Cooking with Ben
March 11th, 2010by Caroline
A recipe Ben wrote when he was 5 (we didn't make it)
I love Pete Wells’ Cooking with Dexter column, and this week’s installment spoke to me particularly. Wells, apparently, is a perfectionist, and his occasional cooking missteps make him storm and stomp – unless his five year-old son is around. Then, because like any parent Wells likes to model more constructive behavior, he checks his temper and tries to let the mistakes slide off his back.
The article resonated with me not so much because I’m like Wells but because my son Ben is like Dexter – a boy who will erase a mistake so hard that he wears a hole in the paper — and the note Dexter wrote to himself after a painting went awry breaks my heart: “Step 1: Do your best! Step 2: Try again.”
But Dexter goes for it in the kitchen, and so did Ben at the same age. Wells writes, “When Dexter is at the stove, neither failure nor success surprises him. Watch him bake: he freestyles like a snowboarder.” And amazingly, it works. He wings it, and most of the time it turns out okay.
Ben’s never entirely freestyled – he loves the mathematical precision of baking’s measurements too much to abandon them entirely – but when he was five and a daily reader of cookbooks (he asked for cookbooks as his bedtime stories) he absorbed them so thoroughly he started to write his own. Here’s another recipe Ben wrote when he was five (with my comments in brackets):
Whole-Wheat Bread
You’ll Need
¾ c + ½ c whole-wheat flour
½ c warm water
1/3 c cornmeal
1 package (1/4 ounce) dry yeast
3 tablespoons + ½ teaspoon granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons + ¼ teaspoons wheat germ
¼ teaspoon baking powder
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter [I talked Ben down from a full cup of butter, so we used 1/2 cup, melted]
Equipment
Measuring cups & spoons
Bread pan
Cooling rack
Preheat oven to 375 F.
Measure the flour, cornmeal & butter into the bread pan
Add the yeast and salt
Now add the water, sugar, baking soda & baking powder
Add the wheat germ
Bake up to ½ hour [it took exactly half an hour. This surprised me almost more than how good the bread tasted]
Note: This bread will taste good with some raspberry jam (page 77) [a reference to the jam recipe still to come in his hypothetical cookbook]
We ultimately halved the recipe (which delighted my fraction-loving boy) so a full recipe might need to bake longer than half an hour. Bake until the top is browned and a tester comes out clean. And it tastes alright, kind of like an especially crunchy soda bread.
(I wrote more about this baking experiment here).
Now that he’s eight, Ben is less inclined to freestyle and more likely to follow recipes to the letter. He made his own birthday cake this year, choosing to follow a recipe in a kids’ cookbook that I don’t much like. I resisted the impulse to alter the recipe as he went, though, in favor of his getting direct experience with the recipes and letting him judge for himself. And really, although I could quibble about a few things, the cake tasted fine and — more importantly – the boy made his own cake!
Ultimately, I hope, there’ll come a day when both my kids achieve a good balance in the kitchen: sometimes using cookbooks as inspiration for something new, sometimes following their recipes to the letter, always getting plenty of experience so that they can find ways to salvage the experiments that go awry, without deflating like a couple of soufflés.
Social Shopping
March 5th, 2010by Caroline
I love peeking in other people’s shopping bags and baskets. The other day a fellow Trader Joe’s shopper snagged my cart by accident and as I wheeled hers up and down the aisles, I marveled at what different groceries she found — it was as if we were shopping in different stores — but after I retrieved my cart, I paused at the cookie aisle to pick up a box of the maple leaf cream sandwiches I’d seen in hers.
At the grocery store, I like to imagine what’s on a fellow shopper’s menu based on what I see go down the conveyor belt ahead of my purchases. Recently, it was 4 white onions, a can of frozen limeade, and a bag of ice. Um, onion tart and margaritas? One can only hope. For me, the grocery store is more for last minute pick-ups than the big weekly shop, so I wind up with random assortments like this:
That’s a basket that says I’m really hungry (sushi & mojo bar), Eli is hungry and I’m too hungry myself to maintain high standards (Annie’s canned spaghetti-Os); but I have Ben on my mind, too: there’s a birthday cake to decorate (milk chocolate for the frosting; candles; colored sugar sprinkles); and I’m wondering if he might like adzuki beans better than cannellini (I’m trying to up his iron intake) so I grab a can rather than invest the time in dried.
