Highfield Hall Cooks!

Crow with a Side of Pizza Pockets and Fruit Smoothies

What was that I said about the Tots forgetting all about that Chefsir thing? Well yeah, they didn't, so it's crow for me, but thankfully the kids got a better deal with Pizza pockets shaped like bunnies, eggs, and tulips.

 

They made their own dough and tomato sauce from scratch and stuffed those little pockets full of fresh mozzarella and fresh basil and although they were too hot to eat before they left I'm betting they gobbled them right up. Especially if eating them involved as much gusto as drinking their fruit smoothies did. Those poor banana-strawberry-blueberry-nonfat yogurt-y drinks didn't stand a chance! They were positively guzzled. Just look at Sean here:

He dove into a second serving before all was said and done. Ella enjoyed both her cupfuls equally much and entertained us all with her silly smoothie mustaches.

Abigail took one sip, closed her eyes, and said, "Mmmmm. Wonderfullllllllll," and five minutes later announced that she didn't actually like the smoothie at all.

Chefsir was confused, to say the least, but with a confusing name like that it's really no wonder, is it?

You Can Call Me Chefsir!

That's my new name. So sayeth the Tots, anyway. I never asked them to call me chef, and sir definitely wasn't on the agenda, but somehow along the way they decided to combine the two and throughout last week's class that's who I was. Of course I expect them to forget all about it by the next time I see them, but I did get a good giggle out of Chefsir. "Um, excuse me, Chefsir?" "Chefsir, can you help me mix this?" "Is mine okay, Chefsir?"

These little ones didn't get a chance to make pasta the first week because their start class was postponed. Pasta-making isn't difficult, but it's labor-intensive and I wanted to get to know this group a little better before attempting something that required them to wait off and on in line. I have to say, these little guys did a great job with their pasta. They mixed and kneaded it themselves,

And then they let it rest while they made a pear and banana salad with Five Spice Powder and honey.

My favorite part of the class came during the cutting up phase of the fruit salad, when some visitors came in for a peek and Reilly enthusiastically told them, "We can touch EVERYTHING here!" And they can!

After the fruit salad it was time to roll the pasta. They were absolutely exuberant. And insistent upon turning the hand crank by themselves, which was an enormous feat considering the fact that the dough went through the rollers no less than eight times.

Tots n' Pans Making Pasta from Highfield Chef on Vimeo.

They waited extremely patiently between turns and took a great deal of pride in their pasta sheets. Perhaps the best moment of all for them was when they saw their pasta sheets turn into noodles right before their eyes. We took the noodles, stirred them into a pot of boiling water, and a couple of minutes later we saw this:

And this:

Reilly and Sean didn't want to leave and stood at the table shoveling in forkfuls of noodles with parmesan and olive oil (or butter, depending on their preference), for a good half hour after class ended! I think it's safe to say that a fantastic time was had by all!

Zealously Zesty

To honor the St. Patrick's Day festivities without green food coloring or whiskey, I decided we'd make scones in the Kids Café this week. Of course scones originated in Scotland in the 1500s, but they're also a type of soda bread (a traditional Irish quick bread made using baking soda and most often, buttermilk) and quite frankly, I didn't think these kids would go for lamb stew and we didn't have time for corned beef and cabbage, which could have been hit or miss in the approval department too. Scones seemed like the perfect choice.

They were raring to go again this week, stepping up to the table and reading their little recipe books to find out what we were making. Some yelled out that they "loooooooooooooooove scones!" and others had never had one before. I was still smarting from Friday's green tea debacle, so in an effort to redeem myself I treated this class to some real frozen yogurt. (Look! A tuile!)

I let 12 cups of Stonyfield Farms whole milk plain yogurt drain overnight in cheesecloth, added some vanilla and a little sugar and put it in the machine to freeze before the kids started arriving on Sunday morning. At the end of the freeze I tossed in some chocolate chunks for good measure. The kids were stunned. Frozen yogurt at that hour of the day?! Some were so shocked that they started turning their friends in for eating it—I think they thought it was an ingredient for the scones! Lucky for me, this frozen treat was a success.

After that sweet interlude we got back to business, mixing the dough, adding some orange zest, and then kneading in the cranberries and walnuts.

