The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

the times Saturday April 30 2022

12 Food + Drink

Serves 4

Ingredients

3 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and finely

chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled and finely

chopped

1 stick of celery, finely chopped

1 bay leaf

3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely

chopped

2 tbsp tomato puree

1½ tsp Dijon mustard

½ tsp ground cloves

1½ tsp maple syrup

2 x cans borlotti or cannellini beans,

drained (480g)

150g passata

4 slices freshly made toast, to serve

Method

1 Warm the oil in a (flameproof)

casserole over a medium heat and fry

the onion, carrot and celery, stirring,

until golden.

2 Add the bay leaf, garlic and tomato

puree and stir to combine. Add the

mustard, cloves, maple syrup, beans

and passata and stir again.

3 Add 150ml water and stir, then

cover and place in the oven at

160C/gas 3 for 45 min. Serve on

fresh toast.

Tip If you are switching from canned

baked beans, try blitzing the sauce

before adding the beans for a more

familiar, smooth texture.

Baked beans the

Ottolenghi way

W

hat’s the best way
to get children to
eat healthier food?
It’s a challenge
that Nicole Pisani,
former head chef
of Yotam Otto-
lenghi’s Nopi restaurant, has been grap-
pling with for the past eight years. And this
is her advice: make food fun, don’t shy
away from strong flavours and, if all else
fails, include vegetables by stealth.
“Courgettes, beetroot, black beans, I’ve
come to learn that you can hide practically
any vegetable in a cake,” she jokes.
Pisani is now executive head chef of
Chefs in Schools, a charity that is on a mis-
sion to improve what kids eat by teaming
up restaurant-trained chefs with school
kitchen staff. They help schools to move
away from processed, preprepared meals
to dishes made daily from fresh ingredi-
ents within the school’s food budget.
The charity, now in 58 schools, was co-
founded four years ago by Pisani, Henry
Dimbleby, the author of the National Food
Strategy, and Louise Nichols, an executive
head teacher in east London. It’s champi-
oned by a host of names including Otto-
lenghi, Thomasina Miers, Prue Leith,
Jamie Oliver, Tom Kerridge and Allegra
McEvedy, as well as top food suppliers.
“The mission was to take up the cam-
paign to improve school lunches that was
started by Jamie Oliver by enlisting an ar-
my of chefs who would swap their restau-
rant work for school kitchens,” explains
the charity’s launch director, the cookery
writer Joanna Weinberg. Sometimes, she
says, it’s about making popular children’s
dishes, such as pizzas and baked beans,

but on site, from fresh ingredients. It’s also

about introducing more adventurous fla-

vours. Now she and Pisani have released a

book featuring the charity’s most popular

recipes called Feed Your Family. It includes

dishes devised by big-name chefs, as well

as a host of school cooks. All have been

tried and tested by tens of thousands of

kids. “We wanted to share what kids will

eat, not just in school but as family food at

home,” Weinberg says.

It was eight years ago that Pisani, look-

ing for a new challenge, responded to a

tweet from Dimbleby. He and Nichols

were seeking an “inspiring chef” to help to

turn around the food at his children’s pri-

mary school in Hackney. Dimbleby had

recently completed a report for the gov-

ernment on school food and had seen first-

hand the improvement to children’s at-

tainment levels and wellbeing at schools

that served freshly made school lunches.

For Pisani — who now works across all the

charity’s schools helping to train staff — it

was at first quite a shock moving to a

school kitchen serving up meals for 600

boisterous 4-11-year-olds.

“The thing that struck me most was the

overcooked cabbage and that the menu

mainly consisted of ultra-processed

foods that just needed heating up.”

Pisani put her Ottolenghi culinary

Excite children with strong f lavours and enticing smells — and

hide the vegetables, a top school cook tells Bridget Harrison

experience to work, as well as encouraging

the school’s catering staff to make the kind

of food they would cook for their own fam-

ilies. She began serving whole roasted cau-

liflowers for the kids to tear apart. She

created “edible gardens” by “planting”

carrots and radishes into a “soil” created

from a Nopi dip recipe of blitzed-up olives.

“When we go out to eat we want a dining

experience. Think of the way Ottolenghi

and Heston do things, so why not give that

to the kids? If they are pulling at it and

smelling it and touching it, then they are

more likely to be excited by it.”

She made fresh tomato sauces for pasta

flavoured with miso. To make the school’s

fish and chips she breaded fresh hake from

Brixham Fish Market in Devon.

“Then we started to serve fish without

breadcrumbs, telling them that the fish is

‘naked’ and they enjoyed that too. Often

it’s about taking children on a journey.”

Not all of Pisani’s ideas went down well.

A mushroom tagliatelle mostly went in the

bin. “I still don’t know one school that can

get a child to eat a mushroom.” There were

tears when she took jacket potatoes off the

menu to encourage the pupils to be more

adventurous. There was practically a riot

when she banned tinned custard. “Bring

back the old cook!” the children cried. She

tried to appease them by whisking up fresh

custard, but the task nearly killed the

catering team and it was still rejected.

“It was then we realised that the prob-

lem was the colour. The kids wanted it

to be bright yellow.

So we added tur-

meric. Then, at last,

they were happy

with that!”

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 wholemeal pitta or

leftover flatbread,

ripped into pieces (or

leftover bread)

4 tbsp milk

500g minced lamb

2 tbsp parsley, finely

chopped

2 tbsp mint, finely

chopped

1 tsp dried oregano

1 garlic clove, peeled

and minced

½ tsp sea salt

Olive oil, for drizzling

For the sauce

2 tbsp olive oil

1 red onion, peeled

and roughly chopped

1 garlic clove, peeled

and finely chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

2cm piece of ginger,

peeled and grated

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

3x400g cans plum

tomatoes

2 tbsp miso paste

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp harissa (optional)

To serve

Flatbread

Brown rice, quinoa or

couscous

Fresh herbs, optional

Method

1 Preheat the oven to

160C/gas 3. In a

medium bowl, add the

pieces of pitta, pour

over the milk and

leave to soak for 10

min. Then add the

mince, herbs, garlic

and salt and mix well

with your hands.

2 Roll the mixture into

balls about the size of

a ping pong ball —

making about 20 in all

— and arrange in an

oven tray. Drizzle with

olive oil and bake until

golden, about 20 min.

3 To make the sauce,

heat the olive oil and

cook the onion, garlic,

ginger and cumin for

10 min until the onion

is translucent. Add the

vinegar and scrape the

pan to get any sticky

bits off. Tip in the

tomatoes, miso paste

and salt and simmer

for 30 min.

Allow to cool then blitz

in a blender.

4 Add half the sauce to

a large pan and stir

through the harissa.

Save the rest to use as

a pasta sauce for

another day.

5 Warm through and

when the meatballs

are ready carefully add

to the sauce and

simmer together for a

few minutes.

6 Serve with flatbread

and brown rice or

couscous, and fresh

herbs, if you like.

Minty lamb meatballs by Allegra McEvedy

Yotam Ottolenghi

Eat your greens!

The chefs’ guide

to feeding kids

Often it’s about making

popular kids’ dishes but

from fresh ingredients

for 30 min.

tbll

Recipes extracted from

Feed Your Family!

Exciting Recipes from

Chefs in Schools by

Nicole Pisani and

Joanna Weinberg,

published by Pavilion