Cooking Lesson #3: Expanding Our Collection of Side Dishes

Last weekend was busy and neither of us were in the mood to cook since we had a few family emergencies, so I had more time to plan out this week's lesson.  Having conquered eggs and potatoes, we ventured into the pasta, rice, and "wheat" side dishes.  We went outside of our comfort zone and tried dishes no one in the family had ever tried before.

Keeping with my theory of cooking like you are in the middle of a three ring circus, we made 3 different types of rice, regular long grain white rice, jasmine rice, and rice pilaf.  Once we finished and tested them, it was on to couscous, which was one of the experimental dishes that we tried.  We made a regular couscous and an herb chicken flavored couscous.  Lastly, we made fresh linguine, fresh cheese raviolis, and potato gnocchi, which was the other experimental dish.

Today was particularly hard to keep Hunter in check since he was spinning all over the place.  At one point he was doing arm curles with the small bags of rice while I was trying to explain that each rice was different and required different amounts of water and cooking time.  Getting all the rice going was the easy part, but the downtime of cooking the rice was the problem.  He kept walking away to watch TV with my daughter.  I had to wrangle him back to the stove and remind him that he had to watch the stove.  When the rice was done, we tested each one.  I will fully admit that we overcooked the white rice, which is a good lesson to learn.  Cooking rice may seem easy, but having the heat too high will kill the rice. 

We served the 3 stacks of rice to my husband, who was kind enough to point out that it was dry and a little burned.  Apparently, he didn't hear the warning that I gave him before I handed him the plate.  All in all, he couldn't tell the difference between the regular rice and the jasmine, but did like the pilaf.  My daughter didn't care for the jasmine because it was too solid and preferred to add ketchup to both of them, which is completely normal for her.  The pilaf was "okay". 

I was proud of Hunter for trying the pilaf, since he hates anything new.  His only comment was that it tasted like chicken noodle soup, which he isn't a fan of.  I don't know how I raised a kid who doesn't like chicken noodle soup, but it happened.  Anyway, he wasn't wrong in his assessment.  It had a chicken base, so yes, it tastes a little like chicken noodle soup. As for the white vs jasmine, he was a fan of the jasmine.  He liked the texture and quality of the rice better than the white.  Then I asked him how they fared when compared to my old standby, Success Rice, in the 10 min boiling bag.  He said that he understood how the regular white rice held up better and wasn't as mushy.  He liked the ease of the boiling bag and liked that it was hard to burn, but enjoyed the jasmine more.  I would consider that a win.

Moving on to the next project, we made the couscous.  I don't understand the allure.  Granted, I followed the general comment that you serve it with butter, but I still don't get it.  Perhaps with some other kind of preparation, I might enjoy it, so the jury is still out.  Neither my husband nor my daughter liked it.  Hunter was the only one who moderately enjoyed it, but I'm convinced it was only because he had been authorized to use as much butter as he wanted on it.  Hunter only eats pasta with butter on it.  Red sauces are a four letter word to him and grounds for starvation.  He was happy eating the couscous with the standard quarter stick of butter.  The herb flavored couscous was not a hit for anyone, except my daughter, due to the consistency.  It had been ground up and felt like little pebbles in my mouth.

The final project was a little rushed since Hunter had a scout meeting to go to with my husband, but thankfully all of the pasta cooked quickly.  Aside from possibly eating it in a fancy restaurant, I have never had "fresh" pasta.  The main draw back is the egg content.  My daughter is a HUGE pasta fan and can't have the eggs, so it's silly for me to make two different dinners just so that I can say that I had fresh pasta.

My husband swallowed his plate and ran to get ready.  He liked the linguine and loved the raviolis, but the gnocchi was not a hit.  I liked the linguine and raviolis, but the gnocchi didn't impress me, just like the couscous.  Again, it may have required better preparation.  The best was Hunter who ate the edges of the ravioli, then gutted it and ate the outside.  He said the Parmesan cheese was too strong, which I agreed with.  My daughter just gave me a pouty face because she didn't like the gnocchi and didn't get to have the pasta. 

I was kinda disappointed in the couscous and the gnocchi since they rave about it on Master Chef Jr, but I'm proud of my family for giving them a try.  Next time I will have to watch to see how they cook and season it.  At least we know what the heck Ramsey is talking about when he says that the gnocchi was cooked to perfection.  I feel a little better about having tried them.

