Amanda Grant
Award-winning cookbook author, food educator and food writer Amanda Grant is co-founder of Cook School (Cookschool.club), an exciting, nationwide not-for-profit project teaching children how to cook.
Amanda’s Easy Vegetable Samosas
Amanda Grant
Featuring:
Spinach
Effort:
Complexity:
Cost:
In season now
Serves: 6
Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Ingredients:
olive oil, for greasing and brushing
50g frozen or tinned sweetcorn
50g frozen peas
small bunch fresh coriander, leaves and stalks chopped
100g fresh spinach (3 really big handfuls), chopped
2 tablespoons mango chutney
2 teaspoons medium curry powder
50g halloumi or feta cheese, chopped
2 tablespoons plain flour
3 tortilla wraps
Veg Portions / Serving: 1/2
Recipe donated by Amanda Grant for Veg Power. Recipe and photography by Amanda Grant.
Children and adults alike love these samosas — they taste so good! You only need a pack of tortilla wraps, a few store cupboard ingredients and some veg. Samosas are normally made with a special pastry, but using halved tortilla wraps is a quick alternative. Some children who have made them described the paste that seals them as being a bit like slime — they love filling and sealing them, and it’s a great way of getting them involved. Vegans can swap the cheese for peas, adding even more delicious veg to this curried spinach and sweetcorn filling. They can also be eaten warm or cold for packed lunches.
Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5 and grease a baking tray with a little olive oil.
Put the sweetcorn and peas in a bowl, and add the coriander, spinach, mango chutney, curry powder and cheese. Mix together with a spoon.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour with 2 tablespoons water to make a paste.
Using scissors, cut the tortilla wraps in half. Take a tortilla half and fold over a third of the wrap to make a triangle, brushing some flour paste along the edge to seal.
Fold the other third over the top to make a cone, brushing a little of the flour paste along the edge and pressing to seal. Repeat with the rest of the tortilla halves.
Divide the filling between each cone and squash it inside. Brush some flour paste inside the opening and press together to seal. Make sure the samosas are sealed all the way round.
Put the samosas on the oiled baking tray. Brush a little oil over the top of each samosa and bake for 10 minutes, until golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before eating, as they’ll be very hot!
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
This recipe is great for involving children at each stage, including measuring the ingredients, cutting the herbs and tortilla wraps with scissors, mixing the filling together, mixing up the flour and water paste (‘slime’), assembling the tortilla cones and brushing the tray and samosas with oil.
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.
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Effort:
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Complexity:
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Cost:
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