Jedi Kitchen Tricks

This recipe is certainly silly. It says to separate the eggs, but it doesn't say how far to separate them - Gracie Allen

My Mommy’s was brass.


I don’t know if it was really made of brass, it could’ve been brass-plated or brass colored. I just remember it being brass. I had no idea what it was for, though I am certain that on several occasions, when my Jungle Jim became a Spaceship, that it was useful as some implement of an intrepid space explorer.

I’ve never purchased one myself, but there’s always been one in my kitchen. There’s one now - made by Tupperware. I’ve never used never used it.

An ex-girlfriend of mine once brought me back one as a gift from Britain. It was ceramic and interesting looking. I never used it for its intended purpose. Became a scouring pad dish as I recall. (That same girlfriend also ran my wok through the dishwasher when I was out of town. We didn’t last long as a couple).

Monkey See, Monkey Do - Mexican Cooking

The second of my cooking classes consisted of a reading of Skippyjon Jones, Lost in Spice, an examination of foods native to the Americas - especially chillis - and a lesson in the making of Guacamole. (Note to self - add a molcajete to your wish list for demos.)

The kids ate my salsa, but thought the guac looked gross (though they loved it when I faked a sneeze on the towel I had cleaned up the avacado with).







The parents dug right in though!

Monkey See, Monkey Do - And So It Begins . . .

Yesterday was my first regular gig at Monkey See, Monkey Do, a bookstore steered toward kids in Clarence. We did a reading of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi and Ron Barrett. We squished the ingredients, and and ate some meatballs in tomato sauce that I had made earlier in the day.

It is the first in a regular series of kids cooking events. Next up is a lesson in Mexican cooking and a reading of Skippyjon Jones, Lost in Spice tomorrow morning.

We will be starting adult classes in January, with a program on Julia and Julia, featuring My Life in France and Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.

It's fun
.

The Herb Garden and Other Random Thoughts

HERB gardens don't grow overnight. Oh you can stick a plant in the ground, and have herbs to use through the summer, and the annuals don't really make it - even if you shake the seeds on the earth - but a true herb garden works on its own. It grows, it changes, it fights.

After 5 years its finally taking off. Forget about the culinary uses - it looks great. I will use it, preserve, make lots of vinegar for gifts. Don't worry, anything that isn't used for cooking is saved and used to add to aromatic smoke for BBQ and other smoking tasks.

Still, watching the honeybees in the chive flowers just makes me smile. I wonder where the hive is . . .



Ellie is becoming a real cook. She recreated her lemon/key lime meringue pie this week. But. this time we only had to provide her with pie pan and pie weights. She made, rolled and docked the dough, and made the custard filling and meringue. . We did assist in getting it in and out of the oven - but this was her baby.


Finally, if you like frog legs, maybe you should try raising them at home.

Simple Gifts

"'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free" - a Shaker Dance Song

I'll let the image speak for itself:

Cooking or Death I : The Tongue is ever turning to the aching Tooth - Benjamin Franklin

Cooking with kids always carries the risk of a mess of biblical
proportions, but the rewards are so great that the risk is irrelevant. In fact the debris fields become the subject of merriment.

So it was when the girls insisted that they make Sunday dinner with little or no supervision. Ellie picked a recipe for pie crust, and combined it herself (debris at left), but shortly thereafter some friends came by, and they forgot about cooking the rest of the day. We ate hot dogs.

But, yesterday, while was out they decided to proceed. Ellie blind baked the crust, made lemon pie filling and meringue from scratch. Alison trimmed green beans, mepotatoes and made a peach glaze for the ham. Ellie made biscuits. The waited for my return to surprise me.

Only one problem. I was at the dentist thinking to get an antibiotic scrip and schedule an extraction of a busted tooth, but they went ahead and yanked it. All I wanted from that hame was the bone to make split pea soup!

Mental Health Break

My girls are exposed by us to more than just cooking. Classic art, literature and music among them. Lately, that have taken to spontaneously erupting into Cole Porter's "Anything Goes." Of course it's the version by the "other" Cole Porter.



I love those two!

Cooking With Kids V - The Final Horror

I have been writing about cooking with kids since I started blogging. I think it is one of the greatest undertakings a parent can engage in. Since the beginning, I have referred to these posts as "Cooking with Kids". No more. Over the holidays we came up wiith a new name, all because of my daughter Alison - age 8.