Overall, Hunter did a good job of measuring the olive oil and boiling multiple foods at the same time.  The problems came when there wasn't anything to do.  I worry that when he starts cooking on his own that he will walk away and will have to call the fire department because his rice pot burned straight through.  I think when he moves out I will buy him a rice cooker and avoid the sleepless nights.

Next Lesson: I want to find a pasta sauce that Hunter will eat, that isn't dripping with butter.  I'm hoping that an Alfredo Sauce, or even a Vodka Sauce will get past his nature hatred of everything yummy.

Below are photos of our experiments.  My presentation of the pasta is terrible, but I was being yelled at that I needed to get Hunter ready for scouts.

Herb Chicken Couscous

Regular Couscous

Fresh pasta and Gnocchi

Cooking Lesson # 2: Potatoes - Mashing and Frying and Baking Oh My! Part 1

For our second cooking lesson, I decided to stick with my "cooking main components" theory and explored the versatility of the potato.  Just like eggs, there are countless ways to cook a potato.  Due to my Irish heritage, I love potatoes.  I find that they complement most meals, so I picked a few of the more popular ways of making potatoes to teach Hunter.

I will start off by saying that Hunter was not really up for cooking today since he was tired out from an extracurricular activity earlier in the day, so it was hard to motivate him to start.  After bugging him a few times, he finally agreed to cook.  Thankfully, once we started, he was okay, as I knew he would be.

We embarked on making Mashed Potatoes, Hash Browns, and Baked Potatoes.  I wanted to try some red potatoes and French Fries, but we didn't have enough time to cook them.  We will try them tomorrow for Part 2 of Potatoes - Mashing and Frying and Baking Oh My!

Since we were making so many dishes at one time, we decided to limit the amount of potatoes we were cooking.  For the Mashed Potatoes we only used two potatoes, for the Hash Browns we used one potato, and for the Baked Potato we only made one.  

I will tell you that boiling the water for the Mashed Potatoes was the easiest part of this lesson.  It was all uphill from there.  While Hunter understand the concept of peeling potatoes, doing it was a challenge.  Apparently, I have a "stupid" potato peeler since you have to hold it straight down and glide it in the desired direction.  He kept trying to turn the peeler so that he could slice through the potato.  It took about 5 minutes to peel the first potato, during which there was a lot of complaining.  At one point I offered to take over, but to his credit he refused.  I told him that he would never make it in the military since they had to peel lots of potatoes.  He argued that he would never have peel one because he would never get into trouble.  Since he is unable to followed simple instructions without arguing, I believe that he would be a potato peeling expert upon leaving the military.

The second potato, thankfully, was easier since he finally got the basic technique down.  By the time he was done with the two potatoes, the water was boiling. 

Here is where a critical error was made.  Apparently, since I'm the product of the TV Dinner Age and am not a skilled cooked, I do not own any sharp knives worthy of cutting potatoes.  Yes, I have cut potatoes in the past, and yes, I've had trouble cutting them, but I just dealt with it.  Since I have crappy dull knives, Hunter had a lot of trouble cutting up the potatoes for the Mashed Potatoes.  I ended up hack-sawing my way through the potatoes, as I have done before and put "sharp knives" on my grocery list for next week.

Sadly, putting the chopped up potatoes into the water was the next challenge.  Hunter nearly flooded my stove with water when he plopped the potatoes into the water one by one.  He was afraid of getting burning, so he dropped them from outer space into the water.  His Drill Sergeant would not have approved, I'm sure.

With the Mashed Potatoes boiling, we started the Hash Browns.  Since he had peeling potatoes under his belt, he whizzed through the peeling process, until he realized that we were going to use the grater to shred the potatoes.  He was hesitant since he had been cut on the cheese grater at school before, but he managed to get through it unscathed.

We followed our Betty Crocker Cook Book and rinsed the potatoes, despite Hunter's protests that it would all fall into the sink.  I managed to keep 99.9% of the potatoes on the plate and showed him the best way to drain it.  Drying the potatoes sparked another debate.  He argued that it would be impossible to dry the potatoes.  I proved to him that Bounty Paper Towels can pull water out of nearly anything, including shredded potatoes. 

The shredded potatoes went into the pan without further complaint.  He told me that he could manage mushing them down into the pan, so I moved on to draining the boiled potatoes. 

