Female Speaker: First things first. Well, everyone liking the kitchen for yourself you’re now dealing with your baby’s first food. So it’s time to step up them up a little bit on hygiene. So let’s start with washing our hands. I was also was thinking about just making sure that everything is spotlessly clean. And the good way to do that, if you got a dishwasher, put your dishwasher on the hotter setting, and everything you use, just run in the dishwasher. If you don’t have a dishwasher then while you’re washing up, make sure that you get some -- you have to get some rubber gloves, and make sure that water is really, really hot, and allow everything to air-dry. It’s a great way to make sure that everything is just clean.

So we do the peel at this stage. The reason that we peel is that now I am scouring a lot of the roughages, although roughage is good when you’re old, babies find roughage too much for their little intestines. It’s quite coarse roughage as the name suggests. It will basically cool some irritation on the intestines. So always peel at this stage. Then as your baby comes up to around about the age of 10 months or a year, then you need to worry less about peel.

Once it’s peeled, cut the peel into quarters so you can cut out the hard-core center. It’s the same principle whether you’re doing apples or pears; some babies take apples hard, just take the pears as their first food. So you just cut out the middle core and then once you’ve taken the hard core out, cut them into really small bits. You’ll see that whether I am making a fruit puree or a vegetable puree, one of the things I am really keen on is cut it down into really small bits to stop with. This means that when you’re cooking it, it’ll cook really quickly, the middle will cook a lot quicker, then if you put a great big large pieces in, I am not one of those professional cooks, I do the same way as you do at home, just as quick in roughage, it came into nice small bits.

Then once it’s chopped, you simply put it into a small sauce pan. You can also steam a lot of fruits and vegetables, and I am big fan or steaming. I am going to show you how to do that with some of the other ingredients. But the thing is, as for some pears, the pan method is really simple and really good. To this, I am just going to add a desert spoon of water. I am using water as being boiled because if your baby is under six months, really I would recommend that any water that you give your baby has been boiled rather than just straight from the tap.

Once the baby is over six months then tap water is just fine. Then cook it on a gentle heat. So you don’t bring it up to a vicious burn to start with, just a gentle heat, so that as the fruit starts to cook down, you get a bit more juice off it. Then you want it to bring up to a simmer and cook it for just ten minutes.

I know it sounds really simple but even the most foodie parents find weaning a little bit daunting to start with. So what you’re doing is cooking down pure pears to smooth puree. Whether you’re cooking with apples or pears, particularly with you using desert apples, you’ll find they hold their shapes while they cooked, but they look so solid, the best way to taste is you just take a little bit, and one pear, take a little teaspoon and push it, if you can catch it on a spoon, and you’ll see that it soon squishes down to a nice smooth softness. So we’re ready.

So the pears are cooked. We now need this into a smooth puree. And the old fashioned way of doing is just squeeze it through a sieve, a very fine metal sieve at the back of the spoon, which you are welcome to do but actually I think time is a little bit too precious. So one of the things that a lot of people reach for is a hand blender. Now this, the hand blender with this kind of attachment gives you an okay puree at this stage because your baby is only have hard milk. Any texture is a little bit of a surprise to them. So you want to get it as smooth as possible. So instead, get rid of this bit and invest in a hand blender that has a herb chopping attachment, like this at the bottom of it.

Pour the puree into the chopping attachment. You aren’t need necessarily all of the juice and so just make sure you get the solids rather than the juice at this point. You can always add a little bit of more juice at the end. Put the lid on and give it a blitz. Now I am chosen to use pears because I actually blitz time really quickly and may be smoothly, when you do some of the more interesting of harder vegetables, they will actually take a little bit long to blitz time. So I am looking for to see if there’s any little bit left, that’s fine. This is a very smooth simple puree that we got here. Now you can either chose to serve this a little bit to a baby now, only thing is allow them to cool. But a little bit of preparation means you got something for a few days time. So the best thing to do I think is to freeze them.

So what we’re doing is just pouring a little bit into each of these keeps, they have hundred of lines, which will tally the fan. When things freeze, they expand a bit, so it stops the lid from popping off. And when they are lot up to the lines of about 30 grams and that will be plenty for the first few tastes, hungry babies would like a little bit more than that before too long. So what you’re not trying to do in the first stage of weaning is give your baby a great big full meal. What you’re doing if you think about it this way is you’re just giving the baby a taste of the new foods and new tastes.

So all my first fruit puree is always a single variety puree, just pure ingredients, just pure pears, pure carrots, sweet potato and so on. You shouldn’t put the whole thing straight into the freezer, so put the lids on and then allow them to cool in the bottom in the fridge just to cool off before putting in the freezer. And in your own freezer, as long as you made choice, you set the temperature to at least minus 18; it’ll be fine for up to three months.