But nobody asked me about my basket, because at the grocery store, it seems, that’s unseemly. Is it because at the grocery store we’re more likely to buy packaged foods — dump and heat things — rather than items we actually cook? Or is that just me? Maybe it’s just the atmosphere of the store which makes it a place folks don’t typically chat about their choices.
Regardless, it’s one more reason why I love shopping at the farmer’s market. Here, we’re all buying fresh ingredients, and both the other shoppers and the farmers are happy to share ideas about what to do with them. Don’t know how to prepare agretti? Ask the guy who’s buying a pound! We ate broccolini recently, and the boys studied the buds closely, unable to remember what a broccoli flower looks like. At the Sunday market, one of the farmers had both flowering broccolini and flowering arugula, which I’d never seen. What to do with them? Saute the first, salad the second, said the nice farmer from Marin Roots. So I bought bunches of each and the boys nibbled on the flowers like little goats. The verdict? thumbs up on the flowering broc, but the arugula flowers, while tasty in my salad, were too spicy for the boys’ taste. This time of year, the farmers are starting to pile up all sorts of new greens on their tables, and if you ask me, it’s fun to share what we’re doing with them.
Sunion Tart
March 4th, 2010by Lisa
Be warned: This is delicious, but not fast. It’s fun, but time consuming. It’s really pretty, but a major commitment of energy. Also, the kids might not eat it. Still.
A few weeks ago, Finn and I went to Chabot Space and Science Center for a kid’s science class about the sun. It was full of fun, hands-on projects, including something called a “Sunion”–a layered collage demonstrating the Sun’s layers. This was new information to him, and he took much care cutting and arranging the layers. When he proudly told his sister about it (“I made a Sunion!” ) she exclaimed, “A Sunion? What’s a Sunion? That sounds like a pie!” Which of course it does. It sounds like a pissaladiere–a really delicious, melt in your mouth savory French tart made with onions, garlic, anchovies, and black olives. So of course, yours truly followed through.
Together, we brainstormed what foods might make the various layers of the sun, and adapted the pissaladiere to Finn’s diagram. The result was really delicious, though Finn wouldn’t touch it, of course.
Here is Finn’s Sunion:
Yellow photosphere lifts to reveal: blue core, green radiative zone, orange convection zone, red chromosphere, white corona
Here is the one we ate:
The layers are composed of
- purple peruvian potatoes (boiled, cubed, tossed with butter)
- erbette chard sauteed in butter and olive oil with minced onion
- carrots sauteed in butter with thyme
- chopped plum tomatoes simmered with butter and thyme,
- all layered over a bottom layer of sliced yellow onions carmelized with 2-3 cloves garlic and 2 anchovies.
Once the vegetables are cooked, layer them over the uncooked pie crust according to your five-year old’s directions. Or you can improvise.
I would have added black olives for sun spots if I had any in the house. Also, I used a frozen TJ pie crust, which are terrific in a pinch. I rolled out the crust and cut the sun spokes with a paring knife, but you could obviously skip this and use a tart pan or even a plain old pie plate, or just free form it…
The hard part is that each layer needs to be cooked separately and drained so it doesn’t make the crust soggy. Once the tart is assembled, it goes in a hot (375 degree) oven until the crust is cooked. You can eat it immediately, or serve at room temperature. If you have the time and inclination, it would make a great side dish for company, a terrific plate on an al fresco buffet, a nice anchor for a picnic lunch…
Pan Roasted Chicken
March 2nd, 2010by Lisa
This is one of the easiest & fastest ways to prepare chicken in the winter, and it has the added virtue of being really adaptable. It’s not a recipe, but a technique, so you can use whatever cuts of chicken your family likes best, whatever fresh or dried herbs you prefer, and add a few root vegetables, or not. It’s also virtually fool proof-the technique makes it pretty much impossible to dry out the chicken. You can serve it with rice, made in your rice cooker, or baked potatoes, or just some good fresh bread, and a side salad, or if you’re feeling ambitious, a simple sautee of greens or steamed broccoli. For a busy family, this dinner is a godsend.
