BackTriumph with the toddler
If children and adults eat the same things, it makes life so much easier
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Just over two years ago, I wrote about my disastrous kitchen attempts at winning approval from my baby girl.
“To a man fattened by the endless and often overstated endorsements of friends, family and readers," I wrote in my blog, “the rejection of culinary skills by a 5.5kg baby cuts to the bone, cleaving through a flab of accumulated complacency."
I remember making khichdi with carrots, grinding it to an off-white, red-speckled mash and proudly offering it to eager little Babyjaan, who promptly spat it out, bawled and over two days steadfastly refused to eat it, daddy’s little girl or not.
I, who have never been fazed by 20 people dropping in for dinner, for the first time felt frustrated and harried. A man may be master of his kitchen, I noted then, but it only takes a little girl’s bawling to make him feel like a hunted kitchen mouse.
The baby is now a 16 kg toddler, 3.5 years old, fattened—I am happy to note—in great part due to her father’s cooking. Somewhere along the line I cracked the code, or, perhaps, she simply figured I might as well make my old man happy. Yes, that appears more realistic.
Either way, I have realized the secret to a toddler’s approval is to do some culinary acculturation from baby days, so she quickly eats what you eat.
The first major food she ate was a brownish gruel of ragi (millet), egg and milk. The wife and I fed it to our thin, little baby every day for eight months. It worked. It got her used to eggs and sent her on a real growth spurt. It looked awful to me, this muddy meal, and I guess I should have realized my daughter would, sooner or later, feel the same way.
One day, when she was a one-year-something, she glared at the ragi, picked it up and hurled it to the floor. Any attempt to get her to eat it again met with screams and furious swipes. It was good while it lasted.
We introduced little bits of mashed fish, which led to bits of slowly roasted chicken. Before her second birthday, she had eaten rabbit.
“What dis?" she asked, during lunch at a restaurant in California.
“Er, um, it’s a bunny," I said weakly, struggling for a reference she might grasp.
She brightened and nodded.
“Bunny, bunny," she trilled and wolfed it down.
Bunnies were followed by ham and mutton—even camel—and I am happy to report my little girl is well on her way to living the Halarnkar adage of “if it has lived, we will eat it". Alas, this week the acculturation was shattered by the wife, who kept going “eeks, eeeks" when she saw what I and my mother were eating: pupae—as in many pupa of silkworms—pickle from Nagaland. “Worms," she said in horror, watched closely by her daughter, “You are actually eating worms?"
Babyjaan immediately picked up this negative conditioning. When I offered her the pupae, she screwed up her little nose and repeated, “Worms? I don’ wan’ worms."
Sigh. The wife, who—I admit—has calmly accepted the carnivorous habits of her in-laws, husband and daughter, drew the line at “worms".
In any case, I began Babyjaan’s process of adaptation by age 2, giving her the same food I would eat, minus the red-chilli powder. Now, I add paprika, which is a great substitute. There is no restriction on any other spice—from Jamaican jerk flavouring to cloves to cinnamon powder, she is learning to take in a variety of tastes.
This is no bad thing because we no longer have to take special food along when we go out. She is willing to try most things, however unfamiliar, as long as it passes her sniff-and-lick test.
Babyjaan’s strictly vegetarian mother doesn’t have a problem—as long as she eats her vegetables, which she does. Lightly done beans, bhindi (okra), broccoli (“trees"), carrot, corn and palak (spinach) in parathas supply enough nutrients that meat does not. As for pasta, rice (or dalia/quinoa) or chapati, she will now eat whatever we are having.
With some back and forth, I have now refined my cooking schedule to take care of the culinary needs of both my girls at one go. Since her mother likes simple vegetarian food, Babyjaan’s mother shares her bhindi and beans. Her chicken or mutton is the same that I eat. I have evolved a roasted/baked chicken (see below) that is good for father, daughter and guests.
Those guests include a lot of yummy mommies—if you will pardon the expression (they don’t mind)—from her playschool. This lot of young mothers has given Babyjaan’s roast chicken the thumbs up. At play parties (a larger and more chaotic form of the play date), the roast chicken is eaten equally by mommies and toddlers. It just makes life so much easier if adults and children eat the same things.
Babyjaan’s chicken
Serves one toddler and parent
Ingredients
5 pieces chicken (I use legs and thighs)
1 tsp ginger-garlic paste
½ tsp jeera (cumin) powder
½ tsp coriander powder
1 flat tsp sumac (available at most major food stores) or 1 tsp paprika powder
1 tsp pine nuts (optional)
½ tsp sesame seeds (optional)
5 cloves
2 fragments of star anise
A splash of soy sauce
Salt to taste
Method
Marinate the chicken in all the ingredients. Tuck the star anise and cloves into the chicken. Arrange in a baking tray, cover tightly with foil and bake at 190 degrees Celsius for an hour. Let stand and cool for another 30 minutes. Serve. Babyjaan typically eats the chicken (one-and-a-half pieces, if she is good and hungry) with a baked potato (wrapped in foil and slipped amid the chicken pieces). If there’s no potato, she eats a chapati or rice.
This is a column on easy, inventive cooking from a male perspective. Samar Halarnkar also writes the fortnightly science column Frontier Mail for Mint and is the author of the book The Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking—And Other Dubious Adventures.
Also Read | Samar’s previous Lounge columns
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