The Naming and Shaming Fridge

We are now just over half way through the alphabet of vegetables, Freddie has tasted over 40 vegetables and tried over 130 new recipes, thanks to all the wonderful ideas and most of all encouragement from all of you. In our kitchen in London we have what we have called the Naming and Shaming Fridge.

 

 

There are three categories: Vegetables I hate, Vegetables I am not sure about and Vegetables I like. Freddie moves the vegetables up and down depending on how he scores a recipe. At the start, all but potato and sweetcorn sat in the "I hate category" : a whole class of vegetable outcasts. But look at the fridge today.
Needless to say that when we started out last November, most veggies sat in the "I hate" category. Now its all changed. Very few are hated. Many sit in a state of suspended hope, waiting to be loved. And now,encouragingly, a number of vegetables bask in the glory of being liked by Freddie. Its a great achievement and I hope it encourages other parents not to give up on fussy eaters.

There has been another side to this new found confidence. It has developed into bravado. On a visit to a beautiful garden at a stately home in Warwickshire, Alex shrieked. “Mum, Freddie’s bitten into a bulrush!” Over the years I have learnt to disregard most of the outrageous things that my children say about each other. But he had indeed done exactly that. Maybe because a bulrush looks like a sausage on a stick, Freddie had decided to take a bite. I am not a wild food expert. Not knowing whether bulrushes were poisonous or edible, I flushed the brown bits out of his mouth with a bottle of water and lectured him on the dangers of putting strange plants in his mouth. As an avowed vegetable-phobic, Freddie had never shown any enthusiasm for putting plants in his mouth. But he has changed. Jeffrey Steingarten, author of ‘The Man Who Ate Everything’, devised a Six-Step Programme to liberate his palate from irrational dislikes. He worked on the principal that what is learned can be forgotten. Freddie had clearly forgotten to be suspicious of vegetables on our very own alphabetical step programme. He has become ‘The Boy Who Ate Everything.”
Even nettles, which I have now turned into a Spanish tortilla. You can incorporate nettles into a tortilla in the same way that you might use kale or spinach leaves. Everybody enjoyed the tortilla. The Boy Who Eats Everything gave it 8 out of 10.

 

Nettle and Potato Tortilla
Serves 4
2 red onions thinly sliced.
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped.
250g potatoes diced into small cubes
200g young nettle leaves
6 large eggs
3 tbsp of olive oil
Salt and ground pepper
25g of grated parmesan

Use a deep non-stick frying pan of about nine inches in diameter. Heat up two tbsp of olive oil on a medium heat and add the onions, potatoes and garlic. Mix it up with a spoon. Cover with a lid or circle of foil and gently cook, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Cook this way for about 15 minutes. Wash and chop the young nettle leaves. Discard the stalks. Add the nettles to the potato and onion mixture, stirring for 5 minutes on a medium heat. The nettle leaves will wilt. Turn off the heat.
Beat the eggs in a bowl with a pinch of salt and twist of ground pepper. Add the potato, onion and nettle mixture to the beaten eggs and stir round.
Put frying pan back on a medium heat, add another tbsp of oil and heat up. Pour the egg, nettle and potato mixture into the pan. Cook slowly without a lid on a low setting. The whole thing will take about 20- 25 minutes cooking, depending on the depth of your tortilla.
Cook gently till the egg on the base sets and browns. Carefully draw round the edge of the pan with a palette knife, tipping any liquid edge left on the surface, down the sides. When there is no runny egg on top it is probably time to cook the other side. Now at this point decide how skilled you are. If you feel up to inverting the tortilla on to a plate and putting it back into the pan then go ahead. I know my limitations. I sprinkled a little parmesan on top, turned off the hob and put the pan under the grill to cook the top.
To serve, slice into quarters or cut into 2 inch cubes as finger food.