The Ingredients:
- Olive oil
- Bone-in chicken parts: legs, thighs, breasts, or a combination–enough to feed your family
- 2-3 springs fresh thyme, rosemary, oregano, or a combination, or a teaspoon or so dried
- 1/2 cup white wine or chicken broth
- Optional: whole, unpeeled garlic cloves; carrots, sliced in half lengthwise; whole baby leeks or green onions; quartered onions; 2-3 canned plum tomatoes….be imaginative, use what you have…
- Equipment: heavy bottomed, oven proof sauce or saute pan w/lid
The Technique:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
On the stove, brown the chicken in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. The parts won’t be cooked through–you just want them to acquire a nice, rich color.
Deglaze the pan with the white wine or broth, scraping up all the bits that cling to the bottom. Simmer until most, but not all of the liquid is evaporated. You’ll want about 1/4 cup of liquid to remain in the pan.
Add your herbs and any vegetables (or not) you are choosing to add.
COVER the pan and set it in the oven to finish cooking. Depending on the size of your parts, this will take about 20-25 minutes. The chicken cooks pretty quickly, so make sure any vegetables are chopped small enough to finish cooking in that time. The roast should produce a lovely, rich sauce, which you can spoon over the chicken and/or rice.
California out the window
February 25th, 2010by Caroline
Every Sunday morning, just two blocks from my house, our neighborhood farmer’s market lets me witness the seasonal cycles of California produce and other farm products. Valentine’s Day was the last day for satsumas, for instance, so I bought several pounds for our trip; the woman who sells me eggs explained she’d run out earlier than usual because “The ladies are slowing down.” Our farmer’s market, like many, is made up of small family farms: they bring their kids; they borrow change from the neighboring stand; they may run out of produce and close up early. California agriculture as seen from my farmer’s market every week is low-key and pretty casual.
The California agriculture I saw out the car window last week on our road trip is an enormous machine; it’s the California that feeds this country. One statistic I read says that the state grows “more than half the nation’s fruits, vegetables and nuts from less than 4% of the nation’s farmland.” Driving across that less than 4%, as we did on our drive east and south to Yosemite, and then south some more and west to Santa Barbara, is hugely educational and although I’ve done the drive before, doing it with the kids this time I paid even more attention than usual. I highly recommend loading up the car with the kids, snacks, and books and doing it yourself some day if you can.
This time of year, the orchards are just starting to bloom; we passed almonds, walnuts, peaches and other stone fruit (it’s hard to tell the difference between all the different trees from 70 mph). We saw orange groves that stretched out to the horizon, the trees heavy with big orange globes, and then, as we got closer to Santa Barbara, the spreading branches and shaggy leaves of avocados, their fruit hanging like so many heavy green rain drops. We passed farm stands advertising lobster tails and avocados at 10 for a dollar but because we were nearing the final miles of a six-hour drive and a stop would have made it hard to get the kids ever back into the car, I thought a little sadly of lobster tail burritos with guacamole, and we drove on.
In southern California I was lucky enough to visit two farmer’s markets: a small one in Montecito, and a much bigger one in Santa Barbara. I counted five different kinds of avocados (Pinkerton, Fuerte, Bacon, Hass, Zutano) and was amazed to see that it was already spring, from a produce perspective: the farmers offered snap peas, asparagus, strawberries and loads of tender herbs (at which point I finally remembered to take out my camera):
Then there was the small slice of California agriculture we saw out the window of our cousins’ home; they’re renting a place where the backyard is planted with a half dozen avocado trees. The New Yorker in me was amazed at the bounty (sadly none of it ripe):
The kids just loved playing with the great sticks and the dried-out pits that had fallen from the trees. Our cousins have a lemon tree, too, and this again, for someone who is tending one small potted lemon tree and finally got one planted in the ground this spring, amazed me; even the kids were notably impressed by the size of some of the fruits:
Driving from Santa Barbara back home, our car now fragrant with a grocery bag full of lemons, we crossed miles of grape vines, producing for both wine and table; acres of romaine and other lettuces; and plenty more fruit and nut orchards before the landscape gave way to the beautifully soft, uncultivated green hills of the South Bay. The farms represented at our neighborhood market aren’t visible from these big highways, but now that we’re home I can’t wait to see what they’re selling this week.
