Learning to Eat – Page 116

De Gustibus: Kumquat Marmalade & Veggie Bacon Sandwich

March 7, 2009 By caroline in Uncategorized Tags: cooking with kids, lunch, marketing

Sometimes I think about this phrase, “learning to eat” quite literally: who first learned how to break through all the artichoke plant’s thorny defenses and found the fleshy ends of the leaves, and the sweet, tender heart? How many people became ill from eating rhubarb leaves before someone learned that the stems are the edible part of that plant?

Then I think of the various food combinations that delight me, and I wonder about their origins. Did someone sprinkle salt, instead of sugar, on their caramel by accident one day? Who first thought to pair figs with cheese, and then hit on the particularly transcendent match of fig jam and manchego? Did two people, one nibbling a chocolate bar, one with a jar of peanut butter, really collide, as the old commercial would have it, to discover the happy marriage of chocolate and peanut butter?

Marketing and eating with kids has me think about these questions all the time. Although at dinner we make one meal and sit down together to eat it, at breakfast and lunch I tend just to list a few of the available options and let the kids decide what combination of foods will make the meal. Their palates are different from mine, and also changing much more rapidly, so they need to learn what they like. For awhile this meant Ben’s breakfast was a bowl of yogurt with some graham crackers and sun dried tomatoes on the side. Eli’s lunch today was edamame and yogurt. A little weird, but perfectly nutritious. We don’t really aim for balanced meals around here (except at dinner); we aim for a balanced day.

Today at the market, Ben spied kumquat marmalade; he’s been on a bit of a kumquat kick lately, and loved the marmalade taste he was offered. On the drive home from the market, we talked about ways to incorporate the new jar of marmalade into his lunch, since I wasn’t going to let him just spread jam on bread and call it a meal (a mom I do lunch duty with at Ben’s school goes so far as to call jam on bread “cake.” I’m not that tough, I just suggest my kids eat some carrots on the side). “Peanut butter,” I suggested, “some slices of cheese, veggie bacon…” I was tired, and sort of forgetting the main player in the sandwich. “Veggie bacon!” called Ben from the back seat; “Kumquat marmalade and veggie bacon sandwich!” Well, I thought, maybe this would be the new fig jam and manchego.

The combination of salty and sweet, crunchy and sticky, has some definite appeal. I’m not sure we’re setting a new food trend here, but you won’t know until you try it.

Birthday Cakes

March 3, 2009 By caroline in Uncategorized Tags: baking, chocolate, cooking with kids, dessert, Parties, sweets

For all the baking I do, you’d think I would have one, standard, go-to birthday cake.

But I don’t. I have dozens of cookbooks, and I want to explore them. I baked most of the way through Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame (in Feast) and found many excellent cakes to add to the repertoire (Chocolate Guinness cake, anybody?) before losing interest when I arrived at the tropical chocolate cake. Then of course my friends and family members suggest recipes, and magazines arrive with others. Plus, every year brings new requirements. Sometimes we want cupcakes for a party:

And sometimes we just want a simple layer cake for family:

Sometimes the birthday boy participates in the baking:

And sometimes he just draws me a diagram:

This year, we haven’t talked about his birthday cake at all, so I am planning for the first time to make a cake with a picture on it: of an airplane (of course) for my aviation-obsessed boy. I’ll make crazy cake (since we’re baking vegan for my niece these days), and plan to use a vegan vanilla frosting (and various food colorings) to create the airplane. As it turned out, Tony did the decorating (our first birthday cake division of labor!), and the birthday boy was well pleased:

Kumquat Popsicles: A Dessert/Craft Project

February 26, 2009 By caroline in Uncategorized Tags: cooking with kids, fruit, recipes, sweets

by Caroline

A couple years ago, an Amanda Hesser food column in the Sunday Times Magazine inspired me to do a little popsicle/craft project with kumquats.

