At this point, congratulations on the book. It turned out so beautiful. You’ve been running the family food magazine “Neulich am Familientisch” for a long time. Tell me, how did you come to the subject of family nutrition? And how did the magazine ultimately become this cookbook?
Thank you Alicia, for the beautiful intro and the kind words. I was and am a foodie through and through. My husband and I loved to go on real foodie tours on vacation and test our way through hip restaurants and the best cafés. That was pretty much the beginning of my passion for all kinds of culinary topics. Although my sociology studies actually suggested a different direction , I ended up in a large Berlin food startup where, among other things, I was in charge of recipe development. At the same time, I created my first food blog, which increasingly developed into a full-time self-employment.
Then I became a mom and before I knew it, a little foodie was sitting at our family table – curious, happy, strong-willed and with a big package of new challenges for us parents.
It was clear to us that we wanted to include all complementary foods and offer our son a whole range of culinary highlights right from the start. At the same time, it was important to us that we didn’t lose ourselves and suddenly only eat things that we would proudly present to our 1-year-old. However, family recipes that you can quickly google online never really blew me away, even though I absolutely understood the meaning of simplicity and quick preparation. The idea of recipe upgrades, i.e. toppings that give family recipes a special twist, came about out of my own necessity. And since I was already developing smart ideas for the family kitchen, it made sense to bring smart experts on board. The result is a place where we provide parents with a lot of expertise on the subject of family meals and child nutrition and at the same time deliver delicious recipes that are suitable for everyday use. The idea felt right and we celebrated our first successes on Instagram. DK Verlag also found the overall concept of my magazine exciting and the idea of the cookbook came about.
What makes the recipes from “Cook once, everyone happy!” particularly suitable for families?
All of the recipes in the cookbook are easy to prepare, have short ingredient lists, require no special ingredients, and are really easy to cook. If you want a special twist on the recipe, prepare the upgrade. For example, roasted honey tomatoes, spicy mojo verde or a pistachio almond crunch – they hardly increase the preparation time, but are the little icing on the cake. You can find the upgrades in every recipe. There are also complementary food ideas for a lot of recipes; these are created almost automatically when the recipe is cooked. Your small children can eat what is served at the family table right from the start.
Some children like their plate to be clear for a longer period of time and don’t want to experiment too much, so the supplementary food ideas are a great option too. What is particularly suitable for families is the variation that each recipe offers and can be perfectly adapted to the preferences of all family members.
And what is your absolute favorite recipe?
Hehe… I was asked this question quite unexpectedly in the second bookstore when I discovered the book. My answer: “Everyone!”.. Wow! Maybe I’m a little excused for the excitement. 😀 So now I’m a little better prepared: Because I’m so excited about the strawberry season, I can’t wait to finally make the strawberry tiramisu with oatmeal cookies and roasted pistachios again. This week we have the yellow lentil and carrot soup with baby spinach – we all love it and it’s packed with valuable nutrients.
I was allowed to write a lot of texts about child nutrition for the book. Among other things, how you can manage to eat a balanced diet as a family, what tips and tricks there are for a good start to the day and how you can get through challenging eating phases as a family. As a midwife, Christiane contributed her expertise to starting complementary foods and Mareike contributed delicious baking recipes. Why was it important to you to cover all these topics and write the book as a team?
Especially when I was researching how to start my son on solid foods, I was really puzzled. There were sooo many bloggers selling their own experiences as THE knowledge parents need. I like reading blogs and I love picking out what suits my family best from the many experiences. However, if the experiences are presented as expert tips, then I find it difficult. So it was clear to me right from the start that I wouldn’t claim to know everything about complementary foods, child nutrition, etc., but would bring experts on board for the individual topics – logical in a way, right? 🙂 You as a nutrition coach, Christiane as a midwife and Mareike as an expert in baking recipes are a great asset and offer our readers great added value.
And what are the challenges at your family table?
It was Easter, which means we have a basket full of sweets. Our son has been insisting on dessert after (!) dinner for a few days now. He doesn’t actually get that from us, because we’re very careful not to divide food into categories (first healthy, then unhealthy). For example, if there is a dessert, it is often already on the table with the main course. It works great for us and we hardly have any discussions about it. These sweets are supposed to be dessert now and they really annoy me. They usually shorten our family dinner and are so hyped. My goal is that we don’t ban the sweets, but can simply decouple them from dinner. Let’s see how that works 😉
Did you also learn something new from the book?
