A blog by Kate Gibbs
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The early bird catches the sesame seed bun. Hanging out today with my wee friend Atticus in Melbourne, traipsing around and making lamingtons and finding distractions instead of going for a run around Albert Park lake. We made an early stop at the South Melbourne version of Grill’d, the burger spot. Walls are amusingly scribbled and chairs are fire engine red. The burgers, his a mini with cheese and lettuce and mine with mustard, pickles, sauce, are soft and actually juicy.
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Heavenly mornings, Kylie Kwong pancakes, big bouquets of flowers and best friends. Pics taken a few weeks back at Eveleigh Markets.
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Simon Marnie compared broccoli with snot, and there was general discussion about how to get children to eat, and cook, their vegetables. Much fun this morning on ABC 702.
Two of Sydney’s passionate food writers who love helping kids develop their skills in the kitchen - Sheridan Rogers, author of “mini-chef” and Kate Gibbs (granddaughter of Margaret Fulton and daughter of Suzanne Gibbs), who also writes The Sydney Morning Herald’s Kitchen Cadets column, joined Simon in the studio this morning in an effort to encourage kids into the kitchen and discuss the complex question of how we get our children to like their veggies.
Listen to the full interview here.
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Peas are a do-able vegetable in the kingdom of kids. They’re small, round and sweet and can be chased around the plate with a fork or thrown at your sister. What’s not to love? Stirred into this other old favourite, macaroni and cheese, it’s a win-win recipe for mini chefs.
My Kitchen Cadets column in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Living covered the ever-reliable Mac and Cheese last week. Check out today’s Kitchen Cadets column, where Ava (7) makes raspberry pikelets. Pretty cute.
But meanwhile, from last week, Archie (5) makes herby Mac and Cheese… “Oh, so I have to basically just make a roux. That’s easy,” says “five-and-three-quarter”-year-old Archie as he reads through the recipe before embarking on cooking. “And then we just put everything together and then put it in the oven basically. Easy.” And when he wasn’t making the roux and slowly adding the milk, he’d check his iPod to make sure the embattled soldiers in some game were where they should be. And then back to adding the peas and ham to the sauce, then back to the iPod. There’s a lot to balance in life when you’ve got to cook dinner and beat your top score.
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When the sneaky “little trees” metaphor no longer flies and broccoli is just not finding its way into dinner, mushing it up beyond recognition with other green vegetables may just be the answer.
Three year old Lulu’s immediate reaction to the concept of “mean, green bruschetta” was “yuk”. But we steadfastly continued with our cooking plan. She was less interested during the cutting and blanching, somewhat distracted by the fridge magnets instead. Her interest heightened during the whirring and blending, keen to hold the noisy machine, and she was positively engaged by the idea of grating garlic on toast. And the final verdict? “Not yuk at all, actually.”
Kitchen Cadets, published in Good Living (The Sydney Morning Herald) looks at Lulu’s “mean, green bruscetta”. Every Tuesday in Good Living..
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“I like cooking because it’s fun, and you can make the hugest mess you want…” Australia’s most adorable chefs hit televisions last night in the first Junior MasterChef. An international challenge was the first undertaking for the little chefs, who turned out poached chicken Vietnamese salads, Italian ricotta gnocchi, and french-inspired truffled poached eggs on smashed potatoes.
Last week Good Living launched its new Kitchen Cadets column, in which I tap up a recipe every week for kids to cook. Last week we did Bacon and Corn Muffins and coming up tomorrow is a simple Asian soy chicken wings served on steamed rice. Can’t wait to get more inspiration from Junior MasterChef, where these talented little people cook some really complex and beautifully presented things. Size, it seems, doesn’t matter one bit.
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Tiny pencil-width fingers press into the floury pizza dough and brothers Tom, 7, and Henry, 9, jokingly jostle as to who gets to tear up the salami. Their older sister, Charlie, 11, watches patiently, letting the boys complete this simple task – the other night she cooked Greek-style roast chicken by herself.
Children in the kitchen: opening the flood gates to a catastrophe of potential burns, scrapes and failed invention tests, or a valuable learning and creative experience?
Two articles written by Kate Gibbs published today in Good Living, The Sydney Morning Herald. Weekly kids’ recipe column starts…
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The midnight feast. A childhood culinary romantic adventurism fuelled by fairytales and heros and Harry Potter. It’s children who dreamed up the idea of waking and sneaking and hushing and uncovering some extraordinary concoction of food and carbohydrate-laden treats in the middle of the night. And we adults should bring it back.
Ideally the midnight feast should be lit by the moon and a roaring fire, and there should be pyjamas and some clandestine setting. And icing sugar. And heart-shaped lobster sandwiches and white peach pulped and topped with champagne or soda water.
A new book, Midnight Feasts: An anthology of Late Night Munchies, includes recipes from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Rose Gray (of the River Cafe), and includes suggestions of tinned sardines in bed in the dark, and chorizo cooked in sherry.
The ideas may leave us a bit flat, but the very fact that there is a book, a recipe book, about midnight feasts is something to be rejoiced and cheered on. For me, a caramelised apple stack of pancakes would be perfect. Sure, a pink-iced donut in the middle of the night is not great for your health, but let’s all do it once and then have vegetables for a week to make up for it. Plus salads just don’t work for a midnight feast, they are much too serious.
I leave you with this paragraph taken from Nine Coaches Waiting, in which the governess heroine and her fiance sneak away from an Easter ball to a rendezvous. Together they share a midnight feast, which starts with lemonade and Champagne.
“Thin curls of brown-bread with cool, butter-dripping asparagus; scallop-shells filled with some delicious concoction of creamed crab; crisp pastries bulging with mushroom and chicken and lobster; petits fours bland with almonds, small glasses misty with frost and full of some creamy stuff tangy with strawberries and wine; peaches furry and glowing in a nest of glossy leaves; grapes frosted with sugar that sparkled in the firelight like a crust of diamonds … ”
pic from www.mrslilien.com
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This beautifully designed and heart-wrenching site, Donate-A-Meal, gets viewers to fill the plates of hungry children. Apparently 16,000 kids living in Dusseldorf, Germany, are hungry. They are growing up in welfare benefit households and their tummies are “rumbling and grumbling”. They wait in a queue as you fill their plates with schnitzel and potatoes. Click through and just try to resist their little faces looking back at you, waiting.
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The Kitchen Inc. blog is written and edited by Kate Gibbs - a journalist, author and cook.
Food, travel, design >> How, when entwined together, these things inspire our daily culinary experience >> The Kitchen Inc. covers food, kitchen-based inspiration, and workable design as it impacts our dining, eating, cooking lives.
Kate Gibbs writes a weekly column for Sunday Life in The Sun Herald called The Perfect... She is a regular contributor to the SMH on food and travel. She writes food features for The Wall Street Journal.
Kate writes for The Foodies Guide to Sydney, The SMH Good Cafe Guide and SMH Everyday Eats. Kate has 11 years' journalism experience and has written for Russh, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Frankie and others. The interest in journalism began at London's The Evening Standard newspaper. Her first cookbook, The Thrifty Kitchen, was published by Penguin in 2009. Kate's grandmother Margaret Fulton is also in the food business.
In The Kitchen Inc, Kate writes restaurant, bar and cafe reviews, and shows the most interesting and inspiring places to eat and gastro-explore. Kate reviews new food-relevant design and books, she writes about new trends in cooking, how different ingredients are being used by our top chefs and cooks, and how to use these ideas at home.