Kumquats are an odd little fruit — the peel is the sweet part, while the inner fruit is quite tart — and I lived over thirty years without ever eating one. But here in California, kumquats are one of the available fruits this time of year, and so we eat them.

Back when I first read the article, Ben had never heard of the fruit, so I started by manufacturing excitement; just saying “kumquat” a few times was all it took. Try it. We had a brief setback, the night before market day, when Ben fell prostrate to the floor, crying “But I want kumquats now!” But we got past that, and in fact, the interval between getting the fruit into the house and eating the finished product is quite short, which is always a bonus when you’re cooking with people for whom the phrase “delayed gratification” is a contradiction in terms.

So if you happen to see some kumquats in your market, try this with your kids.

Kumquat Popsicles

Note: the original recipe calls for dipping the kumquats in raw egg white to help the sugar stick, but that step’s unnecessary (and runs the very slight risk of exposing you to salmonella). The kumquat juice is enough to do the job.

You need kumquats, a dish of cinnamon sugar, and some toothpicks.

Slice the kumquats in half horizontally. Use the point of the knife to flick out any seeds.

Stick a toothpick into the stem end so that you’ve got a handle.

Dip the cut end of the fruit into the sugar and cinnamon.

Lay the fruit on a freezer-proof plate or tray, and then stick into the freezer for an hour or so.

Or eat before they’re frozen.

Have Beef Will Braise

February 25, 2009 By lisa in Uncategorized Tags: Braised Short Ribs, comfort food, family dinner, Guinness Braised Short Ribs, marketing, new food, recipes

by Lisa

One thing I’ve learned doing this blog: food styling is hard. So don’t let the slipshod photo above deter you. This is an amazing recipe that came together one rainy afternoon last weekend. This is done with beef ribs, but I suspect the flavors would be just as good if you substituted some rich porcini mushrooms for the beef.

I was inspired by a new cattle farmer–Holding Ranch–who’s shown up at our weekly farmer’s market. They’re a terrific small operation, and right now they’re carrying beef and chicken. In the spring they’ll have lamb and pork–at the time when the sheep and pigs are actually ready to slaughter. Yes, it’s true, meat should be seasonal like everything else we eat. To give you an idea of scale–they butcher one steer a week to bring to market. The beef is terrifically expensive, so a difficult purchase even for me to make these days. However, I’m committed to buying from them, which will mean less meat, less frequently, which is a good thing, of course.

The first of my purchases, one rainy Sunday, was about a pound of beef short ribs. I think I paid around $13 for them, and I wasn’t really sure what I would get inside. When I opened the package, I found 4 good sized ribs, which was easily sufficient for our family. Beef ribs have a good amount of meat and fat on them, and when they’re braised, with other things you really don’t want to eat a lot of them. (Okay, you might want to, but you don’t need too.)

I took stock of my garden and refrigerator and the ribs, which were just crying out to be braised–which is basically a slow, long cooking in liquid after browning the meat and aromatics on the stove top. What I came up with: Guinness Braised Beef Short Ribs with Wild Mushrooms, Tomatoes, White Beans. Actually, I had cooking a big pot of cranberry beans, but I forgot about and they burned, so at the last minute I added a can of white beans instead to give body to the stew.

The meal was an enormous hit with us and the kids. And the meatless leftovers provided over 3 lunches for me over the week. Pretty good for $13 + the cost of the vegetables.

Guinness Braised Beef Short Ribs

For each 1 lb of short ribs:

medium yellow onion, cut in half crosswise, then lengthwise into 1/4 inch slices (you don’t want the onions to dissolve in the braising)

4-5 medium carrots, cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces

2 cloves garlic, smashed

1 can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped in quarters

2 sprigs rosemary

beef broth or stock

1 can Guinness

1/4-1/2 oz dried wild mushrooms

8 oz white beans

olive oil

1. Reconstitute mushrooms in boiling water.

2. In a large (enameled) cast iron pot brown short ribs in olive oil until nicely brown all over. Remove from pan.

3. Add a few tablespoons or so (as needed) to the pan and sautee onion, garlic, bay leaf and carrots until the onions are soft.

