Green and Cheese Pie with extra cheese

How good is cooking with your kid? Alfie loves to move his chair up to the bench and watch everything get chopped, cracked and smashed into a bowl.

On a Sunday, I like to use up all my veg from the week and throw it into a soup. But today the weather was so sparkly we decided to chop up all the remaining greens and make a green and cheese pie. The best.

Being a son-of-a-chef, Alfie loves to hang out at the bench and 'help'  cook. We ate chopped up apples and pears while we mixed up the pie ingredients.

And best of all, The Kid ate it.

Here are the deets, give it a crack!

GREEN AND CHEESE PIE 
By Ali and Alfie Webb

• Chopped spinach/kale/silverbeet or whatever green leafed veg you have in the fridge (I used this trilogy)
• A decent sized amount of Parmesan cheese
• One tub of ricotta
• Salt and pepper to flavour-flave
• Puff pastry

We made a selection of triangles, rolls and mini parcels.

Wrap, shape and mould and pop in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius.

I popped half in the freezer for another day/week. The rest we had for dinner with sides of pickled beetroot, homemade sauce and cut up fruit.

Enjoy this sunny week ahead!

Tea at the Webb's

All parents are busy. Why? Because they have kids. And sometimes, that time between 5 and 7 pm is the hardest, most busiest time, especially if you’ve had a shocking day at work or if you are in a disorganized state.  How the hell are you meant to come up with something wholesome, exciting, pretty, delicious and downright edible for your kid every night?

I’m married to a chef. A really good one. One that has worked in the finest dining establishments in Melbourne, who has slogged away at a stove (and loved every minute of it) for over half his life. When people find this little fact out, they get all ‘Oh. My. God. Do you like, eat THE BEST food every night?’ ‘Do you have THE BEST well stocked pantry?’ ‘Does he make your lunch?’ ‘You are so lucky!’

What people seem to forget is that when a chef works, it’s during those busy times… you know, between 5-7pm when people eat and are feeding their kids. I’m lucky enough that when we had Alfie, my hubby decided to change jobs and work closer to where we lived and closer to his son. My hubby is most likely now your chef, that is, if you eat at the Cornershop in Yarraville.

So what does a chef feed his two year old son? 

I bet you are expecting stylized recipes that look like they’re straight from a fancy cookbook, or even specially curated menus that would make Heston Blumenthal sweat. Nope, we are just a normal family, surviving each 5-7pm period each day with the most basic of ingredients.

Our son can sense a vegetable from a mile away. He knows the word ‘yuck’ and definitely knows the word ‘no’. He also knows how to make a fake vomit noise, throw and climb and hide food under his thigh. And he certainly knows how to ‘share’ food with the Cheef Dog.

To us, a good meal for our boy is all in the name. Favourites include Monkey Muffins, Tiny Tacos, Meallion (makes a million meals), Froggy Fritters and Por Favor Patties.

So here’s some inspiration for tea from one normal family (with a chef) to yours. Bon appetite!

Monkey Muffins

1 cup self raising flour

¼ cup caster sugar

50grams melted butter

¼ cup milk

2-3 very ripe bananas

2 eggs

Good handful of prunes, dates or whatever dried fruit takes your fancy.

Mix all ingredients into a batter and pour into a muffin tea. Into the oven set at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until you can put a skewer into a muffin and it comes out clean.

Meallion

500 grams good quality mince

½ cup grated carrot

½ cup grated zucchini

½ cup sliced mushrooms

1 small brown onion, finely chopped

Any other vegie you can find

Rocco’s Deli homemade pasata (from the fridge at the back)

Chicken stock to cover the ingredients by approx. 1cm

Salt and pepper

Thyme / Rosemary / oregano / marjoram or a mix of whatever herbs you have at hand

Brown the onions and meat, add vegies, stir a lot, add stock and pasata. Cook on a low heat, stirring regularly for 45 minutes. Add extra stock as required.

You can turn Meallion into a million meals. Add some kidney beans and put the mixture into flat bread to create Tiny Tacos (great with avocado and sour cream). Pop a spud in the oven and add the Meallion on top. You can also turn it into a quick cottage pie by adding smashed potato (or smashed cauliflower) on top.

Froggy Fritters

4 grated zucchinis

1 cup of grated cheese

5 eggs

4 rashers chopped bacon

½ cup self raising flour

½ cup peas (can be frozen)

Salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients into a bowl. If the mixture is too dry, add another egg. Pour into a lamington tray and place in the oven set at 160 degrees for 30-40  minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Once cooled, cut the green zucchini slice into appealing shapes. Presto! Froggy Fritters.

