Tom Hunt
Tom Hunt is an award-winning chef, food writer and food waste campaigner. His Bristol restaurant Poco attained the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s highest ever score of 96%.
Tom’s Basque ‘Gilda’ Salad Sticks
Tom Hunt
Effort:
Complexity:
Cost:
In season now
Serves: As many as you like!
Prep time: 5 mins
Ingredients:
Seasonal vegetables (eg. cherry tomatoes, cucumber, broad beans, kohlrabi, carrots, fennel)
Olives (optional)
Roasted peppers (optional)
Herbs and edible flowers (optional)
Veg Portions / Serving: 1
Recipe & Photography from Tom Hunt (tomsfeast.com)
This dish is inspired by a Basque Pintxos recipe called Gilda. A Gilda usually consists of an olive, anchovy and pepper skewered onto a toothpick. My daughter loves olives so I thought this might be a fun way to deliver them along with some other vegetables. Salad on a stick is a fun way to enjoy vegetables as canapés or with kids. I made these with my daughter and allowed her to choose which ingredients were put onto each skewer. Choose a few ingredients you know your children will like and mix them up with a few new ingredients incase they are feeling adventurous and want to try something they aren’t used to eating.
Share your own versions of these fun #SaladSticks with us @VegPowerUK on social!
Method:
Cut ingredients into small bite size pieces. Thread onto skewers or toothpicks. Enjoy!
Note: Cut the sharp spike off the end of the skewers or toothpicks to make them more child-friendly.
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
Kids can really take charge here, which is part of why salad sticks are so popular with them! Make sure to prep any chopped ingredients for them, and keep an eye on their fingers around the sharp end of the skewer, but otherwise let them build it themselves. Help them with any harder ingredients.
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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