07 Mar 2023
Sometimes, quite often in fact, I feel like I am a YO! Sushi-esque conveyor belt of food production, only instead of small bowls of raw fish, I’m churning out the food of two extremes: from fine, elegant canapés for my food business clients to the vaguely nutritious but generally bland for my two children, writes Elena Hogg, founder of local culinary company food by Elena.
I’m possibly exaggerating, but it feels as though anything with any real flavour is a complete no-go as a family meal and, given the older one is now eleven, it’s been many a year now of sacrificing taste for an argument-free meal.
To give him due credit, aforementioned child does now eat some things that were historically deemed ‘disgusting’, like vegetables for example, which means the tactical hiding of said vegetables in sauces with the use of a trusty stick blender is no longer always necessary. Small victories.
The younger child is seven and, although she’s years younger than her brother, she has always been more adventurous with food.
But it’s not straightforward: her ‘give-it-a-try’ attitude which we so applauded has led to a slightly out-of-control yearning for seafood – and I don’t just mean prawns; I mean the kind from which kids normally recoil in horror: octopus, mussels… she’s not fazed by a sucker or a rubbery blob.
Her second addiction is slightly more affordable, at least: any sort of salty-vinegary morsel – think olives, capers, marinated anchovies, but not ketchup, which it the one salty-vinegary item you’d expect her to enjoy. And that’s my daughter all over.
So my daily plight is trying to find a family meal that suits everyone – the no-longer-whiny-but-still-afraid-of-flavour son, the only-eats-expensive-food-that’s-salty-enough-to-induce-dangerous-levels-of-dehydration daughter, as well as two food-loving adults who would give anything to share even just a homemade curry with the kids and not have World War III break out over the inclusion of some cumin seeds. Maybe the solution is ear plugs at every meal so you just can’t hear the fallout.
It feels as though the only time all four of us are contented at table is when we’re out at an eatery that serves burgers.
The children are satisfied by meat between bread and served with chips.
They even eat the lettuce leaf these days, although the tomato slice is still a challenge, and the gherkin slice evokes visceral revulsion. And we two adults are happy because there is at least some nutrition in the meal the kids are shovelling into their faces.
But we’re mostly happy because neither of them is moaning about what’s been put down in front of them, and we can actually try and have a conversation, assuming the kids halt their shovelling now and then.
But eating out is an infrequent occurrence, so I have been racking my brains of late to come up with meals that might please all of us just enough to elicit no complaints. This means the food needs to be salty-vinegary enough (daughter), bland enough (son) and interesting enough (us). No mean feat, as many of you will know.
I have come up with a handful of staples, including fish pie (but you need time to make this one and it’s always worth making two so you can freeze one). Especially if I add prawns to the fish mix, this goes down a treat, and even the peas go down the hatch without comment because they’re suspended in creamy sauce rather then rolling around the plate tauntingly.
I have also started making a chickpea and cauliflower pilaf-like concoction. A lot of slowly sweated, translucent onions give sweetness to offset the brassica-tang of the cauliflower, while the chickpeas are soothingly bland but a powerhouse nutrition-wise.
It’s a bit beige, I won’t lie, but at least there’s no dreaded green. And you can flavour with the mildest of spices like ground coriander – or turmeric for a hint of colour, too.
There’s always a faithful roast dinner to rely on, as long as the accompanying vegetables are acceptable. Finally, there’s the age-old saviour of the family dinner table: pasta, which has the triple-bonus of pleasing everyone with relatively little effort, being deeply comforting and also nourishing. Where there’s pasta, there’s hope.
Tonight’s meal is a leftovers-enforced potato salad made with green beans, beetroot and hard-boiled eggs, which my mum made when we were kids and we devoured, but that my own children view as something spawned from the underworld. Now, where did I put those ear plugs?
