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Text ©1989 by Sam Waring. All rights reserved.
Created: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 at 02:47:42 UTC
We all had to start cooking sometime. I have yet to meet anyone who was born knowing how to cook, and somehow I don’t think I ever will, either. Cooking is one of the learned skills, and I recommend it for all children to learn, male or female. I was fortunate in being in a familly where cooking was seen as just fine for men to do, and further, my parents had the idea that someday I might have to live by myself or fend for myself, since I’d be unlikely to manage a situation where I could afford a housekeeper (or even an obliging paramour—of course, I always lived in apartments with no lawns, so what did I need with a paramour anyway, I wasn’t going to cut the grass.)
All that aside, when I was young my mother taught me how to wash and iron clothes, how to do simple mending, and how to cook, and as it fell out the cooking came first. There’s a lot you can do to teach children basic cooking techniques without just turning them loose, and several cookbooks exist which are geared to children’s necessarily limited kitchen skills, and which gradually introduce them to more sophisticated things as they go along. Two which I’d say deserve a second look are Kid’s Cooking, published by Klutz Press, and the now-venerable Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls. The Klutz Press book is aimed at a slightly younger audience than Betty Crocker; about six to eight years old, I’d say. It comes with a set of color-coded measuring spoons, for those who haven’t learned enough fractions to work out measurements (or maybe don’t know math at all, yet). The recipes are designed for some degree of parental supervision, particularly for the occasional thing that needs cutting up, but still allow a good deal of room for “I did it all by myself!”
The Betty Crocker cookbook has been around a good long while (since about 1957, which is about as long as I’ve been around, too), and has survived very well, even after being revised in the early 1980s. The recipes are aimed more at nine to twelve-year-olds, some of the recipes rely too heavily on mixes for my liking, and the salt measurements can use some cutting if you get hold of an older copy, but the recipes are well-tested and damn near foolproof. (They’d have to be—there’s no one like a determined novice for making every mistake there is to make, as I can testify. Remember that story I told awhile back about how I once couldn’t tell cornmeal and flour apart?) This book will also do for the younger cook, but I’d recommend more supervision at that point, just on general principle.
The recipe I found to go with this actually isn’t from either book, but it’s just about the first thing I ever learned to make. My mother was very fond of egg custard for dessert, and I wanted to know how it was done, so she taught me, and that was the beginning of how I learned to cook.
The only tricky part of an egg custard is scalding the milk, which means to heat milk in a double boiler (if you have the patience) or directly on the stove (as I do) until it is almost-but-not-quite-boiling. The magical stage is reached when a skin forms on top of the milk. At that point, pull it off the heat and let it cool some, so you don’t cook the eggs immediately when you pour the milk in.
| 2 cups milk | ¼ to ½ cup sugar |
| 1/8 teaspoon salt | 4 egg yolks |
| ½ teaspoon vanilla | 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, for garnish |
Preheat the oven to 325° F. Scald the milk and let cool some. Mix the sugar, salt, and egg yolks together in a large bowl, then slowly stir in the scalded milk. For a little thicker custard, add one or two egg whites to the mixture as well. Add the vanilla, and beat all well together. Pour into an oven-proof bowl or into individual custard cups. Place the bowl in a pan of water in the oven for an hour or more. To test for doneness, insert a knife near the center of the custard (like testing a cake with a toothpick). If the knife comes out clean, the custard is done and will be solid clear through when cooled. If the custards are made ahead for a meal, be absolutely sure to refrigerate them once cool; the eggs will spoil on you with no telltale smell. Serve with fruit juice or maple syrup poured over the custard.
Another thing which can serve as a learning ground for kids when cooking is using boxed meals and mixes such as Hamburger Helper™. Generally these are made for people without a lot of cooking skills and without a lot of time either, so it’s possible for a child cook to see positive results in a reasonable amount of time, not to mention that a feeling of great virtue can come from making the whole family’s supper single-handed. I first learned what sauté meant at about age eleven by making taco casserole from a mix. The first instruction was “sauté the ground beef.” I had to go ask once, but after that I always knew, and I’d also learned a foreign word.
first ran: October 1989
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Text ©1989 by Sam Waring. All rights reserved.