Sam's Butternut Squash and Chickpea Curry

Sam’s Butternut Squash and Chickpea Curry

Sam Nixon

Featuring:

Butternut squash

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: 4-6

Prep time: 40 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

½ butternut squash

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3 tbsp olive oil

1 red onion

2 cloves of garlic

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger

2 tsp curry powder

½ tsp turmeric powder

½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground coriander

1 tbsp tomato purée

1 vegetable stock cube

400g tin of chickpeas

100ml double cream

Small bunch of fresh coriander

Squeeze of lemon juice

This is one of my favourite recipes… and it’s a vegetarian one. My kids absolutely love this meal too. We serve it with all the trimmings: rice, poppadoms and naan breads.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180°C fan. Cut the butternut squash into chunks (you don’t need to peel it) and pop into a roasting tray with the cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and a pinch of salt and pepper.
Roast the squash for 30 minutes, turning halfway through. Set aside once cooked – you can do this well in advance if you wish.
Peel and finely chop the onion. Peel and finely grate the garlic and ginger. Heat the remaining olive oil in a large casserole pan over a medium heat.
Add the onion, garlic and ginger to the pan and fry for 10 minutes. Stir in the curry powder, turmeric, cumin and coriander and cook for 1 minute.
Stir in the tomato purée and cook for 2 minutes, then crumble in the stock cube. Add the tin of chickpeas to the pan along with the water they’re in.
Now add 300ml of water and bring to a boil. Add the roasted butternut squash and simmer for 10 minutes.
Stir in the double cream, then finely chop the fresh coriander and stir into the curry along with a little squeeze of lemon juice to finish.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

Sam Nixon

Sam is a TV and radio presenter, best known as one half of the BAFTA-winning duo Sam and Mark. A trained chef and Celebrity MasterChef finalist, he creates food content with a focus on hearty, family-friendly cooking and the great outdoors, and is currently working on his own cookery book.

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