Baked treasure parcels

There’s a sound we hear every day in our house, usually about half an hour before dinnertime. It’s a dreadful scraping that, according to every horror film, should signify something bad. But this sound makes my heart sing as it’s my youngest pulling a chair across the floor, accompanied by ‘Maxi help Mummy?’ One day, little Max will grow up and I will be without my very messy, slightly unpredictable and shouty sous chef.

This is one of his favourites and is a great way to get any child excited about eating fish and vegetables. The bonus is that it’s not expensive to make. To make things even cheaper, I buy fish fillets on offer, cut them into child-size portions and bag them up individually for the freezer. Just defrost before you use them.

INGREDIENTS

1 teaspoon olive oil

50 g piece fresh fish, like salmon or coley

a wedge lemon

vegetables of your toddler’s choice, thinly sliced

ground black pepper, (optional)

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Take an A4-sized piece of foil. Ask your little one to measure out the oil onto the foil or help them if they find this difficult. Place the fish in the middle of the foil and squeeze over the lemon. Choose vegetables together from the fridge or larder – we tend to discuss each one’s colour, texture and flavour – and wash and trim them.

Place the prepared vegetables on top of the fish and sprinkle over a little pepper. Pull the foil together to create a parcel, trying not to squash the package too much as it needs a bit of air to circulate. Place on a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes until the fish is firm and cooked through. Serve the contents of the parcel with bread to dip in the juices or some cous cous.

One of Max’s and Charlie’s favourite combinations is coley, thinly sliced carrots, frozen peas and a few florets of broccoli.

IDEAS FOR LEMON

Place wedges on a greaseproof paper-lined tray, freeze and bag up individually for use in a lemonade or G&T, to add a refreshing citrus hit. Or squeeze some lemon into a mug, add a slice of fresh ginger and drink first thing. Or if your taps are worse for wear, attach a halved lemon to the end of the tap using an elastic band and leave overnight for a chemical-free limescale remover.

#normalmum #fish #salmon #coley #vegetables #lemon