 

Cranberries and walnuts are great together, and the aromatic oils in orange zest really made this a great-tasting scone. Buttermilk keeps it moist. And, of course the vanilla cream cheese butter we made didn't hurt the flavor at all. Just ask Will!

Everyone went home with a smile and a Chinese take-out container filled with warm, zesty goodness.

Note: There is no Kids Café class this weekend, due to the Easter holiday. The session will instead be extended by one week.

Green Tea What?

Stephen wanted to learn to cook salmon, so this week I settled on a menu of pan-seared Asian-style salmon, steamed broccoli and basmati rice.

The fish was marinated in rice vinegar, fresh ginger, mirin, and soy sauce and was accompanied by two sauces—wasabi and sweet honey-soy. Stephen and Dominique teamed up and prepped the salmon and sauces while Gabriella took on the rice and broccoli. Nicolette, David, and Matt got to work on some hippenmasse (or tuile) cookies to go with dessert. What was dessert, you ask? Well, you know, here's where I could distract everyone with a discourse on the humble tuile, because tuiles are interesting and fun. Their sweet, sometimes almond-y, thin, crispy goodness is loved by one and all. And they can be molded into a variety of interesting shapes, which makes for some good old-fashioned kitchen fun. See? There you were, right there, running off on your own personal tuile tangent, right? Me too!

Alright, alright, the dessert. I'll admit that until Friday I'd never made Green Tea Ice Cream, but it seemed like the perfect end to our Asian-inspired menu with the bonus of being green for the upcoming St. Patrick's Day celebrations. I'd also recently had good success with Chai Tea chocolate, so I ran with it. I even did my matcha (green tea powder) research and found one produced expressly for creating green tea ice cream and desserts. I figured if they made it just for ice cream it had to be good.

Henry and Ove were eager to take on the task of making a custard-based ice cream in spite of (maybe because of) my warning that the ice cream was far and away the most difficult item on our menu. They took their job seriously and once they got past the initial confusion over egg whites and yolks they mixed and measured and whisked and tempered and they did it with some serious panache. Henry dutifully kept watch on the temperature while Ove stirred and stirred. The eggs cooked a little, but we managed to save the custard, cooled it, and put it in the machine to freeze. At that point all we could really say was that it was very, very green. We left it to do its thing while everyone took a turn cooking their salmon, then we stopped to eat.

Right around the time that last picture was taken the ice cream was ready. I tasted it and knew it was going to go over like a ton of bricks, but encouraged everyone to try it anyway. To my surprise, they all did, even after several of them ran to spit it out. The verdict? Green Tea Ice Cream tastes exactly like….green tea! Really, really strong green tea. The recipe is definitely not a keeper, but success is in the eye of the beholder and I beheld 11 budding chefs (Emily was in a big figure skating show and we missed her!) approaching this experiment with open minds. They were willing to challenge their taste buds and THAT is what this is all about.

(That said, I promise to make a tastier ice cream next week since they were such good sports about the Great Green Tea Experiment of 2008.)

 

Hot Squash Scones!

Thursday afternoon my youngest cooks arrived raring to go. Drop-offs were quick and easy and we got right to work making Butternut Squash Scones. I had premeasured most of the ingredients, but the little ones had no trouble following my lead when it came time to cut the butter and brown sugar into their dough.

They weren't afraid to get their hands dirty (although they did spend a lot of time washing their hands between steps), and they expressed great interest in feeling, smelling, and tasting the ingredients as they were added to the bowls.

We mixed, stirred, kneaded, cut, egg-washed, and sugar-sprinkled our scones.

 

And while they baked we drew flour pictures on the prep table, colored in our recipe books, and tasted some delicious vanilla cream cheese butter.

Another successful day in the kitchen, and they left Highfield Hall filled with the aroma of warm nutmeg. What could be better?

Askutasquash

Um. Gesundheit?

I enjoy discovering culinary history, and it's fun to share what I learn with the kids. This week in the Kids Café we learned that the word "squash," comes from the Narragansett word, askutasquash, meaning "eaten raw." Not that we were eating it raw. Nor am I recommending that as a general practice--even the starving pilgrims didn't enjoy squash à la askutasquash. This Sunday the children were fortunate to be welcomed into the kitchen by the aroma of butternut squash roasting in the oven. They also saw this when they stepped up to their stations:

 

And they knew immediately that it was time to get messy.

