Kids making cakes at Mini Chef culinary institute in New York.
Are you and your family suffering from the winter stir-crazies? Are you hungry? Why not cook together? Romilly Newman, an 11-year-old chef who hosts her own Youtube cooking show, "Little Girl in the Kitchen," insists that it’s easy. And Alyssa Volland, founder and president of the Mini Chef culinary institute for kids, says it can improve everything from your family’s diet to your kids’ math skills.
I try to teach kids that that feta cheese can taste good. —Romilly Newman
Alyssa's easy dough recipe for 3-year-old chefs:
In a mixing bowl, mix one tablespoon of dry yeast with 3/4 cup warm water and let rest for 10 minutes. In a separate mixing bowl add 1 cup of whole wheat flour, 1 cup all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar; stir. In the flour bowl, make a hole or well in the center to pour in wet ingredients. Using your hands, begin the kneading process of mixing the ingredients until they form a large dough ball, then add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to coat the dough. By now, mini-me should be up to her eyeballs in dough and cheering with delight - we never said it wasn’t going to be messy. Let the dough rise one hour under a plastic wrap and knead again (add a little more water or flour depending on how sticky or dry the dough is). Pull off meatball sized portions and have fun shaping the dough into triangle pizzas, letter shaped pretzels, or bread animals. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and bake your mini chef’s masterpiece for 15 minutes. This basic dough recipe can become more interesting by adding a variety of sweet or savory flavors.
For more advanced mini chefs, here is a fun family cooking project. Purchase wonton squares (pack of 100 for $2) and your favorite vegetables. Chop your vegetables with a chopper, season as you like with soy sauce, salt, pepper and sesame oil, mix all ingredients together, place tablespoon sized portions in the center of wonton squares, fold square in half and seal with the edges with water. Then steam and eat. This is a project you can do many times differently by adding different ingredients and changing the final cooking technique from steaming to baking or flash frying.
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Comments [5]
would like to learn more from minichef . kindly have them return for more lessons/
In a day and age where I got shoved out of the way at church last week by a young girl who looked about Romily's age and was chanting "move, move, move, move," as she pushed her way through a crowd of adults and senior citizen, Mr. Horany is worried about the word "yeah"?? (These days and with some of the kids--and adults--out there, Mr. Horany should be grateful to be answered with just "yeah" and not "yeah, -sshole.")
My partner's mother is a high-school French teacher and tries to expose her students to different foods. I'm appalled by some of her stories, like when she recently took in some pate made by a French friend of hers and at least half the students refused to try it, saying "it looks like dog food," (sloppy joes and nachos don't??) or on the same day when they wouldn't touch the blue cheese she brought and, when she loaded up a cracker and brought it to her mouth, started shrieking "DON'T EAT THAT! DON'T EAT THAT!" in horror. I could see a bit of reticence at foods like haggis or menudo, considering what they contain, but to reject something as commonplace as pate or blue cheese based solely on looks and the fact that they'd never tried those foods before...I bet most of these kids had never SEEN those foods before! Sad.
It'd be interesting to hear Romily's take on WHY there is "kid food" and "adult food." I have a theory as an adult, but I don't know if I would've answered the same way when I was a kid. If parents would make their kids eat this stuff more rather than cop out and hand them a hot dog or assume they won't like it, maybe there wouldn't be so many picky kids. I go to ethnic restaurants and see a "kids' menu" full of french fries and hamburgers. Why even bother to take a child to such a restaurant if they won't be eating the main food the restaurant offers? On the other hand, I've known plenty of adults who will announce--not only without shame but sometimes PROUDLY--that they won't try new or "different" foods, or that they've never in their lives tasted common fruits like peaches, or that they never eat vegetables. So no wonder their kids are the same way.
While this was a nice story, and the young lady is very impressive, I was once again disappointed to hear yet another otherwise well mannered and motivated child respond to every question with, "Yeah". I was born in the 50's, and maybe it's old hat now to say 'yes sir' and 'no maam', but by folks would never have stood for that kind of behavior, nor would any of my friends parents. They would have been embarrassed. I hear this every time some exceptional child is interviewed in the media, and it's like nails on a chalk board to me. What has happened to respect for your elders?
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