I have been a poor blogger this week. I've been in Wales working and living off conference food. I know that old style school dinners have been discredited by Jamie Oliver's campaign. But there should be a new bete noir. Its conference food. It makes school lunches look like haute cuisine. And the irony was completely lost on the caterers as they served six fried snacks to delegates at a health conference. A dish labelled Chicken Firecrackers glistened menacingly under the flourescent lights, accompanied by these filo covered deep fried prawns that looked like they had been wrapped in a fire blanket before incineration. And all this while people tried to find inspirational solutions for improving public health... Anyhow I returned home with a new sense of purpose. Friday night was pizza night. Aubergines were sliced, seasoned and grilled and scattered on pizza bases with mozarella and pancetta. Freddie rated them 6 out of ten. (Peas are 0, artichokes were 8) Pizza provides a useful foil to the vegetable interlopers. It's a safe setting to introduce these new ingredients. So that is how aubergines made their debut in our GBVChallenge.
Tonight I went further. I found a recipe from a Jamie Oliver cookbook for Rigatoni with sweet tomatoes, aubergine and mozarella. I made sure Freddie was really hungry, keeping his appetite keen so that the chances of rejection were slightly minimised. He liked the flavour of the aubergines, which was something, but complained that they were chewy. So although he didn't resort to his old trick of retching, he picked round the aubergines. All is not lost - he asked that we have that recipe again. Next stop is Asparagus....even though its way out of season.
