S is for Sweet Potato

When I was a child I spent a year living in the American city of Philadelphia. We arrived in 1976, a pale-faced English family with exemplary bad timing. Everyone was celebrating the bicentennial year of the American Declaration of Independence from the British Empire. Wherever we went there were renactments of battles. And to cap it all, my brother’s name was Benedict. In school he learnt with some unease that Benedict Arnold was an infamous traitor of the American revolution. We spent our first week at a university in Washington DC, undergoing “acclimatisation”. My parents sat through lectures on how to use the telephone, drive on the right-hand side of the road and dial 911 (preferably not all at once). I discovered the canteen. I drank coke, ate hot dogs and embraced hyperactivity. I chased round with all the other British children, high on sugar.
My own acclimatisation was rapid. Within a few months I stood on stage at my American school, belting out songs of the American revolution whilst trussed up in a Betsy Ross outfit. (She was said to have sewed the first American flag.) I tasted sweet potato mash for the first time and learnt how America’s first president George Washington grew them on his farm in Virginia. I hadn’t come across sweet potatoes before.
Nowadays they are in most supermarkets. Despite its name, sweet potato is not a type of potato and they are only distantly related. It is a sweet-tasting root vegetable with the cooked texture of a potato crossed with a carrot. Freddie’s first taste of sweet potato was a success. I baked them in their skins, in the same way as you might a potato, served with a little butter and black pepper. He scored this simple meal 8 out of 10.

Alex has cooked our next sweet potato meal - making spicy sweet potato wedges. Many of you have said how delicious these are. Alex created a paprika, chilli and curry powder spice mix. Freddie's score hit the jackpot, with 10 out of 10. "I think I want to do some of the cooking now with sweet potatoes..." Watch this space!

Sweet Potato Wedges
Serves 4 as a starter

500g sweet potatoes
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Half a tsp ground paprika
Half a tsp curry powder
Half a tsp mild chilli powder

Serve with a bowl of yoghurt or sour cream for dipping.

Preheat the oven to 220C.
Scrub the sweet potatoes clean but don’t peel. Cut them in half lengthways and then cut each half into four. In a bowl, add the oil and spices and mix together well. Lay the sweet potato wedges out on a non-stick baking tray and brush them well with the spiced oil. Make sure all sides are coated. Put them in the preheated oven and cook for 20 minutes. Serve them with a bowl of soured cream or yoghurt.

How do you like your sweet potatoes?

S is for Spinach Spaghetti - “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.”

Some days I feel as if I could do with support from the Army Catering Corps. The nights when we all arrive home late, drenched in rain and exhausted by work, school and football fixtures. There are instant demands for food. I fend them off with a drink of squash and a biscuit but that only buys a few minutes’ grace. The demands become more aggressive. An unexpected side effect of the Great Big Vegetable Challenge was that I am now far better at looking at the fridge and coming up with fast food, incorporating vegetables. I made spaghetti with baby spinach leaves, bacon and pine nuts. The pine nuts or pine kernels are oily and can be toasted very quickly in a dry pan. The meal takes as long to make as it takes to cook the spaghetti. The baby spinach wilts in the heat of the cooked pasta. The film star Sophia Loren said, “Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.” We were all so hungry, we followed her advice. Freddie’s score for this meal was 9 out of 10.

Spaghetti with spinach and bacon

Serves 4

400g Spaghetti (it is approximately 75g to 100g per person)

2 tbsp olive oil

4 tbsp toasted pine nuts

250g of baby spinach leaves

4-5 rashes of streaky bacon

Salt and ground pepper to season

Freshly grated parmesan to sprinkle on top

Cook the spaghetti according to instructions on the packet. Whilst it is cooking, cut the streaky bacon rashes into squares and fry in a non-stick pan. You shouldn’t have to add any extra oil as it should cook in its own bacon fat. Toast the pine kernels by scattering in a small pan and stirring them on a medium heat for a minute or two until they turn golden brown. Wash and dry the spinach leaves. The spaghetti is ready when it reaches what the Italians call “al dente”, or “to the tooth”. This means it should be tender, with a slight resistance to the bite. Drain the pasta well and put back in the pan. Immediately add the spinach leaves and put the lid on for 2 minutes, allowing the heat of the spaghetti to wilt the spinach leaves. Then add the olive oil, bacon and pine nuts with a pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper. Toss the pasta round so that it is evenly coated. Serve with some freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Spinach is quite clearly the ideal vegetable to serve children - but not turned into slime and served up like a medicine. Think quick with spinach - there isn't enough time to post all of our spinach adventures but as well as our Greek spinach tart, spinach and lamb curry and spinach fritters, we have made spinach and feta toasties and a wonderfully quick spinach omelette. We had better move on before this turns into an obsession.....

NEXT STOP THE SWEET POTATO - go on share your love for this vegetable!

