Chiappa Emanuela - Baby at the table: a 3-step guide to weaning the Italian way

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Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Copyright Michela and Emanuela Chiappa, 2016

Photographs copyright Danielle Wood, 2016

Designed and typeset by Jenni Dennis

Photographs Laura Edwards, 2014.

Used with the permission of Red Magazine.

The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted

Cover photographs Danielle Wood

ISBN: 978-1-405-92398-9

Italians live to eat, and this is certainly how weve been raised. We were in the kitchen from birth, eating and tasting everything. We were always involved in some way, whether it was simply interacting socially while our mum cooked, making lots of mess with flour and eggs, or helping out with the meals when we were a bit older.

Fiamma:2 years old. Loves fresh ravioli in brodo, kiwi (with the skin on), watermelon, salmon and nuts. Does not like cherry tomatoes, but will devour raspberries at lightning speed.

Those of you who know me and my sisters, Emi and Romina, will be aware that we have been raised in a large Italian community in South Wales. Brought up in an Italian brood, we lived next door to our uncle, aunt, cousins and grandparents, so our lives have been hugely influenced by both the Italian and the British ways of living, and our upbringing has been focused on family and food.

Serafina:7 months. Mad about beetroot and anything she can get her teeth into (a dried apricot or pineapple core will keep her entertained for at least 20 minutes!).

Emi and I have recently become first-time mums. Fiamma was two years old when I gave birth to Serafina, and Emi added another girl to the clan when she had Fiorenza.

Fiorenza:10 months. A true carnivore add any meat to a pure and she will devour it in seconds. Loves blueberries and sweetcorn, but refuses to eat beetroot [no matter how disguised it is in food].

It has been our mission to retain as many Italian values and traditions as possible and to encourage our children to become interested in food from the start. We cherish any recipes and tips our mum raised us on and want to pass them on to you to make weaning your baby and cooking for the family simple and practical.

Every parent will be able to live by this philosophy, no matter how little time they have. However, we know its easy to make excuses. Maybe you find yourself saying:

I just dont have the time to cook fresh food every day.

My kids are picky and I cant get them to eat the same meals as us.

Im too tired to cook. I forgot to make it to the shops, so the kids will have to make do.

If so, this book is for you!

Yes, our lives today are busier. We are a society of mega multi-taskers and we all strive to be high fliers in every aspect of life; we want the successful career alongside the dream partner and a great social life, while juggling a family and being a textbook parent. But the reality is often different, and this means that cooking can be side-tracked in favour of supermarket sweeps and a quick-fix microwave meal or healthy and expensive organic meal deals.

Ive spoken to mums who tell me that they were obsessed with cooking fresh and delicious meals for their firstborn, but now that they have more kids they make do, or cook the same things over and over again, as they cant handle tantrums or picky eaters.

Food and family should be at the heart of what we do. Eating well is not just important for our health, its what makes the world go round. In our opinion, this food education should start from birth.

We should stop treating kids differently.

Why cant a six-year-old enjoy scallops or fresh porcini with garlic?

Why should they be given a kids meal?

As for cooking three different meals at three different times for babies, kids and adults stop right there! Yes, there could be reasons why families think thats easier to manage, but the knock-on effect of this will be felt later in life.

So what to do? How can we get baby weaned and eating fresh meals from scratch, while sitting at the table with the rest of the family, in as little time as possible?

Thats where Baby at the Table comes in. Emi and I have put all our experiences and recipes into this book, in order to help any parent who wants to try to cook fresh family meals every day while juggling all those other balls that get thrown at them.

My sisters and I were brought up in the Welsh valleys, in an Italian household in which our mum and grandmother were housewives. The focus was providing food for the family, and it centred around the philosophy of one family, one meal.

We, on the other hand, are not housewives and have busy lives centred around our careers. However, having had such strong values instilled in us, we have been determined to continue this way of life alongside our careers. So we started adapting traditional recipes and methods in order that we can still cook and eat like Italians, while juggling the other roles we have taken on.

Our aim is to share our experiences, tips and recipes in order to help any busy parent cook delicious meals for the whole family. I believe that if you start when your children are young (as early as the weaning stage), you can prevent them turning into picky eaters down the line and raise them to appreciate and value good food.

The following pages contain some of the ideas that have worked for Emi and me, giving you a simple but practical guide to weaning. Using the ABC Weaning Steps (see ), by the age of 1 your baby should be eating a version of the same meal you create for your family.

The majority of the recipes have a preparation time of less than 15 minutes do-able for even the time-poor parent.

We have included all our favourite family recipes and tweaked them so most of them have a preparation time of less than 15 minutes. Weve also included some clever tips and tricks to help you out along the way.

We want to help busy parents produce simple, nutritious meals around a busy schedule and encourage their babies to eat healthy, home-cooked food.