My daughter likes pasta and often asks to have it for lunch or dinner. She is not however great with the vegetables if she can actually identify what is in the sauce. I am not sure why as many of them she would happily eat if they were served separately with something else. However she will happily eat it if it has all been whizzed up, which my means we both end up happy!
She is three and a half and I was surprised at how much of this she did herself. I gave her a pretty blunt knife to cut up the veggies and supervised her carefully but she was able to cut up everything herself bar the onion which I did as they can slip and I wanted to avoid accidents. It did take a very long time, but she persevered and OK the chopped vegetables were not in nice even pieces but if you are going to whizz it up at the end it really doesn’t matter, does it?
We made this for lunch when her cousin was coming round to play and they both lapped it up. It gave her a huge sense of achievement and it was the first thing she told her brothers when they got home from school.
Ingredients
1 onion chopped
2 courgettes chopped
2 large carrots chopped
1 red pepper chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped
2 400 g cans of tomatoes
1 tsp paprika
splash of white wine vinegar
Method
- Carefully supervise your child to cut up the vegetables.
Chopping courgette
Peeling carrot
Chopping carrot
Chopping pepper - Fry the onion and the garlic until translucent.
- Add the other vegetables and cook until they start to caramelize.
- Add the tomatoes, paprika and white wine vinegar and cook for 20 minutes until the vegetables are soft but retain some bite.
- Blitz until smooth.
- Serve with pasta and cheese on top.
ChilternEats 