Baby finger food: Potato, Cheese and Veggies Bun

Let me introduce a cool baby product from Japan: freeze dried baby food ingredients.   

A baby food company Wako-Do offers varieties of freeze dried, pureed fresh food such as liver+veggies (left), cod (middle) and spinach (right) in a small cube size. To prepare, just dissolve with a tea spoon of hot water per cube. This helps to make varieties of baby dishes with balanced nutrition.

This is a recipe created by a Japanese mom:

 Potato, Cheese and Veggies Bun.

One of the award winning recipes in the Wako-do baby food recipe competition

http://community.wakodo.co.jp/community/babyfood/recipe_detail/?RECIPE_ID=434

Ingredients 

• 1 Middle sized potato
• 1/3 of middle sized carrot
• 4-5 leaves of baby spinach (instead, I used the freeze dried spinach cubes)
• 4 table spoons of corn flour (or potato flour)
• 1 table spoon of plain flour
• 2 table spoons of cheese (I used Halloumi)
• 1 table spoon of parmesan cheese

Direction

1. Boil the carrot (and spinach) into tender then cut them and the cheese into small pieces. 

2. Slice the potato into 1cm and put into a pan. Fill the water till it covers the potato then heat up. 

3. Once they get tender, drain the water and keep heating for 30 seconds to reduce the extra moisture.

4. Mush the potato and knead with your hand as well as the flours and two different types of cheese till the dough became tender and smooth like earlobe (it'll take only 30-40 seconds).

5. Split the dough into two and mix with the spinach and the carrot respectively.

6. Divide the each dough into 3-6 pieces and roll up into a round shape. Place them over a baking sheet while heat up the oven into 180C.

7. Cook the buns for 15-20 mins to serve.

Total cost: 0.6 pound (40p for 1 baking potato, 20p for the rest of the stuff)

Total time to prepare: 35-40 mins

Deep-fried Wedges of Jerusalem Artichoke

Happy New Year for 2014!! 

Sorry for the slow update as we were in Japan until last week. 

Before introducing the Japanese things, let me do the one that we had last year.

We had the lamb from Ginger Pig as promising!! 

The special thing was the side dish, deep fried Jerusalem Artichoke!! 
Jerusalem Artichoke 

Ingredients:

• Some pieces of Jerusalem Artichokes
• Vegetable oil
• Sea salt

Directions:

1. Cut Jerusalem Artichokes into wedges.

2. Pour vegetable oil into a large frying pan for 1cm depth and heat up in low temperature for 3-4 mints. Once the pan is ready, put the pieces of Jerusalem Artichoke to deepfry for 4-5 mints in medium temperature.

3. Once the pieces of artichoke became tender and turn into gold, put them on the kitchen paper to drain the extra oil. 

4. Serve them with pinches of salt and black pepper.

Total cost: around 2 pounds for 8-10 pieces of wonderful Jerusalem Artichoke
Total time to prepare: around 10 mins