Road Food
February 22nd, 2010by Caroline
There’s nothing like a road trip to create some powerful family food memories. It’s been about forty years, but everyone in my family still remembers our road trip from Tokyo to the mountain village of Nojiri and our stop at a roadside stand for snacks. My oldest brother picked out what he thought was a fudgsicle; he innocently unwrapped the package, eagerly took a bite, and quickly discovered it was, in fact, frozen bean paste. None of us has ever looked at a fudgsicle with quite the same pure anticipation again.
Happily, my family’s recent road trip didn’t create any such searing memories. The place we stay in Yosemite doesn’t have great food, but we know that and know how to deal with it: we pack a lot of snacks. We pack everything we need for 3 days of breakfasts and lunches and we pick our way carefully through the over-priced and mediocre dinner menu, knowing that the experience of sledding and skating and swimming twice a day among some of the world’s most beautiful mountains can almost make up for the lack of a nice dinner (a decent glass of wine helps the adults; coloring pages and more dessert than usual help the kids, who were served, at our low point, an astonishing bowl of spaghetti that was somehow both burned and mushy).
In the past, we made our Yosemite trip with another family. The first year, without any advance food planning, we discovered we’d brought terrifically complimentary groceries: we had crackers, they had cheese; we had dried fruit, they had nuts; we had carrots, they had hummus. Last year, we coordinated to take full advantage of the small hotel fridges; I think they even brought a toaster oven. This year, with our friends now living in India, we went on our own and I had to be more strategic than usual, but you can see how I managed to get the fridge stuffed (that’s a banana bread wrapped in the foil, and a big lentil/Israeli couscous salad in the plastic tub underneath it). I kept the freezer full of powerballs and frozen berries.
When it was time to leave the mountains for the second half of our road trip, we still had plenty of sandwich fixings, salad, dried fruit and crackers to get us through the miles, but still, it’s a road trip! We stopped for fries at In n’ Out and waved hello to the beach.
Homemade Marshmallows
February 19th, 2010The Valentine’s Day lollipops were a disaster. Two recipes, three flavors, three batches, nearly 150 suckers later, and not a single one came out right. They were pretty, but not so tasty, and didn’t harden. They’re not a good activity for kids because well, candy is really hot.
So, on February 13 we were stuck. We had valentines, but no treats, and nearly 5 dozen kids to take care of. And so we made something starts out very sticky which saved the day and which I suspect will not only be our Valentine’s Day go-to treat but which will grace our table regularly over the coming year.
Homemade marshmallows are really easy and fun to make and really delicious–and versatile. Once you get the basic recipe down you can add any flavoring you like: think beyond peppermint, which is certainly a good choice: to lavender, coffee, orange blossom, lemon or zest, coconut, almond, rosemary…if you can find the extract or steep the herb in the sugar syrup, you can make a marshmallow flavor with it.
I used this recipe on Epicurious, added red food coloring, and used only confectioner’s sugar for the final dusting. I heated the sugar syrup, but with careful pouring, Finn manned the hand mixer for quite a while. You should beat the mixture until it’s really, really thick, probably longer than you think you need to. Then you spread it in the pan, wait and cut. I used a pizza cutter sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. The actual “baking” takes maybe 20 minutes, so while it will take several hours from start to finish, the active time is minimal.
The kids filled the bags assembly-line style, and we had enough left over to bring to a party on Sunday, where the adults probably ate as many as the kids. They’re that good.
Pasta with Beets for Valentine’s Day
February 14th, 2010by Caroline
potato-print Valentines (a project supervised by my arty husband)
There was a time when Valentine’s Day had me making heart-shaped chocolate sandwich cookies, or even, just a few weeks before Ben was born, brownie ice cream sandwiches (I’ll never forget the lady who saw me standing in the ice cream aisle — I was looking for flavor inspiration — and commented, “It’s a bit too late to be counting calories, don’t you think?” I guess she’d never seen anyone who was pregnant before). But this year, as I’m entering the second week of an energy-sapping, mind-numbing head cold, I couldn’t imagine baking anything special to celebrate the day. So, uncharacteristically, I cooked dinner.
