I now know what LEGO has to do with cake making, and, perhaps why so many pastry chefs are men.
It started with the rain.
It’s been raining here, for days on end. This has not, generally speaking been a bad thing. The kids like a good fire. I appreciate the down time. We really, really need the water. And it has given Finn endless excuse to play with LEGO, especially his new Power Miners sets.
One day, at breakfast, he wanted to know if the contraptions he built were “real,” as in based on things in the real world. “No,” I answered, hastily. “Mines are real, but I don’t think the machines look like your Power Miners.” But I agreed we could do some research, and lo and behold, the things I did not know about heavy mining equipment. As it turns out, thanks to the magic of Google Image Search, we deduced that, rock monsters aside, nearly every Power Miners vehicle was based, at least in part, on a mining machine:
That afternoon, in a desperate attempt to vary his activity, we read Thunder Cake, a really lovely book about a young girl who is taught not to be afraid of thunder by her grandmother. I promised Finn we could make the cake, but he was only interested once I also promised he could use the hand mixer.
Understand, this is a new appliance. For years, I relied on my whisk, baking off the grid, so my little hand held mixer is a great improvement. But in Finn’s hands, the machine was miraculous. A revelation, in fact. It was evidence that cooking was nearly as exciting as lego and underground mining. Oh, the things you can do with machines.
“This is SO. COOL!” he exclaimed. “This is JUST. LIKE. POWER MINERS!” And his glee knew no bounds as he broke up lumps of butter and creamed sugar and generally mixed for as long as I let him.
The cake itself is decent. It’s a solid everyday cake, not hard to make, not spectacular, but also easy to eat, as a chocolate cake should be. It’s held up well for our cake + milk ritual, and it reminded us that there are really a very many ways to like cooking with kids, not all of them obvious.
In keeping with the seasonal, comfort food thing, I’m giving you another dish that’s a crowd pleaser for a potluck or dinner party, a great weekend dish, and even greater leftover for a fast meal or a hearty lunch: a Spanish Tortilla. It takes some time and tending to make, but it’s not especially difficult, and it can certainly make enough to carry you through two meals or a dinner and a couple of lunches.
This version is what I brought to Christmas Caroling party in December, and it was a huge hit with both adults and kids. IIt was inspired by the tortilla my American roommate, who had spent a long time in Spain, used to whip up in our Belfast kitchen and in part by a dish called Potato Decadence, a really incredible garlicky potato tower that they used to serve at Timo’s, a tapas bar in San Francisco (and maybe still do). There are many recipes online for a traditional spanish tortilla, which generally involve thinly sliced potatoes sauteed in a fair amount of olive oil and bound together with egg. I added a saffron aioli and a lot of smashed garlic paste, for a subtle kick. The trick is to cook it slow and low–a long time at very low heat, and only use enough egg to bind the potatoes.
Potato and Garlic Tortilla-Spanish Style
For the Tortilla
1/2-3/4 cup olive oil
4-5 russet potatoes
4-5 well beaten eggs
4-5 garlic cloves
Coarse salt
Quick Saffron Aioli
2 cloves garlic
a pinch of saffron or Spanish saffron
1/2 large lemon
1 cup mayonnaise
coarse salt
Make the aioli by smashing the 2 cloves of garlic into a paste with the saffron and a good pinch of coarse salt in a mortar and pestle. Squeeze in the lemon and continue to blend. Add the mayonnaise and mix until well-incorporated. Season to taste, then refrigerate until needed.
With the (clean) mortar and pestle, smash the remaining 4-5 cloves of garlic with a good pinch of coarse salt into a paste.
Best the eggs well in separate bowl, preferably with a pouring spout.
Thinly slice the potatoes.
Sautee the garlic paste in the olive oil very briefly over medium heat in a large sautee pan. Add all of the potatoes and cook, stirring and turning gently until potatoes are soft and nicely browned.
When potatoes are done–about 40 minutes–pour off any extra olive oil, and slowly pour in enough of the beaten egg to bind the potatoes.
Cook slowly until egg is set or, alternatively, set the pan under the broiler to brown.
When the dish is cooked through, invert onto a large platter.
We have continued our tradition of kidtinis on these winter weekends, even though MadMen is no longer sustaining us. The kids love them, and think their dad is famous because if you Google “kidtini drinks” the first hits are the recipes on this site: The 7Up Kidtini, the Pomegranate Kidtini, and the one that started it all. One of the latest was also one of the simplest and prettiest, and followed the basic rules of not-too-sweet, seasonal goodness for kids.
Pomegranate Clementine Kidtini
For each drink, pour into a durable martini glass:
Pomegranite soda or Seltzer + splash of pomegranite juice
A thin slice of clementine, floated on top
It’s true that these drinks are more style than substance, not unlike Esme Squalor’s Aqueous Martini (very, very cold water, served in a fancy glass, with an olive), but at our house, like those self-same villanous drinks, they continue to be very, very in.
