Fun feast

Chicken wraps in shopping trolleys, a farm girl raking spaghetti in a glass jar, a construction worker lifting a huge sausage. These are just a few of the innovative ideas that Mövenpick hotel chefs have come up with to lure in young diners into the restaurants.

"It's all about being creative with healthy food, said Salvatore Silvestrino, executive chef at Mövenpick Hotel Deira. "The idea is to give something that kids can relate to, enjoy and yet allow the meal that healthy element. Why do kids love fast food? Not so much for the meal but the toy sitting in front of them."

As we sat sipping lemon teas and cappuccinos, he scrolled through photos of their creations on his phone. Silvestrino, father of three girls, plays an important role in the creation of this menu as four of his proposals have been included in the major offerings on this new kids menu. "I learnt a lot about what kids like to eat by watching what my wife served them at home or ordered when we went out to eat. And you learn a lot from children as to what they like as opposed to what you think they do.

Fresh and healthy

"Four months ago the chefs of Mövenpick hotels in the UAE got together with our F&B vice-president to look at what we served in our restaurants, check out our best-sellers and see how we can improve or change it. We consulted a nutritionist too and came up with scaled-down versions of healthy food prepared with organic and local produce. See, the burger here," he said pointing to one picture, "is made of very lean lamb mince, lentils and a little burghul. We offer this with mechanical man carrying it. We serve food as fresh as possible. You won't find chicken nuggets in my freezer. We make it with fresh chicken breasts. It just takes ten minutes extra to cook. Though the chefs on the team are from different countries — I'm Italian, then we have Indian, Indonesian — the idea of creating this menu was to bring local culinary elements, including Arab flavours, with touches of different cuisine. So when it's served in Mövenpick hotels across the Gulf, and other countries where Mövenpick has hotels, they still retain the local flavour."

So, it's presentation that makes all the difference when it comes to feeding kids?

"Imaginative ways to present healthy meals would be most appreciated by parents who would have young children who are ‘difficult eaters' (strong food preferences)," says Dubai-based nutritionist Lovely Ranganathan.

"From the second year, a child will start to show likes and dislikes for certain foods. Presenting food imaginatively is one great method to tempt children who refuse to eat all foods from a particular group. Many children's menus are limited and offer just hamburgers, sausages or fish fingers — all with chips. The hospitality sector is coming up with innovative ways to present and provide healthy meals and this is a positive step forward in the nations' fight against obesity and other lifestyle diseases.

"Most children will enjoy eating out, and parents should involve their child fully, allowing them to choose their meal and to give their own order to the waiter if they are not too shy. Great presentation is definitely a positive encouragement for the child to eat healthy and try new foods," says Ranganathan.

"Presentation plays an important role, yes," agrees Sivestrino. "Put a token in front of them and they'll eat the food to get the toy regardless of the fact that it's healthy or not. Flat food doesn't really reflect happy endings in terms of happy chef, happy food, happy customer. The happier the person is in the kitchen he will release funkier presentation even if it's just normal chicken curry. Otherwise it's just food-court-style cuisine and defeats our purpose of going to school and learning and changing that crazy healthy food into funky food."

Tagliolini in brodo

For the pasta (6 pax)

For the brodo (chicken broth)

For the pasta

Place flour, eggs and olive oil in mixer and knead on low speed for a few minutes. Turn the machine off, remove the bowl and knock the dough down, return to the mixer and knead for five minutes or until it is combined. Remove dough from the bowl and place on kneading board where you will cover it with a clean kitchen cloth. Let it rest. Attach your pasta machine to a bench, cut the dough in six equal parts and put through the pasta machine from the widest click to the thinnest, always making sure you go through the same click two-three times. The more you go through the rollers, the shinier the pasta sheets will become.

Once you have passed all the dough through and achieved the thickness you prefer, cut all sheets to the same length. Attach the fettuccine/tagliolini cutter to the pasta machine and pass through one sheet at a time, run through a little flour/semolina mix and gently wrap around your hand to form a small nest; return to the kneading board, let air for a few minutes then cover once again with a kitchen cloth. Repeat until all pasta sheets have been cut into tagliolini.

For the broth

Place chicken in a large pot with all ingredients and simmer for 45-60 minutes, always making sure to remove any scum that comes to the top. Do not stir the ingredients and let it simmer untouched. Turn off the heat, let it rest for a few minutes and strain through a fine sieve.

Cut the chicken in pieces to preferred size and serve one portion with each bowl of tagliolini.

Awesome breakfast

Preheat oven to 175°C. Place the chopped and well-strained spinach in a large bowl. Add ricotta (or cottage cheese), Parmesan, garlic, nutmeg, salt and pepper; stir to combine well.

Beat eggs and melted butter, add sifted flour and combine well (do not overdo).

Add the egg mixture to the spinach bowl and fold in gently.

Coat the cups of the muffin pan with cooking spray. Divide the spinach mixture equally among the cups (making sure they are three-fourths full)

Bake the spinach muffins until set should take about 15 minutes or until when skewered the mixture is moist but not wet. Let stand in the pan for five minutes. Loosen the edges with a knife and place muffins on a clean cooling rack.

Serve warm with grilled chicken and beef sausages, crispy oven-baked turkey bacon, toasted baguette and roasted cherry tomato.

Makes: 6

Lamb and lentil burger

Place burghul in bowl and add boiling water to it, let soak for about an hour, strain and remove excess water.

In a large bowl, mix the minced lamb, burghul, lentils, parsley and egg without squashing the ingredients too much as there should be a wholesome feel and texture to the burgers.

With clean wet hands, make six balls of the same size. Flatten these into burgers of desired thickness.

Heat the olive oil in a pan. When hot, add the burgers and cook on each side for three minutes or until golden brown. Place burgers on a roasting tray and bake for five minutes in a preheated moderate oven at 175°C.

Remove the cooked burgers and let rest on kitchen paper to remove excess fat. Serve in whole meal rolls, with lettuce and tomato and salt and sugar reduced tomato ketchup.

Makes: 6