Once the boiled potatoes were back into the pot, we came across critical error number two.  I looked in the utensil drawer for my potato masher and panicked when I realized that I didn't have one.  I wracked my brain trying to figure out if it was in a different drawer or if it had been moved somewhere.  Hunter even went diving through the cooking supplies that my mother had sent.  The outcome was, I NO LONGER OWN A POTATO MASHER!  I know that I used to make real food back when I was first married, like a thousand years ago, but I don't honestly think that I have used a masher in the last 5 years at least.  It must have been tossed out due to rust or it's cumbersomeness in the utensil drawer.  So, with no masher, I taught Hunter how to make Smashed Potatoes by using a fork to crush up the potatoes.  (Deep down I knew that some kid from Master Chef Jr was crying somewhere because I didn't own a potato ricer, let alone a potato masher.)

Having regained some of my composure, we flipped the Hash Browns and started doing measurement conversions in our heads, or rather, Hunter did the conversions while I shrugged.  (He's better at math than I am, thankfully.)  We needed to cut down the milk and butter for the Smashed Potatoes since we were using only 1/3 of the potatoes called for in the recipe.  I have no idea how to measure 1/6 of milk, so Hunter figured out something that looked reasonable.  We finished off the Smashed Potatoes by the time the Hash Browns were done.

With two of the three dishes done, we let the boring Baked Potato cook and served the Smashed Potatoes and Hash Browns to my husband and my daughter.  Here is where critical error three was made.  Since we had to cut down the recipes, the salt and pepper had been "winged".  "Winged" is a technical terms that mean, "ah screw it, if they don't like it, they can add their own seasoning".  Well, that's what everyone had to do.  Despite tasting the Smashed Potatoes and adding more salt, our taste testers were not happy.  The salt shaker was passed around until smiles came to their faces.

My husband raved about the Hash Browns and said that he really liked them.  He said the Smashed Potatoes were okay, but I think he would have preferred them creamier and more seasoned.  My daughter, on the other hand, has apparently never tasted homemade Smashed Potatoes, which made me feel a little guilty.  She raved about them and gave me a thumbs up, which is her highest praise, aside from shoving it into her mouth.  Personally, I liked both of them equally.  The Smashed Potatoes could have been a little creamier, but they reminded me of the home cooked meals that my mother sometimes made.  My daughter and I agreed that they were better than the boxed potatoes that I usually made.  (FYI, the boxed potato mix is made by Betty Crocker.  I was a little conflicted that the recipe was better than actual product made by the Betty Crocker Company.  I thought for one brief second that they should go back to their original recipe book and think things through.)

Hunter's reaction was the best.  Now, before you judge me, which I'm sure you already have since I don't own a stinkin' potato masher, understand that I work until 5:30 or 6:00 during the week and don't get home until 6:15 or 6:45, then twice a week have to drive Hunter around to his activities and typically don't get to actually sit down at home until 8:15 or even later if I have to do a second drop off to yet another activity.  So, yes, I eat take-out food, including the dreaded McDonald's.  (My mother's idea of a quick meal was Wendy's, when I was kid.)  So when Hunter ate his Hash Browns, his eyes lit up and he said that they were the best Hash Browns that he had ever eaten.  He said, "Oh my God, they are better than McDonald's".  This is very high praise coming from him.

Once everyone finished their taste-testing portions, the Baked Potatoes were ready.  We decided to jazz them up and make them into Potato Skins.  It has been a long time since I baked a potato instead of using the microwave.  I don't really like microwaving them, but when I was short on time, I did my best.  

We scooped out the potato and argued over how much to take out.  Technically, Hunter would have won the argument since everyone thought there was too much potato in them.  We put our prefab bacon and preshredded cheese on since my patience wouldn't have lasted through cooking the dreaded bacon, and put the potatoes back into the oven.  We did have a minor technical error when one of the potatoes rocked and most of the cheese felt out onto the baking tray.  Next time we will line them up better.  Aside from the fact that there was too much potato on our Potato Skins, they were good even though they didn't rank in the top for anyone. 

Once we were done eating, I asked Hunter which one he enjoyed making the most.  He admitted that they were all easy to do, though the shredding did take more time, but he liked everything that he made.  I was proud of him for pushing through his aches and pains and complaining to make very respectable side dishes.  He did learn the value of seasoning, so next time we will make the needed corrections.  I was also happy that he didn't stray from the stove, except during our panic to find the stupid potato masher, which I still swear is in this house somewhere!

I did point out to Hunter the differences between the premade mashed potatoes vs ours and the microwaved potatoes vs the oven baked potatoes, so he does get it that fresh is better.  He agreed that the microwaved potatoes weren't as good.  That lesson alone could save him from a bad date once the girl realized that he had no idea how to actually cook.

