Cooking for children

Appears in

Published 2013

About

I’m not a nutritionist or dietitian. Thank God, because the vast majority talk crap. There are good ones, though, sensible and pragmatic.

Once my daughter Lola moved onto solid food, at around five months, I panicked. I couldn’t use salt, or spice, or chilli, the basis of most things I cook. But I took recipes from Annabel Karmel (someone I do rate) and Mark Hix’s Eat Up: Food for Children of All Ages (Fourth Estate, 2003) and adapted them as time went on.

For me, fresh food always best. You don’t want any salt in the first year or so – and keep it low after that. But anything is better than those dreary ready-made pots. However posh or organic or free-range they profess to be, they all taste exactly the same: over-sweet and deathly dull.