People who aren’t you and your babies are the worst
Parenting sometimes involves being able to make food that will cook and cooldown within 10 minutes, but which isn’t just mushed something on toast. Non-parents (and grandparents) get very judge-y when they see babies eating sludge on toast, so you need something that’s as fast as toast but crucially looks like you thought about it for ages. Thankfully the “world food” section of any supermarket is ready for you.
Ingredients (to feed twins):
Udon noodles – 1 packet
Tamarind – A squirt and a tiny squirt
Cooking Oil – a teaspoon or so
Egg yolk – 1
Frozen Crushed ginger – 1 cube
Black sesame seeds – 1 pinch
Method:
Put the oil into a medium to large frying pan or wok (if grandparents are actually watching you make the dish so you need to up the pretence that this is Real Food). Stick it on the hob.
Throw in the cube of frozen ginger and move it around enough to melt and fall apart.
Squidge the udon while they’re still in the packet, then rip it open and chuck them in. Stir around.
Once they loosen up squirt in the tamarind, mix thoroughly then add 25ml of water.
Cook until you think it looks like food, then add the egg yolk (while still on the hob) and stir through thoroughly because we don’t give babies raw egg.
Plate up. Add sesame seeds on top so you look like you give a damn.
Extra bonus is you get to see the sesame seeds in a nappy later and go “what an excellent cook I am these kids ate everything and don’t just live off formula and ricecakes.”
These will take at least as long as you take to drink a glass of wine for the babies to eat. Cleanup will be minimal but hilarious. The noodles wriggle away when you try and grab them!
The Secrets:
This dish is basically about making as much flavour as possible stick to something babies can hold and get into their mouths without using the flavours we want to use like SALT because these are only for grownups.
Udon – you can get these in Asda. Probably even Morrison’s. They’re 60p a packet. Babies love to grab them like they are delicious fat worms and devour their steaming corpses. Skinny noodles slip through babies’ hands which is fine if you actually just want them to live off the sauce they can lick off their hands but THAT IS NOT A WEANING STRATEGY. They cook in two minutes because they’re already wet? Moist? Plump? I don’t know the right term for “not-dry” in this instance.
Ginger – buy this from the “world foods” section of Asda or Morrison’s. Whatever you do don’t buy it in Waitrose who think it’s a luxury item that English people invented last week rather than a staple of everywhere else in the world that’s been around for ages. It’s about 79p for 20 cubes (or £4.99 for about 3 cubes in Waitrose). You can just grate ginger instead but oops it took too long the episode of Hey Duggee finished and now everyone’s screaming wanting their food. But all you have is grated ginger. You can swap the ginger out for garlic (also frozen) for a bit of variety if you make this as often as I do.
Tamarind sauce – it’s in the aisle of your local convenience store that you don’t go down because you only go in for beer and a wispa. It doesn’t have salt in, which is excellent news for parents. Don’t try it neat off a spoon you won’t like it.
Sesame seeds – use white ones when you make this again and people will think it’s a different dish. Or use japanese furikake seasoning which does an even better job of looking fancy without adding much salt.
How to make a grown up version:
Double everything.
Take half the noodles out of the pan before you add the egg yolk. Put them into a fancy breakable parent bowl. Put a whole unbroken egg yolk on top because you are going to have fun smooshing that into your noodles at the table. Add a few dashes of maggi seasoning (like a super-concentrated soy sauce). Add chili if you like. Eat with chopsticks and see if you can get through the portion faster than your kids.
Finish the other half of the noodles as before and give to ungrateful twins.
Geek of Chaos 
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