MOTHER’S Day on Sunday, March 15 is an ideal occasion for those budding young Hestons to give Mum a day off, even though she will probably need the following week to get the kitchen back to normal.

These two recipes are both pretty straightforward and child-friendly. Combined together they would make for a very nice beginning and end to a leisurely Sunday lunch, so that would just leave Dad to sort out the main course!

Starter

Salad of Dublin Bay prawns, with marinaded Lowna goat’s cheese, English pea shoots and lemon-balm mayonnaise (Serves 4)

Ingredients

20 cooked Dublin Bay prawns (peeled)
20 pieces of marinaded goat’s cheese
1 punnet of pea shoots
1 punnet of Shizo cress (mixed)
Zest of 2 lemons
2 tsp mayonnaise (good quality ready-made or homemade using the recipe below)
½ tsp lemon balm plus a few leaves for garnish
Dublin Bay prawn claws and antenna to garnish, if required
16 confit cherry tomatoes
A little light vinaigrette (made from 8tsp olive oil, 2tsp white wine vinegar,1tsp English mustard and 2tsp runny honey mixed together)
Mayonnaise: 6 (10gr) egg yolks 10cl white wine vinegar 2tbsp Dijon mustard 400ml extra virgin olive oil Lemon balm Seasoning

Method: Marinade the goat’s cheese in shallots, garlic, thyme, white wine, dill, rosemary, bay leaf and lemon zest overnight.

For the mayonnaise, put the egg yolks, mustard and vinegar in a mixing bowl and whisk together.

Then slowly add the oil until it is thick, add a little warm water if required. Season to taste.

To finish, finely chop the lemon balm and mix in.

Alternatively the lemon balm could be added to a good quality ready made mayonnaise.

Use long plates and place the drained, five discs of the marinaded goats’ cheese in 5cm intervals along the plate.

Then place a confit cherry tomato between the cheese discs.

Dress the peashoots and cress in a light vinaigrette and place some on each disc of cheese. Dress the Dublin Bay prawns with a little vinaigrette and lightly place on the peashoots and cress.

Pipe dots of lemon balm mayonnaise along the plate or put into a pot on the side of the plate. Garnish the plate with more of the peashoots and lemon balm leaves. Serve immediately.

Dessert

This dish would also work well with strawberries in place of raspberries.

Fresh raspberry stack with gingersShortbread (Serves four)

For the ‘stack’
Approx 40 raspberries
250ml whipping cream
40g icing sugar
1 vanilla pod

Ginger shortbread
225g plain flour
150g cornflour
225g butter
110g caster sugar
½ tsp ground ginger

Method: Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Slowly add the flours and the ginger; you can do this in a mixer or by hand. When the dough is coming together, roll it into a ball and chill for 20 minutes. Roll the pastry out and cut into three large or 12 small rounds or any other chosen shape. Bake until only slightly colouring at 180°C/Gas Mark 4 for about 15 minutes.

Assembling the stacks: Whip 250ml of whipping cream with 40g icing sugar and scrape out one vanilla pod, beat until stiff.

Pipe a rosette of cream in the middle of your shortbread and arrange the raspberries around the cream. Place another piece of shortbread on top of that and do the same as the last layer. Dust the top with icing sugar.

You can serve with a little sauce of berries or pouring cream, if you wish.