I can’t remember where I first discovered this recipe, but it’s a staple of our winter suppers, as it’s delicious, quick, and beautiful. You can pull it together in the time it takes to boil water and cook pasta, or you can make the beet topping ahead of time and let it sit until you’re ready to cook your pasta.
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups (packed) peeled and coarsely grated uncooked beets (about 3 large beets)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
12 oz tagliatelle, fettucine, or other long pasta
8 oz sour cream (yogurt or goat cheese work nicely, too)
6 tbsp chopped fresh Italian parsley, divided
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, coarsely chopped
Melt butter with oil in large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; saute until pale golden, about 1 minute. Add the shredded beets and cayenne; reduce heat to medium-low and saute until beets are just tender, about 8 minutes. Stir in lemon juice. (At this point, you can set the beets aside till you’re ready to boil pasta for dinner)
Cook your pasta in large pot of boiling, salted water, stirring occasionally, until done.
Drain pasta, saving a little bit of the cooking water, and return to cooking pot. Stir in sour cream and 4 tbsp of parsley, then the beet mixture. Add a little bit of the pasta-cooking water if the mixture seems too dry. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer pasta to bowls, garnishing with remaining parsley and chopped walnuts.
Blood Orange Prosecco Cocktail
February 12th, 2010I had gone to BevMo to find Orange Flower Water, to recreate the Gin Fizz I had at the Moss Room, but they were out.
Then I saw Blood Orange Bitters, which immediately reminded me of our road trip and meal at the Hotel Del Coronado last summer.
There, I had a lovely drink of champagne and blood orange bitters, which I had always assumed was really fancy and unobtainable at home. But there it was, in the dead of winter, in my own hometown, the bottle of blood orange bitters, for under $5, so I bought it. At home I read the lable, and there was my drink, which we mixed up that afternoon for company. It’s a lovely bubbly drink with the exotic, not too sweet flavor of blood orange. The sugar cube gives it just a touch of sweetness. I made it with Prosecco, of course, but any bubbly will do, I’m sure.
This is the kind of thing I love: something that feels very fancy, that you think you can never have at home, because the ingredients are too expensive or exotic. But in fact, a lovely version can be made with a decent bottle of your favorite, inexpensive Prosecco (many are available for $10-12) and a serendipitous find at BevMo, which is not exactly a bastion of exclusive, foody culture. It’s more like the work horse of a home that likes their cocktails on a budget.
It’s a lovely drink, it’s seasonal and delicious, and one of those things that can just make you happy. The color is glorious and the flavor just a bit suprising. It’s probably what we’ll be toasting each other with this weekend. And for winter weekends to come. At least until the bitters run out.
Blood Orange Prosecco Cocktail
- Blood orange bitters
- Chilled Prosecco
- Sugar cube
- Sliced blood oranges for garnish (optional)
For each drink, place a sugar cube in the bottom of the glass and cover with bitters. Pour chilled prosecco on top. Garnish with blood orange.
The Real Thing
February 12th, 2010I have never brought a bottle of soda into the house. Occasionally when my father or father-in-law are visiting, they buy their own diet soda, but I can safely say that nothing with corn syrup has ever been brought into my house by me or my husband.
This is not to say the kids haven’t had their share of Shirley Temples at restaurants, and if you’ve read even a little of this blog you know that they have kidtinis with some frequency.(Try the new search engine on the blog site! You can have your pick of recipes!). The point is, we don’t have a ban here on sugary drinks, but we do choose to drink them selectively and to make them less sweet than say, a can of coke.
However. As I was paying for my wine at BevMo a week ago, I saw a big stack of Coca-Cola. From Mexico. Made with real sugar. In thick glass bottles. Caroline’s husband is, I think, partial to this elixir for himself. But we don’t see it all that often here, and if you know me, you know I bought a dozen bottles.
When I showed the kids the treasure I had found, they had no idea what it was. “What’s coke?” Finn asked. “What’s it taste like?” Ella wanted to know. “It’s delicious,” I told them, and I let them split a bottle for lunch, over ice.
We made appropriate ceremony, and then they tasted.
Finn loved it.
Ella really didn’t care for it, and now, while Finn will chant “Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola!” while watching football (we each had a bottle during the Superbowl), Ella leaves her bottle untouched. There are worse things, of course, but for the rest of us, not much better than a good, real Coke once or twice a year.