The Splat Cooking Blog

Hi, I’m Cath, been working for Splat for a year now, and although I get involved in some of the cooking at Splat my main role is to look for new and exciting products for the Splat on-line shop and I also look after the press and PR with the foodie and lifestyle mags.

In common with the rest of the Splat team I too am passionate about cooking, getting the right nutrients into my kids, and encouraging them to take an interest in what goes into their food, balanced eating, fresh seasonal produce – you name it.

What I AM NOT is CREATIVE. I draw stick men which the children proudly show their art teachers, I avoid art homework like the plague, and spend hours on the net to find templates if I really have to get my hands dirty. This all adds up to someone who in theory can’t decorate cakes, make nicely shaped biscuits, and panics at a blank canvas. But I have to choose new products for you, which need testing by Splat, and… Bev makes everything look so easy (ha ha!), and children pressure from my own two, means that invariably I go home with grandiose ideas which I put into practice – or try anyway.

So when my husband had his 40th birthday last month the children TOLD me that I had to make the three tier chequerboard cake – (tins available from Splat of course!). It took much longer than expected to make, I had to make far more mixture than the recipe on the box said, putting mixture into a piping bag was a new and messy job for me – a lot of dollops on the floor. But for a first amateur attempt I ended up with a cake that people couldn’t work out how I had put together, tasted good and I was quite proud of for my first go. The photo shows it a bit pulled about, a few slices gone, and the wear and tear of the blowing out of candles but…[thumb:77:r]

A week later my son was seven and asked if I would make him a chequerboard cake for his party – PLEASE!! Deciding to take a bit of time out I promised him glittered bug biscuits for his pond dipping party instead. I’ll share that experience next…

Home from school, usual arguments about what children want for tea amid the cry of ‘why can’t we go to the chip shop’, ‘I want chicken nuggets’ (shop bought chicken nuggets are banned in our house as I can’t bear to think of what parts of the chicken are included, the whole breaded chicken breasts are allowed though, for a special treat). Anyway, we have no chicken nuggets in the house so Small Boy declares ‘that’s OK, I’ll make them!’ and bless him, he did.

This is Alison’s recipe and they are great. Cut chicken breasts into 4 or 5 pieces depending on the size of the chicken breast (I did this bit, Small Boy is only 4). Whilst I was cutting the chicken up Small Boy had the cornflakes out of the cupboard, washed his hands, remembering to wash his nuckles and his thumbs, and put a big handful of cornflakes into a freezer bag. I tied the bag and then small boy got out the rolling pin and squashed the cornflakes to bits. I broke an egg, Small Boy beat it with a fork and then dunked each piece of chicken in the egg and then into the cornflakes and onto the baking tray. Small Boy washed his hands thoroughly afterwards whilst I put them in the oven for 20 minutes.

His two big sisters didn’t dare not eat them as he was so proud to have made them just about all by himself. Healthy versions of chicken nuggets made by a 4 year old – watch out Jamie Oliver, Small Boy’s on your heels.

Back to school, early mornings, trying to drag children out of bed, thankful I don’t have to make packed lunches and extremely grateful to the person who imported coffee to the UK (so is my husband). Sad about children starting back at school, especially smallest boy who started in recpetion but he’s loving it so that’s good.

Back to cooking club which we run at two seperate schools for 3 different ages of children, reception and year 1, year 2 and 3 and year 5 and 6. So a lot of the children we had at the first session were new to the club and some had never cooked before. We had fun talking about how to wash hands and what to do if you pick your noses…..wash hands……and then the made something yummy to take home whilst in the reception and year one class we did apple tasting with 4 different types of apples.

We had one little boy who said he didn’t like green apples and only ate red ones. By the end of the class he’d tried egremont russetts (dull golden skin) and cox’s and worcester’s, he said they were OK but it was fantastic that he even tried them. the children went home with lovely apple tarts which were greeted with lots of enthusiastic ‘wows’ from parents collecting them and hopes of sharing – not a chance!

Year 2/3 and year 5/6 explored chocolate and where it comes from and how it is turned in to the product we buy off the shelf along with and introduction to Fair Trade. This was accompanied with a warning that they weren’t going to be making sweet items every week and they would be alternating sweet and savoury and we would expect the same enthusiasm with vegetable tasting as we had with chocolate tasting.

It’s great to finish the day and go home with a daft grin on my face which stays there for the rest of the evening, beats commuting into the city every day.

We have a link to the Gateway School website which is one of the schools we run a Cooking Club for and they have some great photos of what we do during the club, have a look.

[thumb:74:l]I felt a very proud Mum on Sunday, all this encouraging children to cook and taste different foods is paying off – my four year old made his own pasta for lunch!

Well, all right that’s a little bit on exaggeration, we ran a pasta workshop on Saturday for 9-13 year olds. Most of these children came on their own and were a little nervous not knowing anyone, being in a strange kitchen and quite rightly wondering what was going to happen and when!

