Rachel Green
Rachel Green is an award-winning chef, local food campaigner, food stylist and author. Her family have been farming in Lincolnshire for 14 generations and she is the chef ambassador for the Yes Peas! campaign.
Rachel’s Green Baked Eggs with Leeks and Peas
Rachel Green
Effort:
Complexity:
Cost:
Serves: 2
Prep time: 5 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Ingredients:
30g butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 leeks, washed, trimmed and thinly sliced
Bunch of spring onions, roughly chopped
Sea salt flakes & freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp cumin seeds
150ml vegetable stock
200g frozen peas
A good handful of baby spinach
4 large eggs
For the dressing:
4 tbsp Greek yoghurt
100g feta cheese, cubed
1 clove garlic
Veg Portions / Serving: 2
An amazing breakfast, brunch or even “brinner”, these baked eggs are packed with green vegetables and as pleasing to look at as they are to eat!
Method:
Mix the yoghurt with the feta cheese, smashing the cheese with a fork to combine well into a chunky sauce. Cut the garlic clove in half lengthwise and add to the yoghurt mixture. Set aside.
Heat a large sauté pan over a medium heat and add the butter and oil. Once the butter starts to foam add the leeks and spring onion, season with sea salt and black pepper.
Fry the vegetables for 2 minutes, stirring until the leeks are soft. Add the cumin seeds and vegetable stock and boil the mixture until the stock has evaporated.
Add the peas and spinach and cook for 1 minute until the spinach has wilted, then reduce the heat to a low to medium heat.
Make a well in the leek and pea mixture and break an egg into the space. Repeat with remaining eggs, then season each yolk with salt.
Cook the eggs for about 4-5 minutes over a low heat, or until the egg whites are cooked and the yolks are runny.
Remove the garlic halves from the yoghurt and feta sauce and serve with the baked eggs. Serve with a wedge of lemon.
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 take charge of the dressing. Have them mash and mix while you cook the veg. If they can, they could crack the eggs one by one into a small bowl for you (fish out any stray eggshell pieces with a larger piece of eggshell before adding to the pan and letting them crack the next one).
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.
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