What you see up there quickly became a table lined with messy hand monsters literally squealing with glee over their dough-caked fingers. They had so much fun making noodles a couple of weeks ago I decided we'd do it again, only this time it was butternut squash ravioli on the menu. Even though it was only their second time making pasta dough their efforts produced a much smoother, softer dough and the resulting rolled pasta was much easier to handle.

We ended up with nice, long sheets of dough and had no trouble at all spacing dollops of butternut squash mixed with ricotta, nutmeg, salt, and pepper at regular intervals to form square or round ravioli.

It was a sprint to the end as we cooked the pasta and then served it up with a tasty light Alfredo sauce. There was no time to eat this week, so everyone went home with a Chinese take-out container—that is, everyone except for my son, Ben, who so thoroughly cleaned his plate that I had an actual concern for the state of the porcelain's glaze when he'd finished. And then, when we got home, he insisted on making another batch, which we all ate for dinner!

 

Young Epicureans Make Chicken Quesadillas

And they did it completely from scratch! Tortillas, salsa and all. During this class everyone seemed a good bit more relaxed. Some arrived early and got started grating cheese before moving on to mixing dough for their tortillas. It took a while to roll those tortillas to appropriate sizes and thicknesses, but everyone was successful. The paper thin ones, like David's, turned out the best. You could literally see through his uncooked tortillas.

It seems that David, whose mom drives him all the way from Yarmouth for this class, has some mad tortilla-rolling skillz—unlike my not-so-focused tortilla-photographing skillz. You'll have to trust me that this was by far our most gorgeous tortilla. Large, round, thin, and quite clearly focused in person. (Maybe it's the camera?) That cutting board is 12 inches wide, just to give you an idea of how hard he worked a little 2-inch ball of dough.

While the dough was "resting," before we rolled and cooked the tortillas we made fresh salsa.

I was overjoyed to see all of them using all the ingredients in the recipe—even the scarier ones like jalapeno peppers and cilantro. Some even bravely tasted the raw jalapenos. The results of that little experiment were, let's just say, mixed. The cilantro we had, incidentally, was gorgeous and almost intoxicatingly aromatic. It filled the kitchen with its unique scent while we cooked. Some of the kids even took a bunch home, which pleased me to no end.

Their sauté skills are improving. This week we sautéed chicken, red bell peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes for the quesadilla fillings and many of the kids are beginning to get the hang of flipping their ingredients in the pan to mix without using a spoon.

That's Emily demonstrating her two-handed technique in the first picture. Those pans are heavy and Emily may be small, but she's mighty! In the second picture you can see Gabriella (in the middle) frying her tortilla on a dry sauté pan.

After the vegetables and chicken were cooked it was time to add a little olive oil, stack the quesadillas (tortilla, a few tablespoons of cheddar and Monterey jack cheeses, chicken, vegetables, and the final tortilla) and pan fry on both sides. Then onto a plate and time to add the garnish (salsa, reduced-fat sour cream, and avocado).

Behold the final product:

Spectacularly unique and tasty! Everyone ate some, some ate everything, and others took home about half of what they made in our new and fancy Chinese takeout containers. A great time was had by all! Next week we'll work on our recipe reading, measuring, and dish washing skills (I'm not sure, but it may have been a shock to find out that there are no pot-scrubbing gremlins living inside the Highfield dishwasher)….

A special thanks to Nichole Litchfield for volunteering her Friday night after a long day of landscaping to help us out.

Have a great week everyone!!

 

 

 

Tots n’ Pans Debut!

Think three-, four-, and five-year olds can't hold their own in the kitchen? Think again! In fact, these kids are extremely focused and follow directions like champs. Our menu was the same as the Kid Café class—German Oven Pancakes and Chocolate Banana Smoothies, but our starting set-up is a little different for this age group. I measure out the majority of ingredients beforehand and equip each station with a mixing bowl, a spoon, a rubber spatula, a butter knife (that's as sharp as we get in this class), a cutting board, small bowls of pre-measured ingredients, and large bowls of ingredients that don't necessarily need measuring. The result is a wonderful sensory experience with a variety of colors, textures, and aromas.