Por Favor Patties

1 can of sustainable tuna

2 potatoes (boiled and smashed)

1 small sweet potato (boiled and smashed)

½ cup peas

2 cobs of fresh corn or 1 can of corn

Lemon zest

1 cup of breadcrumbs (or enough to combine the mixture)

Allow the potatoes to bind all the ingredients together. Mould the mixture into balls the same size as a golf ball. Add olive oil to a hot pan and lightly pan fry the patties until they have a golden brown colour on the outside. Take out of the pan and place on paper towel to absorb any oil.

Serve with smashed avocado, scrambled eggs or even a little bit of Kewpie mayo. Por favor, please.

A key part of our crazy 5-7pm busy period is having options and a good, well stocked fridge and pantry. We have the fabulous Reno from Vari’s Organics deliver a fruit and vegetable box to us each week. At $35 a box, it’s great value and feeds our family well. For those nights where it’s all a bit too hard (i.e. when my hubby is working), I like to give my son some homemade produce, made by someone else with love: Rocco. Rocco’s Deli on Roberts Street in Yarraville has a great selection of homemade pasta sauces, bolognaise, lasagnes (veg and meat based), soups (their bean soup is amazing) and it ranges between $2-$8. It’s really handy to have these items in our fridge for those emergency nights.

I’m always happy to share our meals and recipes, but I would love to hear about what your kids have for dinner.

Hey, dough face!

It looks a bit like a dog's breakfast, but it tastes like vegetable

As you've guessed, I'm on a food wastage free bandwagon. I've been trying to get our weekly food bill down to around $50 and it's bloody tough. The best I have done is $68 and I was hardcore hanging for a steak by the end of the week. But I'm determined as hell to work this out. Why should we have to spend $5200 + a year on food.

Alfie is a morning sleeper - he has a snooze around 9.30am on a Friday for about three hours - he is so knackered from three hardcore days at daycare. This gives me heaps of time to make some excellent food.

Today I've smashed out a good ol' minestrone using the remaining items of last week's veggie box:
Carrots, sweet potato, potato, zucchini, mushies, kidney beans, end-of-packet pasta, stock and the special ingredient is Rocco's passata sauce purchased from my local Italian deli in West Footscray. Nothing tastes better than a nonna's homemade passata!

Whack it all in a pot and bam, there's lunch for the kid and I. The plan is to pick up some yum pumpkin bread from Sourdough Kitchen in Seddon to dip into the veggie mass. I'm going to have to coat the top of Alfie's dish in Parmesan cheese to disguise all the green veg.

For tea, I've made a quick-as-hell pizza dough, from a recipe on Taste. It's a fucking freezing day so I'm hoping it rises in time - it's got only seven hours to do so.

The dough has already started to rise!

It's a little tradition for Alfie and I to head to Rocco's Deli every Friday and stock up with pastas, pestos and other goodies for the week. I'm going to add prosciutto or parma ham to the pizza and maybe a little bit of pineapple... we all deserve a bit of Tropicana in our lives during winter.

It's going to be a lot of funny making these sweet pizzas with my little man this evening.

How good is it when meals for the day are sorted by 11am?A rarity in our house, but what the Helen-of-Troy, it makes me feel freakin' excellent.

Happy Friday punks.

xx

Gettin' loose with orange juice

I've become a little obsessed with wastage.

Every week our bins are choccas, so full that I have to do a midnight run in my Hello Kitty nightie around the street to shove crappy nappies in other people's bins, because mine just don't have the space!

I read recently that over 30% of an average food shop is wasted. What. The. Fuck? Meaning, we throw out a third of our weekly, hard earned and spent, grocery stash.

Hell.

So I went and spent a third of that dough on a book by Rhonda Hetzel titled Down to Earth. This woman is pretty incredible, basically living the life my parents gave us as kids in self sufficient country Victoria. Living off the freaking land. But it's not all woodfires, macrame and hand washing, there's some great stuff in there for city dwellers such as myself and my gorgeous-as-hell family.

Our weekly box of organic fruit and veg arrived today  - $35 from local grocer Vari's Organics - and as I was putting the goodies away, I made note of all the remaining fruit and veg I needed to use up before starting on the fresh stuff.

I came across three super ripe and juicy oranges and using Rhonda's Whole Orange Cake recipe, I whisked up this amazing treat. And my goodness, my house smells like a freaking citrus orchard.

Two dishes too, so even someone like me can handle it. My son  is going to lose his face with squeals when he tries this tomorrow.

Rhonda Hetzel's Whole Orange Cake
This is one of the easiest  cakes you'll ever make and it's full of flavour and orangey goodness. It's all mixed up in  the food processor too, so there's very little washing up. Easy peasy, orange squeezy!

1 orange, washed and quartered (I actually used two and drank the juice of the third)
3  eggs
180g butter, melted
1 cup white sugar (or less)
1 1/2 cups self raising flour

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees and grease cake tin
2. Put the orange quarters in the  food processor and process until they're completely broken down and no large pieces remain.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and process again for around 30 seconds or until you feel awesome
4. Scrape the batter into the tin and bake for around 40 minutes or until the cake is golden  brown and if you stab  a fork into it, it comes out clean.
5. Cool it - both you and the cake. You don't want to cut it too soon.

