Julie Hasson: So the first recipe I am going to look at is, just simply Broccoli, Cauliflower and Potato Puree. It has lots of some different uses; I will tell you about it as we go along. But they -- the ingredients themselves have chosen, because they all are really handy foods for your child, because they are really good tasteful. Well the potatoes are really good source food a Vitamin B3, also known as Niacin. A niacin is really important to help your body create the human serotonin. And serotonin itself is what we call a happy hormone and it keeps us smiling. So potatoes are good for keeping your soul in a good mood. Cauliflower, as well as Vitamin C it’s a really good source of folic acid. But the super food, the super ingredient of this recipe is broccoli. Broccoli is known only as a good source of Vitamin C and folic acid, but it’s also are very rich in Vitamin K, which you need for really good quality blood but also magnesium and calcium, and calcium is very important for bones and general development. Broccoli is also thought to have antiviral and antibacterial properties, so when your little ones starting to go to a day nursery and picking up these bugs, reach for the broccoli because it really does help boost their immune system.

Lets get on with the puree. What I’ve got here is already washed and prepared one potato, cauliflower, and broccoli. And you just simply wash it, and put it into small florets. If you haven’t got a food processor, then you can just grate the potato and chop the cauliflower and Broccoli as small as you can, but I am going to whisk it through this food processor, because obviously time is a bit precious for all of us. So with this vegetable puree, we want to make sure that the water is boiling before we put it in. You do that because it actually not only keeps it looking nice and bright in color but actually helps keep the vitamins rather than them being destroyed in the cooking process. Don’t worry if you have a good enough water in that because you can always boil the cup and add a little bit more boiling water. Then I bring this up to the boil and down to a simmer. I keep this quite dry because vitamin C is actually water-soluble vitamin, and therefore the juices that come out of it whether would way to find the vitamin c, so by doing it this way you blaze in with the water that is cooking in and keep all the goodness in as well.

Then top this up with a little bit more boiling water. What you’re trying to do is make it, so the ingredients are just slightly covered, but not swimming on water. So bring it up the boil then down to a simmer, and leave it simmering for just 10 minutes. We recently grated the ingredients before we put it in here, it’s because if you could grate wheat flour to broccoli and cauliflower, the outside is really cooked before the inside is, and that’s true of any of the ingredients that you might use in a puree at this stage. If you could grate the gloms in, you’ll end up over cooked on the outside, and under cooked on the inside. There’s a good reason I choose this recipe, to encourage your children to eat more vegetables, it’s not just because it’s been find that it’s really important that your child gets a taste of vegetables in the early days. But broccoli is a really sweet vegetable, whereas some of the green vegetables tend to have quite a bitterness about them. So for a little one, this has still got a little bit too much texture in, so what we want to do is just give in other quick blaze with the hand blender. So we’ll just take it off the heat, so we don’t splash ourselves with some hot puree.

And you want to toss it with a hand mixture. You’re not trying to make a smooth puree, you’re just trying make it a little bit easier for your little ones to digest. As I am blending, I am just looking to see if there’s larger florets, then I am going to just mix -- have a look with a teaspoon. And of course, this is ready to serve to your little one straight way once it’s cooled to the right temperature for your baby. But because it’s such a useful puree, really it’s worth freezing some because you could of course freeze into the little ice cube trays, but that you quite use, quite a lot of cubes as your babies getting a little bit older. So these little containers of about 60 gram is perfect. And as we do puree, you want to allow them to cool a little bit before you put them straight in the freezer. And that’s because if your put hot food straight into the freezer, it’ll start defrost everything else around it, which obviously is not what you’re trying to do.

The one thing I love about this is container is that, you can just warm them up, you can heat them in the microwave or heat them in a pan of boiling water. So you can warm it up that way. And then serve those as the little dips for your child to dip veg sticks or chicken sticks in. This is broccoli cauliflower and potato puree, a great way to give your child food for the day.