Creative potato cakes - fun with food!

After reading Julia's potato recipe posts on her Free From recipe blog Alimentary Bites a few weeks back, I must have made potato cakes/farls six times since then. Never before have my twins willingly eaten (and more impressively, ENJOYED) potato before, other than chips. Memories of choking were hard to shift, potato is a sticky food which children with reflux can find difficult to swallow, and scary to reflux back up. But there is something about potato cakes that is reminiscent of chips, which as long as they are not too soggy they have always been able to eat safely and enjoy.

I'm not going to reproduce Julia's recipe, you must visit her Blog to find out how to make them but they only contain potato, or possibly another flour of your choice in addition. I sometimes add a little "Pure" margarine but this is optional.

Since the mixture the recipe creates is so easy to roll and shape, as well as the gnocchi I have yet to try, you can cut it into shapes. So today, we got creative!

The pizza has some of the Redwood Cheezly soya free cheese on the top, which I cut into chunks and freeze on opening, then lift out and grate frozen as required or take a wedge at a time out for the fridge - otherwise it tends to go bad very quickly.

For the bunnies, I used carrot strips for the whiskers, and raisins cut in half (watch your fingers!) for the eyes. I experimented with my stove-top griddle to try and burn on eyes etc too.

These potato cakes have revolutionised our lunch boxes too - they are fine cold and make a lovely change from sandwiches. Today, I also added some of the protein powder I wrote about before to make them a very healthy cold snack.

Duck breasts with Pomegranate and Mint

A great Christmas recipe with lots of flavour!

Ideal if you are having a dinner party and need to provide a free from meal which looks stunning and so simple to cook, or if you have older children on exclusion diets.

Ingredients:-

4 duck breasts
200g rocket,
watercress and salad chard (Possibly chinese leaves?)
1 Pomegranate (on rotation)
1 small bunch or packet mint ( if the kids don't like mint you could use chives)

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 220/gas mark 7
Heat a flameproof, oven proof pan on the hob, and then sear the duck skin side down for a minute or so over the high heat. (Remove the skin if not tolerated)
Turn the duck breast over then place in oven for about 15 mins.
Remove the duck breasts from the oven and sit them on a carving board to rest.
Whilst the duck is resting line your meat plate with the salad leaves. Slice the duck breast very thinly on the diagonal and lay on the salad lined dish, pouring any meat juices over them as you go.
Halve the pomegranate and then bash out the seeds from one half to garnish the duck slices.
Squeeze some of the juice from the other half, just by hand over the duck as well.
Sprinkle with mint leaves or chives.

Serve it with mini home made roast potatoes or your choice of potato, rice or pasta.