recently brought Qy to the adult section in the library and she was so thrilled to find a children's cookbook there. The book is meant for children, but dunno why it's in adult section.
She has been curious about cooking and I thought this is a good chance to get her to try making simple dishes for the family. I don't want her to grow up to become some kitchen idiot next time. Her kindergarden had let her baked cookies for some charity programme and hot cross buns for Easter. She had enjoyed the sessions and were most eager to let me taste them.
She showed the book to everyone, asking what would we like to have. Very much like a waitress with menu, taking customers' orders. We decided on a few more popular choices and last two weekends, got down to cooking them.
Dish one: Scramble eggs and toast.
She beat the eggs, added milk, cooked eggs in frying pan, added salt and pepper (I taught her how to add a "Pinch of salt"), trimmed off the bread crust, spread butter, toasted it in the frying pan. I told her presentation is important too. So she arranged the food nicely on her sets of IKEA children's plastic plates. Toast cut into triangular slices, a dash of black pepper on the eggs, a nice scoop of jam on the side. And it's ready to serve.
Dish Two: Fresh fruits kebabs.
We had a party at home and she wanted to make this for the occasion. We went to the supermarket to pick the fruits. I told her to pick 4 kinds of fruits and that we try to get contrasting colours which will look nicer when put together. she picked strawberries, pineapples, kiwi and black grapes. Back home, I cut the fruits into the right sizes for her to skewer them. Not easy for her. Sometimes she didn't get the stick in properly. The fruit ended up hanging loosely/sliding off the stick. I had to redo them, and eat up her messing, poked till disintegrating pieces of fruits. Made a mistake with the pineapples too and we had to replace it with canned peach. Finally let her pick from my collection of lacquer plates to present her food.
Dish Three: Fried vegetable spring rolls
I merely made her grate two sticks of carrots and it was already a torture for her. Within minutes, she complained of tired hands, messing carrots sticking on her hands, and got impatient. I tried to motivate her along "it's the most easy to do step", "we can only proceed when the carrots are done", "I will tell everyone that you prepare the fillings".... Didn't work and before long, she was sending SOS to Ec and Ed.
I took over the grating and delegate her to the bean sprouts; rinse with water, pick out the blackish stuff, drained... She managed that well. I fried the ingredients, let it cool and got her to start wrapping them. She helped to peel off the pieces of popiah skin, and wrap the filing in. She can't wrap so well, but improved with each piece she wrapped. She made about 10 (quite an achievement I think) while I finished up the rest of the 30 plus pieces. We brought the spring rolls to my grand's place and everyone complimented her.
These dishes were a pretty good start for her. I know she had enjoyed it cos she is asking me to photocopy those recipes for her to keep. She probably plans to cook them again.