Easy Family Recipes To Teach Your Nanny

It can be quite a challenge to plan weekly meals for our little ones and for many mamas who rely on a nanny during the week, it can be even tougher planning for what she feels comfortable cooking. There’s often not only a language barrier but also a cultural barrier that’s not always easy to bridge. We all have our own way of cooking, our favourite family recipes and our own individual tastes (we can be fussy eaters sometime too), which is why it’s important to have few easy recipes up your sleeve that you can share with your nanny and that will make the whole family happy.

Quiche
This is one of my favourite stress free dish that can be made in record time and that have many different variations to it. You can use turkey ham, different cheeses, shredded zucchinis and carrots that you stir-fry in olive oil before…

Ingredients:
– 1 puff pastry roll or short crust roll
– 4 eggs
– 25cl of cream (for a dairy free version, I use soy or rice cream that you can find mostly in Carrefour & Géant)
– Turkey ham
– Shredded cheese(I usually use Emmental)
– Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.
In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and cream. Add turkey ham (cut in pieces), and pour the cheese over and season to taste.
Whisk to combine, pour into crust that is on parchment paper, and bake until the centre of quiche is just set, 20 to 25 minutes.
Serve warm or at room temperature (also great cold in kids lunchboxes!)

Vegetable Soup
There are many ways of making this recipe, you can pretty much use whatever vegetables you have in the fridge (a great way to get your little ones to eat them and also to use up leftovers). This is what I usually use:

Ingredients:
– Carrots (about 4 pieces)
– Courgettes/Zucchinis (about 4 pieces)
– Celery (4 sticks)
– Half a pumpkin
– 4 potatoes
– 2 parsnips
– Cream to taste
– Salt and pepper to taste
– 1 chicken or vegetable cube

Method:
Cut all the vegetables into small cubes, add the stock cube and water a little bit above the vegetables and boil until all the veggies are cooked through. Then blend and add the liquid cream, salt and pepper.

Et voila! My little boy was a bit fussy about soup, so I made him try it with bread and now he is totally sold. Sometimes to shake things up a little, I add vermicelli as all the kids love pasta.

Salad
This delicious salad was actually ‘invented’ by my nanny and it was such a success with my kids that it became a regular in the family menu.

Ingredients:
– Shredded carrots
– Cherry tomatoes cut in half
– Cucumber cut in circles
– Lemon juice
– Olive oil

Method:
Mix all the ingredients and add a drizzle of olive oil, the juice of a lemon, salt to taste and serve. So simple! Great served with meat or fish and crusty bread.

Baked Salmon

Ingredients:
– 1 piece of salmon
– Sesame oil
– Lemon
– Dill

Method:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees
Take an oven dish and line with aluminium foil and baking paper
Put the salmon on the baking paper and brush some sesame oil over the fish, squeeze the lemon juice on top and cut the lemon in quarter, add the dill.
Close the paper and foil over the fish to make a parcel and bake for 20 minutes

Can be served with steamed or stir fried veggies, mashed potatoes or baked sweet potato.

Pasta Gratin

Ingredients:
– Macaroni, fusilli or farfalle
– White sauce
– Turkey ham or shredded chicken
– Cheese

White sauce ingredients:
– 40g butter
– 4 tablespoons of flour
– 750 ml of milk
– Nutmeg

Method:
Melt the butter in a pan and add the flour, whisk until all combined and add the milk slowly. Keep stirring until it thickens, can take up to 20 minutes. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Cook the macaroni in water according to the packet instruction, when it’s ready drain the water and pour cold water over the pastas. Mix the pasta and the white sauce together and pour the mixture into a baking dish, add pieces of ham/chicken and sprinkle over shredded cheese.

Heat a grill to high. Pour mixture into prepared baking dish and grill until the top is crisp and golden.

Annabel Karmel is also my saviour when I’m out of ideas; her ‘Favourite Recipes book’ gives you good choices of simple and yummy dishes to make for the children. I ask my nanny to follow the recipe, go through it with her to make sure she understands everything and voila!

Well mamas, get printing and planning next week’s meals!