Joe Wicks
Serves: 2
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 40 mins
Ingredients:
60g butter
1 leek, finely sliced
2 medium carrots, finely chopped
2 celery sticks, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
1 veggie stock cube
2 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped
Knob of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 tbsp medium curry powder
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tbsp tomato puree
1 x 400g tin of green lentils, drained
1 head of cauliflower, cut into small florets
2 handfuls of frozen peas
30g cheddar, grated
Recipe from 30 Day Kick Start Plan by Joe Wicks which is available to buy now.
Joe Wick’s curried veggie take on cottage pie is sure to wow the family – not to mention it’s veg-packed, tasty and simple to make!
Method:
Melt 20g butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. Once bubbling, scrape in the chopped leek, carrots and celery along with a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring regularly, for 10 minutes until veg is completely soft.
Meanwhile bring a kettle of water to the boil. Put the veggie stock cube into a jug, measure in 150ml of boiling water and whisk with a fork to dissolve.
Come back to the saucepan, add the garlic and ginger. Cook for 1 minute more, sprinkle in the curry powder and cumin seeds, spoon in the tomato puree. Give everything a good mix and cook for 2 minutes more, then tip in the drained green lentils and the veggie stock.
Bring the pie mix to a simmer, turn down the heat to low and leave to gently bubble away while you make the mash.
Pour the remaining water from the kettle into a saucepan and re-boil. Salt the water and drop in the cauliflower florets. Cook for 10 minutes until completely tender. Drain into a sieve and leave to steam for a few minutes – this will stop you from having watery mash.
Preheat the grill to maximum.
Tip the cooked cauliflower into a food processor, add the remaining butter and some seasoning, blitz to a smooth mash. You can also do this with a stick blender.
Come back to your pie mix. Add the frozen peas and season to taste. Once the peas have defrosted, spoon the filling into an ovenproof dish. Spread the mash on top, then grate over the cheddar cheese. Slide under the grill for s minutes or until bubbling and golden with a crispy top. My low-carb cottage pie.
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
Help the kids boil the kettle and make the stock. Have them carefully add ingredients to the saucepan like the spices. Let them blitz the cauliflower in the food processor with you, add the frozen peas, and assemble the cottage pie by prepping the layers and spreading the mash.
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.
Joe Wicks
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Vic Borrill (Brighton & Hove Food Partnership)