Below are photos of our Smashed Potatoes and Hash Browns.  He can experiment with them once he is older and has learned to appreciate different flavors.

Next time, we will try to make French Fries while trying not to burn the house down and exploring how a Red Potato tastes different than a Russet Potato.

Cooking Lesson One: The Main Element of Breakfast: Eggs

Employing my theory of breaking down food dishes into components, I decided to start with one ingredient at a time so that my son would understand how to make many different dishes, using one main food item.

For my first cooking lesson with Hunter, I had the idea to teach him how to make eggs.  Why?  Well, because I know how to cook eggs.

Eggs are a fun place to start because they are in every breakfast meal you can think of.  I know this because when I take my daughter to breakfast in a restaurant, we need to find her some kind of cereal and give her a side of bacon to appease her sense of moral outrage that they don't have any non-egg breakfast meals.

Eggs.  They are a simple food with so many different ways to cook.  Our first few lessons involved eggs, until we mastered the basics:  scrambled, fried, poached, hard boiled, and omelets.  I know an omelet is basically a big fried egg, but it's fun to make.

I will point out that my son already had some experience with cooking by taking a Home Economics class at the beginning of the school year and was working toward his Cooking Merit Badge at Boy Scouts at Scout Camp.  He understood the safety rules of keeping knives pointed away from you, not touching hot pans, and keeping his face out of the steam so that he doesn't get burned.  These lessons peaked his interest in cooking, but didn't give him a lot of hands on experience.  Each lesson, they would take turns either cooking, cleaning, or prepping, so he didn't actually cook each week.

As I mentioned, my mother sent us some things to help Hunter learn how to cook, but the best item was a cook book for kids.  It had kid friendly recipes and colorful pictures.  It detailed all of the ingredients that would be needed, including which utensils or pans to use.  This is helpful since having the right size bowl or pan is important.  It also showed pictures of the different kinds of cooking paraphernalia.  The best part about the cook book was the fact that it made him consider eating foods he probably would have ignored before.

We started our first lesson with omelets.  Why?  Hunters likes omelets and we were all hungry that morning.

The first thing I did was lay down the ground rules.  No leaving the kitchen.  No TV.  No stopping to pet the dogs.  He had to keep watch over everything on the stove!  Once he agreed to stay focused, he started.

Hunter broke 2 eggs into a bowel, per omelet and poured it into the pan.  He decided to add shredded cheddar cheese and bacon.  Truthfully, we didn't go fancy by shredding the cheese ourselves since this lesson was about eggs and the bacon was precooked, mostly because I hate cooking bacon and burning myself.  We will venture into that territory later with meats.

Having only made one or two omelets myself, we turned to our trusty Betty Crocker Cook Book to consult the directions.  The one thing it pointed out was to make sure that the egg weren't completely cooked yet since it would continued to cook after the ingredients were added to the flat egg.  So, we made sure that the egg was still a little running on top before adding the cheese and the cut up bacon.

The hardest part was folding the egg in half.  Hunter had trouble with the first one, but I showed him how to use more force.  He was able to handle the next two eggs like a pro.  Once the cheese started to leak a little out of the end to prove it was melted, we served the omelets.

I have to admit that for his first try, the omelets were amazing.  Granted, fresher ingredients would have improved things, but he got the basic concept.

With omelets under our belts, I decided the following weekend to step it up a notch.  We went egg crazy.  Since Hunter already knew how to make scrambled eggs, we did fried eggs, poached eggs, and hard boiled eggs, at the same time.  Am I nuts for juggling all of this at the same time?  Maybe, but because the hard boiled eggs take a long time, it gave us enough time to get everything else done.  The important part is that it kept his focus since he didn't have any downtime to walk away.

First, we started with the hard boiled eggs.  Boiling eggs is probably one of the most controversial cooking topic.  I had just watched a Yahoo! video on the best way to boil an egg.  They had employed different techniques and time lapsed the photos to show their results.  I was glad that I saw this video since I was confused myself.  I have read everything from boiling the eggs for 15-20 minutes, then letting them sit for awhile, to starting with cold water and boiling it, only to take the eggs off and let them rest.  Even Betty Crocker had a method different than the kid's cook book.  I decided on putting the eggs in cold water, bringing to a boil, and then removing from heat for 20 minutes.  Then I ran cold water over them for at least 5 minutes.

All I can say is that Hunter must be a good cook, but these were the perfect hard boiled eggs.  The shell peeled right off, compared to the wicked time I tried a different technique myself and had to chisel off the shells.  We turned them into egg salad, which he tried and didn't like.  Personally, I liked it and will eat it for lunch.

