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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Cooking for the wonder years
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Cooking for the wonder years

Involve children in cooking and they will start enjoying their meals

Photo: Samar HalarnkarPremium
Photo: Samar Halarnkar

Yuck!" Accompanied by a trademark scrunched face, that rebellious exclamation of disgust is the dread of every parent who has just finished cooking for a child. It is a dread that I felt after I had—foolishly, I will admit—told my five-year-old about the black rice I intended to serve for Sunday dinner.

“Yuck!" she repeated, in case the point escaped me. “I want white rice, appa, not black."

I glared at her. She glared back.

“Don’t be racist," I said, laughing at my own joke. She did not find it funny, thought I was laughing at her and looked even more mutinous.

“You will eat what’s put on your plate," I said, my laugh fading.

“I won’t."

This was not going anywhere. Of course she was acting childishly. But why was I, when I knew the best way to handle an insubordinate five-year-old was to distract her?

Fortunately, help was at hand. The previous day was Saturday, the day when the local store bursts with fresh vegetables and spices. I had picked up a packet of plump portobello mushrooms, brilliantly green Thai basil and—rarely available—asparagus tips. Back home, I had cleaned the mushrooms and asparagus tips, chopped the mushrooms and packed them away for Sunday.

It always pays to be prepared when you have an eternally hungry child in the house. A hungry child is a cranky child, so I usually keep some raw material ready to address the crankiness. The black rice was a long-grained version grown in Camargue, France, a gift from a friend. Now, as I have previously explained, I tend not to use such gifts of exotic spices and ingredients from distant lands because my philosophy is to procure what I need within a half-kilometre radius of my home. That allows me to easily reproduce anything I cook, which is particularly important to writing this column. I cannot obviously ask you to use long-grained French black rice—my wife called it a black basmati—as an ingredient, can I?

My easy, somewhat hodge-podge approach to cooking also won me some attention from my daughter’s Montessori, and before the black-rice episode, the school asked me if I would do a cooking class for their “senior" students. Wait, for five-year-olds? From experience, I knew the only way this would succeed was if I ensured the children participated—of course, no knives please.

With my wife as adviser and assistant, I settled on sandwiches and spent an exhilarating—if somewhat chaotic—afternoon getting initially suspicious five-year-olds to choose spreads (butter, chutney, jam; the last hastily removed when it was clear most of them would choose only jam) and add on pre-sliced layers of their choice: tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos, olives, cheese slices. The suspicions were melted by the pleasure and mess of making sandwiches, and the class was a hit. Some ate combinations of chutney, butter, jalapenos, olives, cucumbers, jam—and loved it. Bottom line: Involve children in cooking—when you can—and they will eat anything.

I briefly forgot my wisdom when I offered my own obdurate five-year-old the black rice I had cooked for dinner the previous night. I wanted her to eat the leftovers, so there would be no extra effort on a somnolent Sunday evening.

Anyway, I had the solution. Out came the mushrooms, the asparagus tips and basil.

“Are you going to help appa cook your dinner?" I asked.

The pout disappeared, her eyes lit up and the rebellion dissipated. We wound our aprons around each other (she has her own little apron), and she perched on a stool near the kitchen counter.

I handed her my wooden pestle and she was off, pounding away furiously. I folded my arms, leaned against a counter and watched her: eyes narrowed in concentration, little tongue poking out from the side of her mouth and plump cheeks silhouetted against the fading light of dusk outside, as she tried to bash the springy basil into submission.

When she got tired, I took over, but she did a major part of the pounding. More importantly, she felt she did all of it and puffed up considerably. We often cook together, and I find that she never refuses to eat anything she has been involved with.

So, too, it was with the pesto-tossed mushroom and asparagus tips. By the time we were done, she had dipped her fingers into the pesto several times (fortunately, her mother was not around), licking them each time before plunging them in again.

“Can we do it again, appa?" she asked, as she sat down and enthusiastically tucked into our creation and, oh yes, the black rice.

“It’s yummy," she said of the rice, her disapproval of 30 minutes ago not even a faint memory.

I smiled, enjoying every bit of our joint culinary effort, knowing these years are fleeting. Soon, the tight bonds will loosen a little and then some more, as her horizons expand and other people, marvels and moods fill her life. Until then, I intend to enjoy the wonder years.

Pesto-tossed portobello mushroom and asparagus tips

Serves 2

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Ingredients

200-300g portobello mushrooms, washed and sliced

150g asparagus tips, washed

1 tsp sesame oil

1-2 tsp sesame seeds

1 packet (about 100g) Thai basil, washed and dried

4 pieces garlic

10-15 pine nuts

2 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Salt, to taste

Method

For the pesto: Using a mortar-pestle, pound the basil, garlic, pine nuts, extra virgin olive oil and salt into a rough paste.

In a non-stick wok, heat the sesame oil. Add the sesame seeds and wait till they start to pop. Stir-fry the asparagus tips for a minute. Add the mushrooms and toss for 2 minutes, or until they shrink and the asparagus starts to soften. Add a little salt (the pesto already has salt). Stir in three-fourths of the pesto, toss and remove from flame. Serve hot. Use the remaining pesto as condiment or chutney.

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. Samar tweets at @samar11.

Read Samar Halarnkar’s previous Lounge columns here.

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Published: 08 Aug 2015, 01:14 AM IST
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