So to break the ice we started by getting the children to put a pile of flour in front of them, break the eggs, make a well in the centre of the flour, pour the eggs in and …………now mix it all together trying to stop the eggs escaping and running all over the table, floor, each other. Needless to say, they didn’t and the eggs escaped and went all over the table and the floor but not all over the children. By the time they had stopped giggling and didn’t stop until they had made the ‘longest pasta in the world’ and said ‘goodbye’ to new friends with email numbers exchanged and enthusiasm about which other workshops they were coming on so they could all meet up again. Fantastic. We had a great time too.

Well, on Sunday morning my smallest boy found a leftover square of pasta dough in the fridge and asked what it was? When Big Sister replied (she had done the workshop the day before) he asked if he could make some. So out came the kitchenaid pasta roller, he squidged the pasta, very carefully, keeping fingers well out of the way, fed the pasta through the rollers until it got thinner and longer and longer and longer and them use the cutter attachment to make tagliatelle which he cooked for lunch and declared ‘yummy!’ Although he didn’t like the chocolate pasta much, preferring the ice cream he had with it, but at least he tried.

Fortunately he will still eat the shop bought variety as although homemade pasta is fabulous it’s not something you want to make every day when you’ve got 10 minutes to get tea on the table, unlike pizza which he won’t touch unless he’s made it from scratch himself![thumb:76:r]

We spent two weeks in France in the summer and it was fantastic, staying in the Vendee on the Atlantic Coast. Feasting on Langoustines and fresh Tuna which was ridiculously cheap in the supermarket compared to here – 12 langoustines for around £7 and 4 tuna steaks (enough for 2 adults and 3 children) for £6.

It wasn’t always that healthy though, we did cremate merguez on at least three occasions much to the disgust of eldest daughter who demanded notice when we were going to cook them again because of the smell. Suppose you don’t really appreciate merguez in all their glory unless you have a beer in your hand and she’s a bit too young for that yet. One day she’ll understand……….

Anyway the reason for writing is my complete and utter disgust with the new French habit of introducing ‘children’s meals’ onto the menu. (Beware: going into old git mode…never used to have this in France, I remember the days when the children were expected to have a small sized portion of what was on the standard menu!) We looked forward to the ferry crossing, Brittany Ferries overnight, children really excited about sleeping on the ferry, years of sailing with Brittany Ferries knowing that the food in their restaurants is great.

So, we all trooped into the A la Carte restaurant to be greeted with a fabulous buffet of starters and puddings, including fresh salmon, king prawns, melon, strawberries, yum. Along came very nice waiter and produced the normal menu for us (fab) and the children’s menu (!) which was Chicken Nuggets and Chips (no way, children totally banned from nuggets), Ham and Chips (Aaaaah) and Pasta with Tomato Sauce (not too bad but pretty boring). Worse is to come, it all comes with a full sugar can of fizzy drink (this is 8.30pm and the children are hopefully going to go sleep within the next 2 hours!), huge bag of sweets, chocolate biscuit, naff toy and a pretty cool pen which lights up (this is now in my handbag, hah).

Eldest daughter took one look and said “That’s horrible, can I have the buffet?”, littlest daughter and small boy declared “can we just have the toys and can of pop and the strawberries on the buffet”. Anyway, along comes nice waiter, we ask if we can have a child sized portion of the buffet, he says that they don’t do child portions (buffet is £18), anyway after a little debate he goes off and comes back with the correct answer ‘yes’, they’ll charge us £5.60 (child meal price) and she can have starter and pudding buffet but no selected main course – brilliant. Smallest children settle on ham and chips on the basis they can pinch eldest daughter’s strawberries.

Happy meal, off ferry next day to start holiday. Most of the time we barbequed at base but we did go out to eat and a really worrying theme began to emerge, just about all of the restaurants we went to now had a ‘Children’s Menu’ and they were identical: Ham and Chips, Chicken Nuggets and Chips, Pizza Bambino.

Going into rant mode now – How on earth can we expect our children to try new foods when they are expected to eat a choice of three items at a restaurant, I really don’t understand why children can’t just have a half-sized portion of anything on the menu. Fine, keep the children’s menu as well but this way it will encourage them to try different foods.

On our last evening we were sitting on the sea front of this great seafood restaurant near Caen, we ordered mussels and fish, dreaded same children’s options on the menu. Small Boy said he didn’t want that he was sick of eating ham and chips and wanted spaghetti bolognaise which was on the normal menu. So we asked if he could have a half-sized portion of that, reply was ‘No, children have children’s menu or they have to pay for a full sized portion’ this was around £7. I don’t believe that each time someone orders spag bol the chef makes it from scratch, it would take too long, so what’s the problem with just giving a 4 year old a half sized portion. After a bit of negotiation we gave in and ordered a full sized portion of which he ate half of!!!!!!

What’s happening? France has always been proud of it’s food and it’s attitude to eating together a family, what’s gone wrong?
As well as a campaign against Elsanta strawberries I think we should do something about these so-called children’s menus and start giving our children the opportunity to eat smaller portions of what we eat or do you really want to cook seperate meals for the children and yourselves every night!

Any comments and feedback would be appreciated on the forum.