Last week I’ve been taking care of my 3-y old nephew and 1-y old niece for 10 days. I’ve had such a lovely time with them and have unleashed my maternal instincts on them!
I’m not really used to cooking for children, but it’s common knowledge that they’re not too fond of vegetables, especially if they’re recognizable as vegetables. Being a responsible auntie however, I thought it was important for them to eat healthily, and I refuse to give them anything I wouldn’t eat myself, like those horrid canned peas or processed foods.
I must say I was quite flattered with their appetite, as they happily munched away most of the things I cooked for them and didn’t complain about coriander and other ‘exotic’ flavors.
One day, I came up with a soup that went down surprisingly well, regardless the fact that it contained loads of green veggies! I think the secret was the story it came with. The recipe is inspired by the Lebanese Spring Soup from Claudia Roden, but I withheld that information from the kids of course. Instead I told them this was a soup made of a green dragon, It contained dragon scales and even dragon warts, as proof it was made from a real dragon. Ow, I’m such a witch, manipulating those innocent children with blatant lies to make them eat their veg…but it worked!
Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients:
-1 chopped onion
-2 cloves of garlic
-a large carrot
-2 stalks of celery
-2 potatoes
-half a broccoli
-2 big handfuls of spinach
-frozen peas
-bay leaf
-handful of chopped coriander
-handful of chopped mint
-1 liter of vegetable stock
-bread
-4 cloves of garlic
-pinch of salt
-olive oil
Put olive oil in a large soup pan, and slowly fry onion and garlic until tender. In the meanwhile, chop all the vegetables, except the spinach and peas. Add potato, carrot and celery and fry a bit more for a minute or 5. Then add broccoli and stir. Pour vegetable stock, add bay leaf, bring to boil and let simmer for about 10 minutes until the veg is tender.
In the meanwhile, cut bread into small pieces and fry with olive oil, garlic and salt, until crispy. Drain on kitchen paper.
Now comes the spinach part (make sure your kids are well away from the kitchen, because if they see you do this, the dragon story won’t go down anymore). Throw the spinach in the soup, take the bay leaf out and turn heat off. Get out your hand blender and blend the soup until smooth. Careful, or your kitchen and you will end up looking rather green as well. You will have a beautiful bright green soup by now!
Add the peas for dragon warts and chopped herbs for dragon scales. Serve in bowls and garnish with fried bread on top.
