We like doing cooking with our kids, it helps connect them to the food we eat. We don’t eat very many prepared foods- the odd jar of curry sauce when we’re in a hurry, baked beans and fish fingers are probably the extent of our convenience food consumption and we even make our own Yorkshire Puddings, which often amazes people.
Today we decided to have a pop at recipe we spotted on Saturday Kitchen. Specifically, the Rick Stein section, because he’s one of our favourite TV chefs. I like his big chunky no nonsense recipes that always give good hearty portions.
In this instance we decided to cook Rick Stein’s Easter Lamb (or a slight variation on it). It’s a simple recipe that basically involves putting alternate layers of sliced potato, then seasoned lamb, garlic, hard cheese and tomato, all drenched in lots of olive oil until you reach the top of the casserole dish. It then spends an hour and a half in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius.
So there is obviously quite a lot of preparation to do- potatoes need peeling and slicing, garlic needs peeling and chopping, the tomatoes need cutting in half and the cheese needs grating. Oh, and the lamb obviously needed roughly dicing too. Fifi did the lot under supervision, including using some wickedly sharp knives. I showed her how to hold a tomato so she could cut it in half without risking cutting the end of her fingers off, which is a kitchen essential.
I stepped in when it came to putting the casserole dish in the oven and taking it out, because heat and weight don’t go together very well in this instance but everything is Fifi’s own work:
