Roasted beetroot houmous: a dairy free weaning recipe

Houmous is such an easy win when weaning a CMPA baby, naturally dairy free, high in protein, and every baby I meet who's being weaned loves it. I make it at every opportunity (not least for the egg replacer aquafaba - as seen in my meringues) for Harry as it's such a favourite of is. He loves it mixed with grated carrot in sandwiches, on toast for a quick and easy post swimming lunch, with veggies dipped in, or simply in a bowl to grab handfuls of (when I'm pretending not to look).

I make a few variations of houmous: roasted, or sun-dried tomato, aubergine - but hadn't tried anything else until lately when the beetroots in my Seed Pantry veg patch were ready to be harvested. M got me my Seed pantry box for my birthday, and I have to say I wasn't enamoured to begin with (ungrateful wife that I am), but it was awesome. I loved planting my seeds and growing my veggies - I still have some late French beans and spinach to pick before I need to dig our little raised bed over. My trip to River Cottage cemented just how much I've changed my opinion on growing veggies - talking to their Head Gardener and making my mental list of seeds for next year, I'm excited already.

My Barbabietola di Chioggia beetroot was beautifully candy striped, which did however, mean that the humous wasn't the vivid pink I'd initially expected, rather a muted, Instagram filtered type of pink. It had a delicate earthy flavour, which worked beautifully with some pre roasted garlic and a light olive oil. 

We enjoyed this with my home made dairy free flatbreads - the only problem about making food from your veg patch is that once the veggies have gone you can't make any more! 

This is one recipe you really do need a food processor or blitzer of some sort for. 

Roasted beetroot houmous
Dairy free
Serves 4-6 adults or 8 babies

1 tin chickpeas (brine drained and saved for egg replacer duties)
2 medium beetroot
2 cloves garlic
4 sundried tomatoes
Olive oil - I used 4 tablespoons, but it'll depend on your ingredients and personal taste. You may want more or less.
1 tablespoon tahini (optional - don't buy it specially - just add extra olive oil)
Juice of half a lemon
If making for adults, add a teaspoon or so of salt

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees
Scrub, and chop the beetroot into eighths, peel the garlic and drizzle with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil
Wrap in foil and bake for 45 minutes to an hour - or until the beetroot is soft
Leave to cool
Drain the chickpeas and sun dried tomatoes, and put in the bowl of your food processor
Add the cooled beetroot, garlic, and olive oil left in the foil parcel and blitz until a rough puree
Add another couple of tablespoons of olive oil, the lemon juice and the tahini if using, and blitz until slightly smoother - if making for adults add salt now

Flatbread recipe to follow when I manage to take pictures - I keep forgetting and we eat them warm!

When you're happy with the texture, you're done. I store this in a tupperware in the fridge. Much like home made pesto I make sure the top layer is covered with some fresh olive oil.

Food styling, farming and photos at River Cottage

This is the second of my posts about #BlogCampRiverCottage - previously I talked about bread and butter - now it's moving on to the side of the day I was infinitely less comfortable with - farming and photos.

It's no secret to my regular readers that my photography is a work in progress. I can cook and write to a standard I'm very happy with, but I struggle infinitely with taking pictures and am sure that this hinders my blog's growth, as these days people are so visual. 

Over the last 6 months I've been getting better at making sure I work with the light, and thinking about props.  Start talking to me about aperture, speeds and lenses and try as I might I just cannot follow. I am probably one of the few people who has tried to read their camera manual and just given up. I was utterly dreading Capture by Lucy's session on food photography - expecting to feel like I used to in Maths or Physics and slink to the back of the group. However, Lucy was engaging, interesting and non technical enough that I could follow most of what she was talking about. 

I don't think it helped that we suspect Harry has posted my camera somewhere, so I was bravely trying to use M's (and even before the session had had to ask the lovely Sarah-Jayne of Keep up with the Jones Family what on earth I'd done to it as it wouldn't focus!) which I was utterly terrified of breaking.  M has noted previously that I am not blessed with pointy elbows so missed out on taking any pictures with Lucy - first my tomatoes were pinched from in front of me, and then I made the mistake of moving to one side and losing my pretty periwinkle plate. At that stage as I was starting to get anxious and ultimately that wasn't what the day was about, so I took a deep breath and thought stuff it. I'm sure there will be other opportunities. 

The afternoon was a revelation however - we met the Head gardener at River Cottage and talked growing food, farming and snails. Oh how we talked snails. My spinach and chard were destroyed by the little blighters this year and I was so interested in the companion planting we discussed. Next year nasturtiums will be accompanying my veggies for sure! I also have a list of seeds for next year, including the beautiful Rose pelargonium, lemon verbena, purple sprouting broccoli, and the aforementioned nasturtiums.

Overall I had a wonderful day at River Cottage - from my previous visit I knew I liked it, but it really is a special place. Thank you to Foodies for organising the day, and River Cottage HQ for hosting. 

Meal Planning Monday: Leftovers galore

As anyone who follows me on twitter will know, Mark and I harvested (is that the word?) his homegrown potatoes today, and as a treat I roasted some tonight with a chicken, and basically the works, butternut squash, steamed spinach and brocolli, and stuffing. It was yum. However, I'm working away from Wednesday so we have basically half a chicken (and then some) to use up before then. Cue immediate flailing panic!

Here's the potatoes - the margarine tub is what we thought we would fill - the hastily located washing up bowl is what we did fill!

So this week's meal plan, will take us up to Wednesday and then pick up again on Saturday morning.

Monday: Leftover roast chicken, in sandwiches with leftover sweet potato and ginger soup. (I made this on Saturday, it is also known as Lifechanging Soup (TM) in this house - it's a Skye Gyngell recipe that I adore)

Tuesday: Was going to be butternut squash and chorizo chilli with cornbread, but I think more leftover chicken with buttered and minted potatoes and veggies. I also need to make the stock from the chicken carcass after Guides.

Wednesday: I may take chicken salad with me to save me from hotel food.

Friday: I'm meeting a friend to go out, but as I'll be coming straight into London and out with her I'm not sure what I'll get to eat.

Saturday: There's every possibility that I'm going to be flat out exhausted on Saturday - yesterday I looked and felt dreadful, and the housework alone wiped me out, so we're going to see - if I'm shattered, I'll probably do the chilli and we'll watch trashy tv/ DVDs but if not we're going to the theatre. Ghost and Rock of Ages are on my shortlist. Mark is going to kill me if we end up with tickets to see Ghost.

Sunday: I honestly don't know. Leftover chilli maybe?

Lunches for me will be chicken salad, and lots of fruit.
Breakfasts - well I'm still trying to finish up the neverending box of the world's dullest museli, but should I ever finish that then it's back to fruit with Total Greek yoghurt and a little bit of raw honey. Which is officially my favourite breakfast. Ever.

Which takes us into next week - thankfully a week at home.