S is for Lamb and Spinach Curry

Spinach is taking over. After our Greek-inspired Spanakopita we've grown green wings and flown a couple of thousand miles east to India, for a Lamb and Spinach Curry. Our journey was inspired by Nupur of One Hot Stove and Ursula who left their ideas in the comment box. Every night Freddie and I rummage through the comment box, deliberating over our next move. Ursula recommended Madhur Jaffery's book "Indian Cookery" which I borrowed from a neighbour in exchange for a hand blender. There must be something in the water because yesterday the whole street was stepping out of their culinary comfort zone. Neighbours were crossing over the road holding casserole dishes and cooking torches. I handed over one rolling pin, a jar of capers, a funnel and a pestle, without its partner, the mortar. I am a little worried about the lone pestle. I can see the headlines in the Evening Standard: "Local man killed by deadly pestle blow." Am I an accessory to the crime? Anyhow, we made our Lamb and Spinach Curry using a recipe similar to this. I think spinach may be addictive because Freddie and Alex were so enthusiastic they asked for seconds.(I was reluctant to hand over because Chris and I wanted more). Freddie's score went through the roof as he awarded an 11 out of 10.

For those of you wanting more inspiration for Indian recipes, we can recommend Mamta's Kitchen which is an incredible resource. Our spinach odyssey continues....

S is for Spinach - Spanakopita

"There are two kinds of people - Greeks, and everyone else who wish they was Greek."

(My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2002)

For a long time My Big Fat Greek Wedding was Freddie's favourite film. He would sit down and watch it at least twice a week, drawn in by the central themes of a huge family, large quantities of roasted red meat and the sound of the bouzouki. So when Ben from Mexico City left a comment about the joys of a Greek spinach dish, spanakopita, we had to try it out.
"This is an eight out of ten...", hesitated Freddie. "Or maybe it was more a 7.9. No actually make it an eight and tell Ben that it tasted really good."
Follow the same path that we took to find Ben's recipe for spanakopita. My version looks a little different to his as I blended the spinach in a food processor. But it tasted delicious. Thank you Ben!

What are your favourite ways to eat spinach?

Spinach - "We plunge it in cold water, boil it, and then force it on our children.”

“An exotic from Persia, it was brought by the Moors to Spain, by the Spaniards to the Low Counties, by Flemish refugees to England. And after that great pilgrimage, we plunge it in cold water, boil it, and then force it on our children.”

I like what Robert Carrier says about spinach. This is a vegetable that has been forced on generations of children, presumably because of its reputation as an iron-rich wonder food. The trouble is, in our house, the ‘this is good for you’ approach is the kiss of death. All Freddie cares about is that his vegetables taste good.

So we took a brave step.

The Great Big Vegetable Challenge went on the road to test out our spinach recipe with the gardening club at Freddie’s school. On a small patch of land in front of the school, the children and their teachers have created their very own Garden of Eden. They dig, sow and weed with devotion, oblivious to the distant thunder of the Great Western Road. Through the year there are beetroot, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, rhubarb, pumpkins, chard and spinach. Little notices announce the progress of the garden. It reminds me of the official notices posted on the gates of Buckingham Palace. ‘It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of a runner bean that succumbed to a green fly infestation’ or ‘the tallest sunflower broke all school records.’ There is something uplifting about a vegetable garden in the middle of a city. With the school gardeners I made rainbow chard pizzas and spinach fritters. They picked the chard and spinach leaves and washed them in the kitchen. The braver ones munched on the raw spinach leaves, flexing their biceps like Popeye. Once heated, spinach has Houdini like qualities. You think you’ve put a huge quantity of bright green leaves into a pan and within seconds in a cloud of steam the leaves disappear, leaving behind a dark green stringy slime. It is the escapologist of the vegetable kingdom. Slime is a complete turn-off for Freddie. With the spinach fritters, I cut the freshly picked leaves into thin strips, added them to the batter and quickly cooked them in a little oil in a hot pan. The young gardeners waited by the cooker like hungry puppies. They took their hot fritters out into the rain to enjoy. Judging by the speed with which they were consumed, spinach fritters passed the taste test with flying colours. And there was no hint of slime, the spinach staying bright green and succulent inside the fritter. Freddie’s score was ten out of ten. I think we are on a fast-stream these days with the scoring. A year into the Great Big Veg Challenge and he can hardly remember what it was like to really hate vegetables...

If you or your local school have a gardening blog or website, let me know and I will create a blogroll for people working in allotments and gardens to encourage children to learn how to grow and cook vegetables. Meanwhile - How do you like your spinach?

Spinach Fritters

Serves 6-8

100g of fresh spinach leaves

230g of self-raising flour

2 tsp of caster sugar (optional)

4 eggs, separated

1 clove of garlic, chopped finely

350ml milk

75g butter, melted

Cooking spray oil or 2-3 tbsp olive oil.Separate the eggs. Put the yolks in a large bowl and beat. In another bowl whisk together the egg whites until they form soft white peaks. Sift the flour into the bowl with the egg yolks, add the milk, melted butter and caster sugar. Mix together with a wooden spoon until it forms a smooth batter. Finely chop the fresh spinach so that it is in thin strips. Add to the batter along with 1 finely chopped garlic clove. Then gently fold in the egg whites. Make the fritters in batches of four in a large frying pan. You may need to have a bit of kitchen towel to hand to clean the pan of any burnt oil in between batches. Spray the frying pan with cooking oil or add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and heat the pan. When the oil is hot, drop in four to five dollops of batter, spacing them apart in the pan. Cook for a couple of minutes and when you see the edges begin to brown, flip them over to cook the other side. Wipe the pan with some kitchen paper and add a little fresh oil for each batch. Be warned, these may be consumed with undue speed....