Gourmet Dinner Service

Why it’s good for mums
You can be flexible with what vegetables you add as the sour cream helps disguise the vegetables and the sour cream sauce is a favourite with kids. If your kids won’t eat meat/pasta with sauce then this isn’t for you.

Why it’s good for kids
Kids like food that comes in interesting shapes and sizes so we’ve created silly pasta for this meal.

Ingredients

Method

500 gm fillet steak, thinly sliced
1.5 tbs flour
2 tsp paprika
Salt + pepper
3 tbs olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
200g button mushrooms
2 zucchini, grated
¼ cup sherry
250 mls beef stock
200 mls sour cream
Thyme (optional)

Combine flour, paprika, salt + pepper.
Coat the meat in the flour mixture
Heat 2 tbs oil in frypan and saute meat in 2 batches to seer meat. Remove.
Heat remaining oil in pan and fry onion and mushrooms until soft
Add garlic and cook 1 minute
Add zucchini, stock and sherry and simmer for 8 minutes
Return meat to pan and stir in sour cream and thyme.
Serve with silly shape pasta

2. TIPS FOR MUM

Busy Mums
Stroganoff freezes well so make double. Remove the batch to be frozen as soon as the meat is returned to the pan. This will prevent the meat from being overcooked.

Tips
Silly shaped pasta is just cooking 3-4 different shaped pasta together.

Some children only have to look at the meal to decide that it is ‘yucky’. If they recognise vegetables they may eat them so try and keep their shape after cooking ie button mushrooms. If they are still too big just cut them in half. Kids often don’t like the look of cooked sliced mushrooms as they leak juice and are a dark brown colour.

Hiding vegetables
Zucchini is a good ‘hiding’ vegetable as the whiteness of the zucchini blends into the sauce. If you are hiding the zucchini, peel before grating. I don’t have any tips for hiding the mushrooms except for wishful thinking that the sauce might also hide them.

3. MAKING IT FUN

Creating a Scene
Older kids
This is a great one for putting in the middle and letting them serve themselves. Have the beef and pasta in separate serving bowls and let the kids use tongs to serve themselves and you. Psychologically this allows the kids to set their own portion size compared to when you put a plate in front of them and they think I have to eat all of this.

Younger Kids
Keep the meat separate and don’t add back in at step 7. Serve the silly shape pasta in a bowl and tip over the sauce. The place the beef strips so they look like they are coming out of the swamp.

Game Time
What is it? - Put a kitchen item in an oven mitt and pass it around for everyone to guess what’s inside. To be eligible to touch the mitt they must have eaten a mouthful of food. The winner gets to choose the next item.

Hands on

Tipping flour, paprika, salt + pepper into bag
Toss meat in bag, coating it with the flour mixture
Picking off the thyme leaves

4. ADULT FRIENDLY

2nd sitting

Cook red cabbage saute
Cook pasta
Reheat stroganoff on stove

Spice it up

Red cabbage sauté. Cook red cabbage in 2 tbsp olive oil until it has softened. Combine with approx 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.