First we mixed the pancakes, which were a tremendous success!

Then each child cut up his or her own fruit.

And finally, everything was mixed together in a bowl.

We ate some of our masterpieces and wrapped some to go.

Proving once again, that cooking is, indeed, child's play. I can't wait for next week!

If You Give a Kid a Pancake…

…you're guaranteed some smiles! What a wonderful group of children in this class. I do believe I'm having at least as much fun as they are! Today's menu was German Oven Pancakes with strawberries, bananas, apples, and blueberries and Chocolate Banana Smoothies made with chocolate soy milk and a dollop of peanut butter. Everyone enthusiastically mixed their own batter and cut their fruit into bite-sized pieces. Peeling the apples gave them the most trouble. Some cried uncle, but many of them persevered. A couple were even surprised to learn that they'd been using the peeler upside down all these years!

They were a bit skeptical about pancakes that cook in the oven, but the first time we opened the oven door to check on them they couldn't believe their eyes. What started out as about a quarter inch of batter in the bottom of their mini pie pans turned into beautiful, golden pancake puffs that were bursting up and over the tops of the pans. When they came out of the oven they collapsed (as they should) into pancake bowls. As soon as they were cool enough to handle we filled them with fruit and yogurt. I think my friend Clemmie inhaled hers because one minute it was sitting on the plate in front of her and the next it had disappeared!

We wrapped the leftovers in aluminum foil swans and got busy with the blender. The smoothies were the perfect end to a wonderful morning in the Highfield kitchen.

Young Epicureans Off to a Great Start!

Last night I welcomed twelve new budding chefs (ages 10 to 16) into the Highfield kitchen. Some sauntered, some swaggered, a few chattered away right from the start, and the rest quietly found a spot around the large stainless steel prep table at the center of the kitchen. The boys outnumbered the girls two to one. As they lined up side by side in front of their cutting boards they were all suddenly quiet. Really, really quiet. Unnaturally quiet. So quiet that I asked whether they planned on always being that quiet, because that kind of silence is really kind of unnerving. Especially in my kitchen.

No doubt you already know this, but they really aren't that quiet.

We started with some basic knife skills—how best to hold the knife, how to use a guiding hand, and how to dice vegetables. The first vegetable? A culinary staple. The humble onion. And lo, they did cry. Tears streamed down their faces and the laughter and chatter began. The shared experience of crying over onions brought them out of themselves and got them all talking. We moved on to carrots, took a break and made some dough, then cut up some celery and the chicken I had cooked earlier in the day. They were well on their way to making a dozen unique chicken pot pies.

The first five jumped at the chance to take a turn at the stove. Butter sizzled in their hot sauté pans as I moved down the line filling them with the onions, carrots, and celery we'd cut earlier. All of them were eager to learn to toss the contents of their pans the way the chefs on TV do, so they took turns flipping and shaking their pans until the onions were translucent. Then came flour for the roux. A few minutes later stock and milk. Suddenly their pans of vegetables and gooey flour were beginning to look familiar. They began comparing the colors of their sauces. David E. and Henry chopped the fresh parsley and thyme, which were added right before everyone tasted their filling for seasoning. Salt and pepper were added and five ramekins were filled. Five more kids took their places at the stove and the process was repeated until all the ramekins were filled and it was time to roll out the pie crust. Between turns at the stove kids washed dishes and checked voicemail and text messages.("Does everyone have a cell phone?" I asked. Apparently they do.).

While we waited for the pies to come out of the oven we talked about the things they'd like to learn to cook. Not surprisingly, at first they clamored for anything with sugar, but then they thought about it and even surprised me with their requests. Many of them are interested in learning to cook fish—even the ones who don't particularly like it. Emily wants to learn to cook some vegetarian dishes, and Gabriella requested salads. Others asked for more specific dishes, like chicken quesadillas, cheesecake, and tiramisu. Looks like we've got some fun times ahead!

Just before parents arrived the pies, whose glorious aroma had filled the kitchen all evening, emerged from the oven, crusts golden, fillings bubbling.

P.S. Mike? Next time we use onions I'll try to get sweet ones so you won't cry as much.