Roasted Red Pepper Pasta Sauce

Claire Wright

Featuring:

Peppers

Tomato

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: 4

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 40 mins

Ingredients:

2 red peppers, roughly chopped

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

1 (400g) tin chopped tomatoes

150ml single cream

Veg Portions / Serving: 1

Recipe created for Veg Power by Claire Wright. Food photography by Claire Wright | raisingsugarfreekids.com

Claire Wright from addsomeveg.com shares 3 simple ways to prepare peppers that the whole family will enjoy.

This red pepper pasta sauce is creamy, sweet and a really easy way of getting some red peppers (which have more vitamin C than an orange) into the family.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Throw the peppers, onions and garlic cloves into a roasting dish and drizzle with the olive oil. Toss to coat the veg in the oil, then roast for 40 mins. Add the chopped tomatoes and roast for another 20 mins. Blitz in a food processor or with a hand-held blender until smooth, then add the cream and pulse to combine. Pour over cooked pasta or cooked grains, or serve with cooked fish, meat or pulses and a side of veg or salad.

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

Show the kids how to set the oven to preheat. Get them to add all the ingredients to the roasting dish and drizzle over the oil, then toss the veg in it with clean hands. Let them pour in the tomatoes. And of course, have them blitz the sauce all together with the hand-held blender or pushing the buttons on the food processor.

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.

Claire Wright

Communications Manager: After leaving Exeter University with a degree in English Literature, Claire worked in various fields ranging from youth work and charities to publishing, before starting up a food-focused website when her first child was born. After being asked to project manage the publication of Veg Power's Crowdfunder book, Claire came on board as a fully-fledged team member in 2018 to take on the role of Communications Manager, looking after Veg Power's website and social media platforms.

addsomeveg.com/

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