Kids Dish

Ingredients:
Leftover mince (I used pork)
Handful of random grated vegetable and/or finely chopped herb (I used carrot & fresh dill)
Large edible green leaves (I used an unnamed dark green cabbage from my mother’s garden & some sad looking giant bok choy)
A spoonful of something sweet and/or spicy (I used mango chutney)
1 egg (possibly optional)

Mix the grated/chopped vegetable matter, the egg & the sweet/spicy into the mince. Stir a bit.

Wash the green leaves and slice off any excessively stalky or nibbled bits.

Place a forkful of mince in the centre of a leaf and wrap or roll the leaf around it to make a parcel. Place parcel seam-side down in a steamer. Repeat until you have run out of ingredients or room in your steamer.

Steam the parcels for a good 15-20 minutes or until leaves are seriously shiny & moist looking. Take top one off the pile & eat it to check if it is done. Serve with rice & sauce of choice (I drizzled a little soy & sushi vinegar over them - the recipe I got the basics of this from used a homemade tomato sauce but that seemed unnecessarily fiddly).

Tell your child that they are “sausage.”

The genius of these is that even if the small child peels off the suspicious green wrapper to get at the sausagy inside, they are still eating vegetable matter because you have masterfully packed the mince with vegetably goodness!

Sigh deeply as child picks a scrap of sausage out of parcels, sniffs it, then ignores beautiful parcels in favour of just eating a bowl of rice for dinner.

Get up false hopes as child brings small place of “sausage” over to you, and looks vaguely interested in the concept of eating it in your presence.

Have hopes dashes as child tries green wrapping, spits it out, eats a touch of mince, wrinkles up nose and pronounces it “yukky sausage.”

When child has gone to bed, weep quietly to self and eat dessert.

The adults liked them, at least. I’ve heard of cabbage rolls & stuffed cabbage before, but could never imagine how to actually cook them until spotting a recent recipe that clearly stated one should place them seam down in a steamer. Then it all fell into place…

PS: My lovely bento supplies have arrived, but I promised to save them for Christmas. Don’t - think - I - can - wait. Waahhh!