We have never posted someone else’s work here in lieu of our own, but I’m making an exception and giving you this link because, well, it’s the funniest thing on feeding young kids I’ve ever read. And it’s also about exactly what we’re doing here: building a family food culture, one day, one meal at a time–which can be, as Frazier implies, a job of biblical proportion with apocalyptic consequence and no shortage of revelation.
Read it and laught til you weep. And then come back here and for more ideas about how to feed those unruly, ungrateful kids another meal.
I used to make fresh pasta a lot. As in once a week. Before kids, or when Ella was very little, it was easy to whip up a batch of fresh pasta for dinner, even for a first course. Fresh, it’s like nothing else in the world, and I even got good at making the right kind of pasta for the right dish. Wide paparadelle for a fresh olive oil emulsion, fettucine for alfredo, lasagna noodles for a casserole with bechamel, spaghetti for ragu, orichetta for broccoli rabe and sausage, raviolis and tortellini, even bite-sized, whisper thin sheets that encased a single spray of tarragon, or a tiny basil leaf, etc. With practice, it became a very easy thing to do and I had a nice wooden kitchen table at which to work.
Then, I had a new baby, and then a new home with a really terrible tile counter on which it was impossible to roll pasta. Our new kitchen table was similarly unsuitable. A few years passed, and while we got a new countertop pretty quickly, aside from a few batches of pumpkin ravioli, it took a while to work the past back in to any regular rotation. But back it is, and I can say now, that I am really sorry it ever went away, even briefly.
It can take a little time to master, and more time to master efficiently, so you’re not spewing flour everywhere and making for an unpleasant and lengthy clean-up, but if you stick with it, you get better fast, and it’s not hard and not messy.
It’s also one of the most fun things–hands down–you can do with a kid in the kitchen. In fact, it can make a great play date if you’re game.
I like the old fashioned method of mixing the pasta and eggs: I dump the flour on the counter, make a well, and break the eggs right into it. With a fork, the eggs get beaten, and the flour is slowly incorporated into the egg, a little at a time. The kids love this bit because it looks so, well, risky. No bowl! What a mess! The thing is, it’s not messy, and the dough only takes up as much flour as it needs. Certainly, you can dump the flour and eggs into your Cuisinart/food processor and mix it up until it rides the blade. But sometimes this produces an overly dry dough (say, on rainy days). It’s not fool proof. The counter method is.
The ratio, straight out of Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cooking which is no longer in print:
1 egg to every 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
For 3-4 people, use 2 eggs + 1 1/2 cups flour
For 5-6 people use 3 eggs 2 1/4 cups flour
For 7-8 people, use 4 eggs, 3 cups flour
You can be brave and roll your dough by hand, or once it’s mixed, finish the kneading by passing it through your pasta machine until it’s very smooth, then keep passing it through until it’s the right thickness. Then, you cut as needed. A good machines will cost you about $70 at William Sonoma. I bought mine for $50 the minute we got back from our honeymoon in Italy ten years ago, and it was money very well spent.
The kids adore the machine.
This night, Finn rolled most of the pasta…
and he cut most of the pasta….
and he was very pleased with his work…
The cream sauce is really fettucine alfredo, but if you haven’t had it this way, with fresh pasta you really haven’t had it in its most fundamental, most extraordinary form. This recipe will make you realize why people go nuts for this dish, when all you’ve ever had is, well, a rich, flavorless, goop.
This recipe is fast enough for a weeknight if you’ve frozen your fresh pasta so it’s ready to go, and elegant and delicious enough for a dinner party or first course. You will never, ever tire of it in the cooler months.
Again, right out of Hazan:
Fettucine with Butter and Cream Sauce
1 cup heavy cream
3 T butter
2/3 cups freshly grated parmesan
freshly ground pepper
a very tiny grating fresh nutemg
Fettucine, made w/3 eggs
In a heavy pan, that can later accomodate all the cooked pasta, heat 2/3 cup cream and butter and simmer over medium heat fro less than a minute, until the butter and heat have thickened. Turn off the heat.
Cook the fettucine in a large pot of well-salted boiling water. They will take only a few seconds-1 minute to cook after the water returns to a boil. Drain immediately and thoroughly and transfer to the pan containing the butter and cream.
Turn on the heat under the pan to low, add the remaining 1/3 cup cream, all the grated cheese, 1/2 teaspoon salt, pepper to taste, and nutmeg. Toss briefly until the cream has thickened and the fettucine are well coated. Taste and correct for salt. Serve immediately from the pan, with a bowl of additional grated cheese on the side.
If you do something like this, and serve it from a serving dish, get it to the table and onto plates immediately. Say grace after dinner.
