She's 11 and she's already taught herself how to boil an egg (a damn good soft-boiled one at that) and cook rice. I started teaching myself how to cook when I was 14 and I'm doing a commercial cooking program in post-secondary, so I've already been teaching her knife skills and some basic stuff but I haven't had many chances to actually cook with her due to living a couple hours away. I'll be home a bunch over the next month, so that's prime time to show her a few dishes.
I have a couple of ideas, like fried rice and a couple different kinds of soup, but I also want to demonstrate just how creative she can get with cooking and introduce her to food she might not otherwise try. The recipes will have to be relatively easy so I don't overload her, but I want her to have fun too! I'm willing to go out and pick up ingredients specifically for this.
Simple fluffy pancakes.
1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1/3 cup of powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and enough milk to reach a drippy consistency.
The confidence of making a nice-looking simple pancake opens the door not just to frying thin things on a stovetop but also to quickbreads.
Also, making your own corn chips and salsa is both satisfying and fairly forgiving.
Spaghetti aglio e olio.
This would be a good intro once it is safe for her to (1) boil a pot of water and (2) fry with medium-hot oil (about 1/4 cup olive oil). It's something like seven ingredients: olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, water, spaghetti, parsley, and optionally black pepper and/or a little lemon.
It also tastes super good.
Recipe:
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Put salted water in a pot and start heating on high.
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Cut 5-8 cloves of garlic into slices. Wash and chop between 1/2 and a whole bunch of parsley.
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Put 1/4 cup good olive oil into a cold skillet along with the garlic and some red pepper flakes (one shake is often enough). Heat on medium until the garlic starts bubbling, then turn to low or off.
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Boil the spaghetti according to instructions and save a half cup of pasta water when draining.
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Put parsley and pasta into the frying pan and mix. Add a few tablespoons of the pasta water. Add ground pepper and lemon to taste (I usually skip the lemon).
That's it. You made a really good pasta dish in 10-15 minutes
I respectfully disagree, while simple, aglio e Oglio is deceptively difficult, to do well at-least. It’s A very timing sensitive dish and the pasta water won’t accomplish what it’s supposed to unless the pasta is fresh enough to throw off a lot of extra starch into the water. If you pay extra and get fancy pasta that can work but I still worry she might be unimpressed by the result. I think Cacio e Pepe might be better, it’s similarly simple but does not require properly deglazing garlic and the end result is akin to Mac n cheese!
I've had good luck with all kinds of pasta, just keep adding pasta water and cooking down if it's not starchy enough. Eventually it will nicely incorporate and turn a nice sticky emulsion rather than oily. Worst case, it ends up a little salty.
Though I haven't tried it, I wonder if one could just toss in some flour at the beginning of boiling to get starchier/easier water. It's also tasty even when it's an oily mess, just not amazing.
PS :im-vegan: so didn't recommend cacio e pepe.
Oh completely agree, very tasty even as an oily mess. I just felt something like cacio e Pepe is a little more consistent and ends up feeling more like an accomplishment.
That’s A really cool idea, a little semolina in the pasta water could probably help fudge the effect of fresh pasta water. I’ll try that someday!
I’m actually Vegan too lol, there are some really good Vegan Parmesans where I am so I completely forgot that Cacio E Pepe is not a vegan dish. If the alternative is actual cheese then do Aglio E Oglio OP. Cheese is highly addictive and you don’t want em hooked young!
Ha, nice! I forgot that vegan parm existed! Gonna make a cacio e pepe soon, yusssss.
I think I'm gonna try the semolina-in-da-water trick today or tomorrow! Hope I remember and check back in with the results.
Can confirm that putting a little semolina works great! I added maybe a pinch total? Only needed about two teaspoons of pasta water, turned out perf
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I'd say, quick breads are a good starting point.
Tortillas are like, three ingredients and a hot skillet.
Biscuits are like, the same three ingredients that Tortillas have with some leavening added, maybe an egg/binder. You've got your choice of drop biscuits or the more complicated/fancy biscuits that you roll out and fold over the dough multiple times for. You can also add some extra flour to the drop biscuits and pat them out into a more typical biscuit shape.
From there you've got your cinnamon buns, which is pretty much just a biscuit recipe rolled flat and then filled with the cinnamon/sugar/nuts/fruit syrup(slurry?) stuff. You can can also replace the cinnamon/sugar with chocolate syrup, and that's pretty good.
Biscuit recipe can also work as a quick "pizza"ish crust.
Cornbread is mostly a biscuit recipe with cornmeal and some more sugar. Which can branch off into savory (add corn/jalapenos), sweet (add more sugar), and just boring old yellow cornbread (reduce the sugar that the recipe calls for).
I always thought it was cool learning how to make things we'd only ever bought pre-packaged. Something like refrigerator pickles comes to mind, they're about as easy as boiled eggs but nobody really thinks about it until someone points it out. It's sort of a peek behind the curtain if that makes sense.
Plus you wind up with something you can snack on for a week, which is always fun.
pickled onions are definitely on the list, I think she'd find the color change interesting. I'm also thinking about jams, since we have a bunch of different berries growing around the house like raspberries and blueberries and she can easily make a PB&J with it
Canadian but they're basically the same
I can't believe I didn't think of mussels! They live within walking distance of the ocean and multiple fish plants so it's something she could literally get straight out of the water if she wanted to.
Baking is my Achilles heel, I can cook a mean steak but I somehow fuck up prepackaged cookie dough every time. I'll definitely take the recipe and try to walk her through it though!
Two sources taught me how to cook (my significant other is a stellar cook but holy hell is she a bad teacher), both just following recipes on YouTube. First, my boy chef John fro food wishes (please use less oil), and the j kenji Lopez-alt for when you’re ready for comfy dad makes Michelin stars meals for toddler and fam. Excellent sources of info
Alton brown is a good source for recipes and the science behind them. There’s some interesting details to properly sautéing mushrooms. Also his chicken parm recipe is dynamite.
You can help her learn some good basic knife techniques and cooking skills from jacques pepin's cooking show. He helped me really get down the many ways of how to cook basic shit like eggs, or how to handle a knife for the many preparation methods of Vegies there are.
I'll recommend carne asada fries because they're delicious, pretty easy to make, variable in complexity, lots of good ingredients to introduce, kids love fries, and I'm just hungry and would like some.
red sauce can be really easy if you just do garlic, oil, and black pepper, then tomatoes, then spices, and then reduce
make your own pizza sauce and/or pasta sauce
also, a good no-rise crust is just 2 3/4 cups flour plus like 1 tsp baking powder plus 1-2tbsp oil plus water to make it soft but not sticky, knead for 5ish minutes then roll it out
Egg in a Hole was a fav of mine when I was a kid. Eventually I graduated to Shit on a Shingle.
You teach th kiddo how to boil vegetables and make an omelette and she can cook anything.
Also you teach her well to cook instant noodles so then she has fond memories when she inevitably makes it in the future.
oh she already has the noodles down pat and she's been experimenting with adding what she can find in the fridge with varying levels of success apparently