4.Add about 1/2 the can of Guinness and stir until most but not all of the liquid evaporates. Drink the rest of the Guinness.

5. Return the meat and any juices to the pan.

6. Add the tomatoes and mushrooms. Carefully pour the mushroom-soaking liquid into the pot–but be very careful not to dump in the grit.

7. Add the rosemary springs and then pour in enough broth or stock to cover everything. Okay, so this part makes it more like a stew and less like a braise….

8. Cook for a few hours, until the ribs are tender and nearly falling off the bone. Before serving, stir in the beans and heat through.

We might not have Paris…

February 23, 2009 By lisa in Uncategorized Tags: baking, breakfast, chocolate, comfort food, cooking with kids, France, marketing, new food, sweets, Trader Joe's chocolate croissant, travel, unfamiliar food

by Lisa

Not long ago, on a family trip to San Francisco, Ella, Finley, and I found ourselves staring at the counter of a French bakery, at a pile of croissants. They didn’t know what they were, and as I explained to them the wonder that is a croissant, I found myself telling them not about croissant, exactly, and how good they can be, but about the summer I spent working in the French Alps at a summer camp. They know many stories from this time, including the fact that no one, not a soul, spoke even a word of English, so I was forced very quickly to abandon all pretense of speaking, looking, or acting even vaguely English-speaking. They know that we ate baguette and cheese, or sugared candy or chocolate every day for afternoon snack. They know that my first night, on the all night train, the youngest child, an adorable little 4-year old, looked up at me and said, “But you don’t speak French” (in French, of course), when I had uttered what I thought was a perfectly comprehenisble sentence in French. Things changed quickly and by the end of the summer, I could enter the mountain village store and be served and local restaurant and be served without disdain; I dreamed in French, and upon my return to Paris functioned like a native speaker. Sadly, this is no longer true.

France was also the place where I learned to eat meat again, but that’s another story. The anecdote I found myself telling my children a we stared at that golden counter was about breakfast.

On the counselor’s mornings off, we got to order from the bakery, which meant croissant–plain, chocolate, etc.–and whatever we wanted would be brought to our room, with our choice of cafe au lait, chocolate chaud, etc…It was quite wonderful to wake up to perfect croissant and eat them and go right back to sleep while the French children screamed.

And every morning we drank big bowls of cafe au lait or chocolate, too, which Ella and Finn found really funny.

Not long after, as I was marketing I spied a box of frozen TJ chocolate croissants, so of course I bought them, and for some reason had the impulse to sneak them into my cart so Ella didn’t see. Of course, Caroline and her family were fortunate enough to travel and eat in France last summer, and you can read about it all beginning here, but for the forseeable future, I’m going to have to recreate a little bit of France in our California home, so I bought the box.

We were in the midst of a rainy long weekend, and while many were away on ski weekends, I had been baking, and braising and nesting and so that night, I planned a petit dejeuner. The croissants are frozen, and you place them out on a cookie sheet overnight to proof, or rise. I did this, set the table, boiled some eggs, set out bowls for the chocolate and coffee, prepped the espresso machine, and filled a bowl of fresh fruit.

I also left a sign that said “Do Not Touch! Not Cooked!” on the croissants, since Ella and Finn are known to be curious when it comes to food, and they were bound to be up first.

The next morning, Ella was exuberant: “I can’t wait to taste my first croissant!” she said, and while they were baking, I made the chocolate and coffee and whipped some cream. They thought the bowls of chocolate chaud were hysterical, but they happily slurped them up just like a child should on a cold, rainy holiday morning.

When the croissant came out, Finn knew right away he was on to a good thing, because the moment he picked one up–before putting a single bite near his mouth– he exclaimed, “Mmmmm! They’re so buttery and warm!” And even though they are not the best croissant you will ever have, they were lovely, and that is all you really need to know.

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