James and Paul's Mediterranean Halloumi Traybake

James and Paul’s Mediterranean Halloumi Traybake

James and Paul Anderson

Featuring:

Courgette

Pulses

Tomato

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

Serves: 4

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 45 mins

Ingredients:

8 vegetarian sausages

1 onion, diced

2 courgettes, diced

4 tomatoes, diced

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp ground turmeric

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 × 400g (14oz) tin of chickpeas, drained

200g (7oz) halloumi cheese, sliced

1 tbsp chopped fresh basil

Veg Portions / Serving: 3

TwoChubbyCubs Fast and Filing: 100 Delicious Slimming Recipes by James and Paul Anderson, published by Yellow Kite

Method:

Heat the grill to medium-high.
Brown the sausages under the grill, turning regularly, then set aside to cool and slice (don’t worry if they’re not cooked all the way through).
Heat an ovenproof pan over a medium-high heat and spray it with a little oil.
Add the onion to the pan and cook for a few minutes, then add the sliced sausages and cook for a few minutes more.
Add the courgettes and tomatoes to the pan, along with the salt, turmeric, cumin, cayenne pepper and chickpeas.
Simmer over a medium-high heat for 20 minutes. Meanwhile heat the grill to medium-high again. Lay the sliced halloumi on top of the mix and place under the grill for a few minutes until golden. Sprinkle with the chopped basil and serve.

Smart swap

If you’re partial to a meatier sausage, pork ones work well instead of veggie ones.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

Let the kids help you carefully add items to the pan and lay the halloumi on top. Get them sprinkling the basil over at the end.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

James and Paul Anderson

James and Paul Anderson are the duo behind the enormously successful slimming blog @twochubbycubs, which has over half a million online fans. They lost 18 stone between them and went on to share their journey with the world. Their tasty, easy recipes prove that it is possible to lose weight without sacrificing your soul and you can actually have a laugh whilst you're at it. Their first cookbook became an instant Sunday Times bestseller, an Irish bestseller and one of the most popular cookbooks of 2020, with over 3500 5* reviews.

twochubbycubs.com/

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