As you probably know if you are a regular reader of the blog, we are big fans of picture books. We were recently asked if we would like to take part in a blog tour and review a copy of I’m Hungry. It’s the new book by Jorge Martin. As well as reviewing the book we were asked to create a vegetarian side/meal fit for a little hungry dragon. Seeing as I have my own hungry little vegetarian dragon I couldn’t say no. But more on that in a bit.

I’m Hungry by Jorge Martin

It tells the story of a baby dinosaur who hatches out of an egg and is extremely hungry. In fact I would go as far to say hangry – hungry and angry! So she goes off in search of food. As she travels around the island finding lots of yummy things to eat, she soon runs out of food. Life becomes quite lonely for her, until her mother returns and tells her that’s because she has eaten all her friends! 

Mummy dragon starts to tickle her and one by one her friends pop out of her mouth! Turns out that baby dragon is actually a vegetarian who eats roasted vegetables! Clem absolutely loved the book. The illustrations are really colourful and she spent a lot of time going “oh no!” as baby dragon ate her friends. The story is funny, sad and then happy. Just what you want from a book!

As part of the blog tour we were asked to create a yummy vegetarian side/main dish fit for a hungry little dragon. Clem actually doesn’t like meat so we quite often cook vegetarian food, and this one is definitely a family favourite. The recipe makes a huge amount. Perfect for big and little hungry dragons and it leaves plenty for leftovers the next day.

Fiery Chilli and Dragon Wing Quesadillas

First of all we decided to make a ‘fiery’ beany dragon chilli and quesadillas. Believe it or not Clem actually ate both of the wings and a small bowl of the chill! See I told you I had a hungry little dragon on my hands!

Ingredients for the chilli

• 1 Tin of tomatoes
• Red and yellow pepper
• 1 Carrot – diced
• Onion – diced
• Beans – lots of them. I used cannellini, red kidney beans and butter beans. I was going to use haricot beans but forgot to put them in.
• A pinch of cumin
• A pinch of paprika. If your little one doesn’t mind a bit of spice then feel free to add more. Clem isn’t a massive fan of spicy food so we add our hot sauce after.
• 150ml vegetable stock
• Tomato puree
• Sweetcorn – we used a small tin

Ingredients for Quesadillas

• Tortilla wrap
• Cheese
• Tomatoes – we used cherry
• Sweetcorn
• Vegetable oil

You can obviously fill yours with anything you want. These ingredients just happen to be Clems favourite.

How to make the chilli

1. Start by chopping the onion, carrot and peppers.
2. Heat the oil in a pan, then add the onion, carrots and peppers and cook for about 5 mins to soften them.
3. Drain all the beans, then add the tomatoes, puree, sweetcorn and beans to the pan.
4. Add the cumin, paprika and vegetable stock. Stir well.
5. Leave to simmer on the hob for around 20-30 mins or if you have a casserole dish you could pop it in the oven. We don’t so I just leave it on the hob with the lid on.

Whilst this is cooking you can make the dragon wing quesadillas. 

1. Chop up the tomatoes. We used cherry ones.
2. Grate the cheese
3. Grab your little dragon and get them to start filling the tortilla wrap.
4. Fold the wrap in half and then place in a pan on a medium heat. Obviously making sure your little one is well out-of-the-way for this. You can put a little bit of oil in the pan but I find this makes them quite greasy so we just do it in a dry non-stick pan.
5. After a few minutes turn it over so the other side can cook.
6. Once the cheese is starting to ooze out of the side they are ready to cut into your dragon wing shape.
7. Be very careful as they are very hot. We used a pizza cutter to make the wing shape.

You can serve the chilli on its own, with rice, cous cous like we did or as a jacket potato filling. You could even put it in wraps if  you wanted to! We had so much left over that we had it on jacket potatoes the next night.

Dragon Flames Cupcakes

We also made some dragon flame cupcakes, which if I am completely honest didn’t quite go to plan. I don’t think I used enough of the food colouring to make the cake bright enough. The plan was to make it bright orange but it didn’t really work. I did cheat and use shop bought icing because again I couldn’t make my own bright enough. Clem loves helping me make cakes though so we had fun.

Ingredients for the cupcakes

• 110g/4oz butter , softened at room temperature
• 110g/4oz caster sugar
• 2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 110g/4oz self-raising flour
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• few drops of orange food colouring, you could use red as well

How to make the cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale. Beat in the eggs a little at a time and stir in the vanilla extract and orange food colouring.

3. Fold in the flour using a large metal spoon, adding a little milk until the mixture is of a dropping consistency. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases until they are half full.

4. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until golden-brown on top and a skewer inserted into one of the cakes comes out clean. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack.

5. Once they are cool, decorate!

As you can see the cakes got Clems seal of approval, tucking in before we even decorated them! The shop bought icing was much brighter than my attempt. We went for a red and a yellow. The tubes came with piping nozzles so you could make patterns on the top. We attempted to make them look a bit like fire, although our decorating skills are not that great! Hopefully if you try them you might have better luck. They were definitely tasty.

I’m Hungry is available now £6.99.