Serve up a decent slice and sip it down with a cup of chamomile tea and a side of a Channing Tatum YouTube clip.

Delicious.

Heather Dell High

When I was ridiculously pregnant and enormous, I had daily cravings for Neenish Tarts. The pink and brown pattern would wake me in the middle of the night and I would stare at the ceiling, counting the hours until Heather Dell Cakes opened.

There’s something so charming about Heather Dell. It represents your nanna, through its sweet smell, its window display, its tin canisters on the shelves, the curried egg sandwiches, the biscuits and treats, the photos on the fridge, right down to the local fruit and veg supplier calendar with its perforated months highlighting birthdays, anniversaries and special events.

Rocco's Role

I’m greeted by a friendly ‘ciao’ when I enter Rocco’s Delicatessen. The store smells good, like a home cooked meal. Rocco smiles at me and there’s a definite twinkle in his eye. Everything about this place is familiar, like I have stepped back to a moment in my childhood.

Rocco and his wife Adriana opened their store in February 1977, 38 years ago. The store is full of reminders of the past, from the vintage signs behind the counter reminding you to purchase a TAB cola or how you can be a mod while smoking a Virginian Slim, to the family photos behind the register and the sound the door makes when you open it.

A Conversation With... Mark Briggs

I have lived in Yarraville for four years and during that time I have seen the village catapult to being a place where you could get away with wearing filthy tracksuit pants, to an uber-hip inner city suburb where smackie-dacks just don’t pass.

Why? Perhaps it’s all the yummy parentals cruising around the hood with their pimped up prams, or the Sun Theatre with its amazingly awesome choc tops, or even the retail therapy ranging from second hand stores to unique fashion? No. You know what’s brought the change from old school to cool? It’s Mark Briggs.

If you don’t know Mark by now, let’s get you up to speed. Yarraville’s latest acquisition is the former Head Chef of Vue de Monde, was named The Age’s Young Chef of the Year in 2013 and has trained with the best, working in renowned kitchens such as Fifteen London, La Tante Claire in London, and The Old Manor House in Romsley, UK. Now you can find him on your doorstep, at Dig A Pony.

I’m married to a chef and whenever I explain what my husband does for a living, people jump up and down clapping and squealing about how lucky I am. What a lot of people don’t understand is that chefs don’t really spend that much time at home cooking for their family, as they are normally cooking for you. So in a sense, you are a part of that extended family.

When I asked Mark about cooking at home he said he likes to put on a roast, but, with his signature smirk, “my wife complains that I make too much of a mess”.

Being a chef is not just about dishing up good food, and with Mark’s incredible experience to date, creativity and inspiration can start with a simple staff meal.

“I’m always thinking about food and idea’s come up all the time, whether I’m at the market, watching TV or cooking a staff meal”.

“My favourite staff meals to cook are childhood favourites or a traditional local dish. It’s really exciting when one of the chefs buys a load of ingredients that I’ve never heard of and cooks up something from their own childhood memories.

“I have also experienced a lot of awful staff meals. I mean, the staff meal is a place where chefs can test out flavours and ingredients.  Some don’t always go to plan. One I will never forget was a sausage and bread stew. The chef who made it still gets a hard time about it six years later!”

(Don’t worry, I asked Mark – that chef doesn’t work at Dig a Pony!)

So what do the people of the inner west like to eat? Apparently we are a trendy bunch, who love our food.

“The healthy options are always popular along with the unusual, like tripe and liver. It’s great to cook for locals who have a good knowledge of food and appreciate fine ingredients.  We are always trying to bring something a little different to Yarraville: new tastes, flavours and dishes – and so far it seems to be working!”

“I love spending my days off at local haunts Cobb Lane and the Cornershop in Yarraville where I can always find excellent dishes. For dinner, I can’t go past a steak at The Station Hotel in Footscray. We are so lucky to be surrounded by so many great options for dining!”

When Mark explained that his favourite people to cook for are his friends and family, I couldn’t help but ask the question as to who the most famous person was that he has ever rustled up a meal for.

“It would have to be Ferran Adria from elBulli in Spain. But if you are talking famous people known to everyone it would probably be David Beckham or Rod Stewart”.

Phew! From Maggie May to Yarraville, it seems like Dig A Pony might be the place to be this summer or autumn or winter or spring – the menu changes with the seasons. So get in quick and try something new.

Dig A Pony is open Tue-Sun from 5pm. Closed Mondays.

58 Ballarat Street, Yarraville
www.digapony.com.au

(Photos copyright Paul Large: flickr.com/people/pmlarge)

This article first appeared in The Westsider, November 2014 edition. (http://thewestsider.com.au/a-conversation-with-mark-briggs/)