Claire McDonald - Top Bananas! : the Best Ever Family Recipes from Mumsnet.

This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2014

Text copyright Mumsnet Limited 2014
Photography copyright Jill Mead 2014

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Bloomsbury Publishing, London,
New Delhi, New York and Sydney

ePub: 978 1 4088 5048 0

All rights reserved You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Mumsnet project editor: Catherine Hanly

Project editor: Lucy Bannell

Photography: Jill Mead

Food stylist: Bianca Nice

Props stylist: Polly Webb-Wilson

Please note that Maltesers is a trademark of Mars, Incorporated. Pom-Bears is a trademark of Intersnack. Boursin is a trademark of Bel Brands USA. Ritz Crackers is a trademark of Mondelz International. Jacobs Crackers is a trademark of the Jacob Fruitfield Food Group. Marmite is a trademark of the Unilever Group. Flake is a trademark of Mondelz International. Tupperware is a trademark of Tupperware Brands.

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Foreword

by Justine Roberts

Mumsnet founder and CEO

Our idea of what constitutes good mothering is intrinsically bound up with food. As soon as your offspring emerges, it is summarily weighed, measured and ranked by centile and that centile chart, updated with weekly results and critical analysis from expert commentators, can quickly come to feel like an unforgiving yardstick of success. From the very first, parents are rudely awakened to their role as fierce competitors in the nutrition league.

Even if you get off to a flying start when your wee bairn graduates from milk to more substantial fare, theres no room for complacency. Manys the six-month-old who has greedily gobbled down bowlfuls of pured courgette, or snaffled fistfuls of devilled olives from your plate, only for their conservative palate to kick in and catch you off-guard down the line. Before you know where you are, your repertoire of acceptable meals has shrunk to nothing more than fish fingers, chips and rice-cake sandwiches.

Old Ben Franklin had a point when he said Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.

I say, Better that they eat them than scream No! and chuck them across the room.

And so it is that you find yourself pressing lumps of mild Cheddar into Hula Hoops in a desperate attempt to crowbar at least some protein into themor hissing at your partner, Remember that its turkey youre eating, not chicken, because your child announced that they hate chicken the day before.

How, you might ask yourself, did you get here? Children sense desperation. No matter whether you manage, by dint of extraordinary willpower and hours of practice in front of the mirror, to keep your voice low and your brow unfurrowed as you suggest that they arent in fact allergic to all meats, fish, vegetables and fruits they can smell it. So you take the path of least resistance, and reach for the fish fingers again.

Any of this ringing bells? Then this book is for you. Its brimful of recipes that have triumphed in the war against recalcitrant tastebuds and a deep scepticism of all things green; that have succeeded in halting the relentless march of spaghetti hoops and have allowed herbs, vegetables and, yes, even shellfish to creep (not literally) back on to the family dinner plate. Albeit often heavily disguised as tomato soup or pasta sauce.

Whats more, these recipes are easy to make really easy and they dont cost the earth. You wont need to buy mountains of kitchen equipment to cook them, nor have to attend an advanced pastry-making course, nor source rare ingredients from far-flung corners of the world.

We are not worshipping at the altar of aduki beans and high tech water baths. Those are for the people with a little more time on their hands.

These are recipes that you can actually cook. They are healthier, cheaper and much more appetising than ready meals. Youll like them, and your family will, too. And if by chance they dont, you wont be rendered an insane screaming banshee because youve spent 24 hours sourcing truffle oil from remote uplands of Uzbekistan and then another two hours grating nutmeg.

How can we be so sure youll like this cooking? Market research. Over the years, Mumsnet has grown into a repository of sure-fire recipes, each tried and tested by the fussiest of fussy eaters. And so the archives contain thousands to pick from and weve picked the very best.

Of course we needed a professional eye to keep all the quantities correct and the instructions clear. Step forward the Crumbs sisters. Claire and Lucy, journalists both, are, in their own words, two sisters who like cooking and love eating. After having children (four between them) they set up the Crumbs Food blog as a way of inspiring us to cook healthy, tasty, quick meals for our families. So neatly did their philosophy We give a two-breadstick salute to long ingredient lists and say hellooo to the culinary shortcut tally with our own, that a partnership seemed more or less preordained. Together with a wonderful group of volunteer Mumsnetters, the Crumbs have tested and retested every one of the recipes that appear in the book youre holding in your hands.

Cooking may become more complicated when children are around; your choice of ingredients might be more limited; your available hours curtailed. But it can also become more rewarding and satisfying and, if you dont mind the odd spillage, infinitely more fun. Eating a meal together whether thats a three-course feast, pasta and pesto, or a plate of lopsided fairy cakes you spent the afternoon cobbling together is cited on Mumsnet over and again as one of the great pleasures of family life. We hope that this book will help with that.

One final thought, courtesy of Nora Ephron, who sums everything up nicely, I think: I have made a lot of mistakes and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.

Introduction

This isnt just a cookbook for you. It is a cookbook by you. We have spent the last four years, on our Crumbs Food blog and YouTube channel, talking to mums (and dads) about the challenges of family cooking. So when Mumsnet asked us to write a book about just that, using all the wonderful recipes and tips shared on their website, we jumped at the chance. Where better to look for such recipes than Mumsnet? Its food section is a library of thousands of recipes created by busy parents. It is family food gold.

We have four children between us and, although we love being mums, we still havent quite mastered all the stuff that comes with it: the washing, the tidying, the continual running up and down stairs, not to mention the cooking. Before having children, we were keen home cooks who enjoyed rustling up three-course dinners and following complicated Sunday supplement recipes, but cooking soon lost its gloss amid the monotony of making three meals a day for a hungry and often unappreciative family. It became a chore, not a pleasure. Sound familiar?