family recipes - blackbird pie

Getting Joshua to eat anything not sausage or bean shaped is a mission.  Until he was about three he would eat anything given to him, and then he got an opinion and it was that he hates anything remotely healthy or vegetable looking.  So Sean and I are always trying to think of ways to stop table tantrums and get some goodness into his meals.

Sean is a dab hand at disguising food into a meal that Josh will eat and last night he surpassed himself.

On Sunday we had extended family over for dinner and one of Josh's most hated meals, a roast.  He will only eat broccoli, cauliflower and baby carrots potatoes and Yorkshire puddings.  While this seems like a lot, if it is on a plate with a roast he gets all stroppy and eats the minimum he can get away with.  So with lots of leftovers as we always seem to cook for forty not four, Sean wanted to use them for dinner.

So Sean began mincing chopping and generally disguising our leftover roast while Josh moaned about what was imminent for dinner.  When Sean responded that we were having Blackbird pie Josh seemed happy, so the name has stuck.  I'm pretty sure there isn't a definitive list of ingredients for Blackbird pie, you can pretty much put whatever you like in it as long as it's well disguised.  And there are not really any weights and measures as it was mainly leftovers, but here is our recipe.

Ingredients

Puff pastry

5 sausages - minced

steak -minced

sweetcorn

peas

stuffing

roast potatoes

mushrooms

salt and pepper to taste

method

chop up steak and sausages in food processor until combined.

chop up rest of ingredients and combine with the meat.

season to taste.

roll out pastry and put filling in the middle leaving about the same amount of pastry to fold over at the top and bottom and a little at the sides for sticking together.

Brush the edges with a beaten egg.

Fold like an envelope or large pasty.

Brush the remaining egg over the pie.

Bake @ 200ºc for around 20-25 mins until pastry is golden brown.

The result was rather impressive and when Josh saw what we were having he was actually excited.  He didn't eat all of it but did eat a lot and didn't even notice the sneakily hidden sweetcorn or peas.

Have you got any sneaky recipes that get kids eating good food without the tantrums that good food usually cause?