For the book, I talked to a lot of parents and listened to how and what they cook and what challenges they face. One of the things I learned is that things look similar at many family tables.
We often all face the same challenges and go through similar phases with our children.
With the topics from our magazine and the cookbook, we can only benefit from each other and approach the whole big topic of “cooking for the family” with more awareness and calmness.
Who is the family cookbook suitable for? Only for families with small children?
No, absolutely not. I wouldn’t limit the age of the children at all, but I’m really happy that we “take families by the hand” from the very beginning. A colleague’s 12-year-old daughter was just leafing through the book and I heard “Ohh delicious!” several times, and the children’s pages were also read carefully. By the way, among my recipe test cooks there were also people without children who also thought that recipes were now becoming part of their standard repertoire.
And what else can readers look forward to in the future?
Of course there are lots of delicious family recipes, that’s for sure. We also always want to take up important topics and bring them up for discussion, most recently the fact that children’s bodies and eating habits should not be commented on or judged. I would also like to get the children on board even more. Eating, enjoyment and new foods are fun and are an important building block for their development. We want to give parents even more inspiration on how they can combine expertise and composure at the family table and provide the little foodies with knowledge and cool ideas in a playful way. And maybe there’s a children’s book idea lurking in the drawer.
And last but not least: Can you tell us a recipe from the book? 🙂
Of course, totally happy. (Veggie) fish fingers are very popular with children. We often have these as burgers. Fresh (sometimes home-baked) rolls with a totally delicious beetroot dip and corn on the side can definitely keep up with the classic side dishes of potatoes and spinach. For us parents, we make crispy onion rings and add some horseradish to the beetroot dip. Absolutely delicious and made super quickly!
Thank you, Marie.
Fish finger burger with corn and beetroot dip
20 MIN. | FOR 4 BURGERS
INGREDIENTS
4 tbsp rapeseed oil
12 fish fingers
2 ears of corn
4 rolls
some salad (e.g. rocket)
For the beetroot dip 250g beetroot (pre-cooked) 100g cream cheese
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp agave syrup
Salt and pepper
Besides that
Blender or blender
1 onion
1 tsp flour for dusting 4 tbsp oil
PREPARATION
Heat oil in a pan and fry the fish fingers for about 3-4 minutes on each side, then remove and keep warm in the oven at 50-60°C. Roast the corn cobs on all sides in the same pan.
Meanwhile, puree all the ingredients for the beetroot dip in a blender or with a hand blender and season with salt and pepper.
Cut the corn vertically from the cob so that some of the kernels always hang together as pieces. If that’s too complicated for you, you can of course also use canned corn. Cut the rolls open, spread with beetroot dip and top with fish fingers, corn and lettuce leaves.
For the UPGRADE, peel the onion and cut it into thin slices (about 3mm). Dust the onion rings with flour so that they are lightly breaded. Then heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion rings over a medium temperature until they start to turn brown. Drain briefly on some kitchen paper, then place on the burgers.
Save the Date:
On Saturday, April 20th There will be a small book launch event. From 11 a.m. Marie and Alicia (and possibly also Christiane & Mareike) will take a look at the book together and answer questions. The event takes place in the family bookstore Mouse & Bear Books at Boxhagener Str. 51 in Friedrichshain. Registration is requested, but there will certainly be a place for spontaneous visitors.
At a glance:
“Cook once, everyone is happy!” was published by DK Verlag at the end of March and contains over 100 quick, easy and colorful family recipes (plus great upgrades) from Marie Dingler, lots of complementary food ideas and a lot of valuable expertise from midwife Christiane Hammerl (who we have already had in an interview here), Super delicious baking recipes from Mareike Pucka from the biscuit workshop and many knowledge pages on the subject of child nutrition from nutrition coach Alicia Metz-Kleine. There are also hands-on pages for children, weekly plans and so on. The family cookbook is also beautifully designed by Anika Kühngrün from frauhilde creative office.