While the eggs were boiling, we made a fried egg.  The hardest part of making fried eggs is cracking the egg into the pan without breaking the yolk or leaving shells in the pan.  Thankfully, Hunter pulled off the cracking like a pro and got the egg into the pan unharmed.  Since I like over-easy eggs, we had to flip it, which again gave him trouble.  He needs to learn to angel the spatula and tilt the pan to get a good grip on it.  Once he flipped it, he nailed it.  The yolk wasn't too runny, but warm and cooked.

The fun part came when we tried to poach the egg.  Warning!  Danger!  I have never in my life poached an egg!  I think I had Eggs Benedict at a fancy restaurant once and vaguely remember enjoying it, but it was never something I wanted to recreate.  This one was a lot trickier and required a few attempts.

After consulting Betty Crocker and her beautiful color photo with the yolk side up, we gave it a try.  The first egg hit the water too hard since Hunter didn't understand the concept of "sliding" the egg into the water.  He apologized for making "egg ghosts" when the white part floated up gracefully through the boiling water.  We did rescue the egg after a few minutes and put it on the side labeling it, Sample 1.  The next egg still hit the water too hard since the term "slide" still didn't get translated properly into his brain.  It did hold together better in the water, but still didn't have the yolk anywhere near the surface.  The book said to cook 3-5 minutes and my husband didn't specify how runny he wanted his poached egg, so he got the 5 minute egg.  When he complained that it was too solid, I show him Sample 1, which had been cooked about 3 minutes.  He swapped out Sample 2 and ate Sample 1, so technically our first attempt was not a total failure.

Once all the eggs were cooked, Hunter made his own scrambled eggs without assistance.  I was told that they were very good.

All in all, our eggs were a success.  I explained to him that I had chosen such a simple food because of it's versatility.  I told him that even advance meals on TV sometimes have a fried egg on top, and how fried rice sometimes uses scrambled eggs.  It was an easy food to make, but held great potential for diversity.

Here is a photo of our egg salad since I didn't have the presence of mind to take photos of the other eggs.  I will make sure to take more photos in the future. I will also have to teach Hunter how to take clear photos.

Our next lesson will involve the potato.  It's a staple of my Irish heritage and, like eggs, hold a lot of cooking potential.

How Do I Teach My Child How to Cook When I Can Barely Boil Water?

I will start off by saying that I am not a great cook.  I can boil water and heat up something from a jar.  I don't know what half of the things are on cooking shows and I doubt I ever will.  I am a mom who taught herself enough basics to cook food so her kids wouldn't starve to death.  I can make Kraft Macaroni, hots dogs, prepackaged spaghetti, and few grown up meals.  So when my son asked me to teach him to cook, I panicked.  After much deliberation, I decided that I would use this opportunity to improve my skills and venture out into other areas of cooking.

To start off, I will admit that I am a picky eater myself, so I will not be trying extremely fancy things.  Mt my goal is give my son enough confidence and basic cooking skills that he will be able to cook a basic meal at college to impress his girlfriend, or avoid the embarrassment of only eating Ramen Noodles when he first moves out.

My mother added fuel to the fire by purchasing a kids cooking set complete with apron and chef's hat.  She is the baker in the family. I pretend that I can bake by making cakes from a box.  She had dreams of teaching my daughter how to cook, but those hopes were dashed when we found out that my daughter was allergic to eggs.  I won't venture into eggless recipes since I have decided that sour cream is not a workable substitute in cakes. With daughter out of the running to become the next great chef, the torch was handed over to my son.

My son, whom we will call Hunter, is a very loving and compassionate kid, but he tends to have focus issues.  I had to keep this in mind when deciding if I would teach him to cook.  I knew I had to set up the lesson in such a way that would keep him interested, while reducing the distractions.

On top of keeping myself one lesson ahead of him, and keeping him from walking away to play with the dogs, I had to figure out how to teach him how to cook.  Lord knows, I'm not going to break out the fancy pots and start pouring olive oil into a pan and stir frying something.  I had to start small and simple.  So I decided to start with the basic elements of food.  My theory is, if he can master each side or main component of a meal, he can expanded upon his knowledge later and get creative.

In our weekend adventures in trying not to burn the house down, we will work together to create edible and, hopefully, tasty foods that will build his confidence enough to be able to cook a meal for himself and others.  Since he too is a picky eater, I'm hoping that he will learn to try new foods and even enjoy them.