Just look at that adorable face! My Mom calls her a gute neshome - Yiddish for a good soul, and she really is all that. However, she has also traced a path of havoc and destruction never before seen in human existence. For this, her nickname since infancy has been Beezil (short for Beelzebub) .

All kids have disasters in and out of the kitchen. When she has them they are just always worse than you'd expect - with splatter patterns that would make Gil Grissom proud. So we were stressing getting ready for the Holidays, Alison decided to drop an egg. It struck the slightly ajar cabinet door beneath and splattered over a stack of nested Pyrex bowls, coating all of them.

As an homage to the unbelievable Executive Transvestite Eddie Izzard, we have now decided to call our family cooking experiences:


We love you Beez!

Cooking with Kids IV - Do The Jerk(y)

There are few things simpler than beef jerky, and Ron Popiel was right - it is loads cheaper than the store-bought pieces of flavored rubber. It's also a perfect task to involve my nine year old Chef Saucier, Ellie. Of course it helps that the two of us love the results, to the extent that Mommy has to hide the finished product or it disappears. Rapidly. Really rapidly.

We start with top round, a relatively inexpensive cut even with the rise in food prices we are now enduring. If fresh, it is popped in the freezer for a half an hour; if frozen, it is thawed until still slightly frozen. I trim it of external fat, slice it on a bias as thin as possible with the grain and immerse it in a marinade.

Ellie's favorite marinade is made of one cup each of Soy and Worcestershire Sauces, a tablespoon each of granulated garlic, granulated onion, liquid smoke, hot sauce (Frank's, in this case, and since I don't make wings as much as I used to I have a half gallon to use up.), Hot Pepper Flakes (in this case Aleppo Pepper from Penzey's). The basic marinade is subject to infinite variation, and we have used other formulas from teriyaki sauce to nuoc cham.

The meat is marinated for an hour or two tossing occasionally to coat all the slices. They are placed on a rack over a foil lined sheet tray and placed in the lowest temp possible, in my case 140º, for about 12 hours - I like it drier than usual as it seems to keep better.

I have also used my electric dehydrator, though cleanup can be a beyotch! Mine doesn't disassemble easily!

Easy As Pie

The remains of the pie below are of a Rhubarb Custard Pie from page 306 of Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook. From making the crust, to slicing the rhubarb, to making the custard filling, to cutting the "lattice pieces" with a fluted pastry wheel, this pie was entirely made by my 9 year old daughter Ellie.

It was yummy!

Cooking with Kids III - Three Cornered Hats

My hat it has three corners.

Three corners has my hat.

And had it not three corners,

It wouldn't be my hat.

Happy Purim. The girls and I made hamentashen today! It was fun, and they are great!

Cooking with Kids II - The Goof Offs

One of the things you have to accept about cooking with kids, is that from time to time they are not going to be on the same page. Such was the case for our belated Chinese New Year celebration,d we had our next door neighbor Lucy over for help. I suppose that was the problem - Lucy was the only one really interested. The others were goofing off, so I had to disappoint Lucy in order to get dinner on the table. A simple stir-fry of pork, red pepper, dried black mushrooms, etc. with longevity noodles.

I'd like to claim the potsticker dumplings. I am good at them, but not that good. These were made by the skilled hands of Mrs. Du. She is a neighbor who came over from China last fall - I am pretty sure her only word of English is "hello". Her grandson Kevin has been in the same class as Alison since Kindergarten. Yes, in times of trouble we often ask ourselves - what would Kevin Du? The dumplings were great!!!!!

Cooking with Kids I - Pretzel Logic

Cooking with your kids is one of the greatest joys of being a parent. Maybe one of the greatest joys of being a cook It can be as simple as making the Ginger Ale you see at right, (1 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp. yeast, juice of one lemon, water to fill. Keep in a warm place for a day or so.) or something more complex.

I have a backlog of posts about such endeavors, which I will share, but the important thing is that cooking for strangers is an important part of being a cook, cooking for friends and family is more important. Cooking for your family is really good, but cooking with your family is the best (though they need to learn things like "behind you").

Below are some photos of the girls making soft pretzels. Were they shaped perfectly? No. But we had fun, and they tasted great!

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