Q&A: Flemish TV chef Sofie Dumont on healthy eating for kids

We are all familiar with the expression: "You are what you eat". Belgian celebrity chef Sofie Dumont goes further: "What we eat determines our state of mind - the belly rules the mind."

A 2016 World Cookbook Award-winning chef, Dumont has the popular daily cooking show Sofie in de keuken van on VTM where she promotes her vision of delicious healthy food with an emphasis on how to feed children healthy food that they will want to eat.

What's your cooking philosophy?

Like many chefs, paramount to me was creating the most delicious and most beautiful dishes with the most complex and sophisticated flavours. That approach allowed me to open a restaurant, win awards and have fabulous experiences.

As a woman chef I was already an outsider so rules and traditions have never held much sway with me and that probably helped me evolve. I make a point of teaching the proper techniques to my audience and readers but I also want to inspire them to new heights. A good dish can be simple or fancy, a quick meal or a leisurely dinner - the important thing is that they be authentic and that the person cooking keeps that in mind.

How did starting a family change your way of cooking?

Once I gave birth to my daughter, Grace, I realised that eating is much more than that. When you are cooking for your family, you want to offer something with integrity. That means trying to avoid prepared processed food and preservatives and other additives. The earlier one exposes one's children to real ingredients the quicker it will be a habit for them - like brushing teeth or tying shoelaces. In my recipes for children I include fruit and vegetable ingredients in almost everything, sometimes without them realising it."

How can parents avoid convenience foods?

Tasty, healthy, varied and quick, how do you reconcile these elements? Everybody is busy but I have tips that will help parents save energy and develop a cooking style that works for them and is beneficial to their family, their schedule and the environment. And of course, from time to time some complex carbohydrates or other guilty pleasures are permissible and acceptable. It's all a question of balance.

What are the inspirations for your recipes?

It depends. For instance, Pistolet Original has been asking guest chefs to create a special seasonal pistolet sandwich. When they asked me to create something for this summer I was inspired by two disparate experiences. One was a childhood experience: my grandmother's way of dealing with leftover stoemp. She would reheat the stoemp with butter and then spread it on a pistolet topping it with bacon. The other is memories of vacations. We go to Ibiza and eat lots of octopus with aioli. I decided to put them together in a pistolet with a potato salad topped with octopus and greens and roasted bell peppers and slathered with aioli.

Sofie Dumont will be cooking up three-course dinners and appetisers at Paradise City music festival this weekend.