Bolognaise Boats

Britmums has challenged bloggers to create a menu using Aunt Bessie's products and as we are BIG fans of Aunt Bessie's and have a couple of little chefs in the family keen to help, we have come up with a brilliant meal idea!

Aunt Bessie's yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes are long standing favourites in our family. They are cooking short-cuts that we just couldn't live without. Basically this is because mum can't cook Yorkshire puddings at all and roast potatoes made from scratch are a bit hit and miss so why risk it when you can get perfect yorkshire puddings and fluffy roast potatoes everytime by using Aunt Bessie's.

But this challenge was about finding a different way of using Aunt Bessie's products. So we put our thinking caps on to come up with a real family friendly meal where the kids could get involved in preparing it and which was also a fun concept so they'd love eating it too.

Here's what we came up with:

Well it wasn't all that straightforward, because we needed to check that our idea would taste good as well as look good. So we started by using normal sized Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings to do a taste test.

We made a healthy bolognaise (which has plenty of veg in it so you won't need any extra veg on the side), and tried it with cheese grated on top. Thankfully we got the thumbs up!

Here's the recipe for the bolognaise:
1 onion chopped
500g lean mince beef
1 courgette
2 carrots
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
pinch of mixed herbs

And here's the method:
Fry the onion and the mince until browned. Add a chopped carrot and chopped courgette. Fry for a few minutes, then add in the tin of chopped tomatoes and the mixed herbs. Once all the ingredients are cooked your bolognaise is ready.

The kids were able to help with chopping the courgette and carrot (with supervision! - always be careful using knives).

So it passed the taste test. Now we could proceed with our boats!

This was so quick and easy to do. The great thing about keeping well stocked with Aunt Bessie's products in the freezer is that you can put together meals at the last minute without having to worry about running out of ingredients or about them spoiling if you have a change of plan. They are great value and now we have found additional ways of using them in our meal planning, it makes them even better value as they can be used in so many ways and no longer just for a Sunday Roast. If you take a look at the full range of products, you may just be surprised at everything you find.

Back to our boat building...We cooked some Aunt Bessies roast parsnips (these took just 25 minutes in the oven) and some Aunt Bessie's button sprouts. The boat shaped yorkshire puddings just take a mere 4 minutes in the oven. And then we were ready.

Simply thread a parsnip onto a wooden skewer, along with a sprout and this makes a sail for our boat. Then add your bolognaise into your boat shaped yorkies with a sprinkling of grated cheese on top and hey presto you have your very own fabulous Aunt Bessie's inspired BOLOGNAISE BOATS!

They really do taste amazing. You'll just have to try them for yourself now.

This post is my entry to the #halftermfood linky on BritMums.