer to a small airtight container until ready to use.

Tips

• For a recipe using this spice mix, follow this link to my Chicken Fajitas recipe.
• You could easily double or treble the recipe so you don't have to mix the spices each time you make fajitas.
• This mix is fairly kid-friendly in terms of its spiciness, but could easily be pepped up by using hot chilli powder or increasing the amount of chilli flakes.