The Children's Culinary Academy

Guest Blogger

Just a quick post to let you know that Emily, CCA's first ever guest blogger, will be posting about today's class later in the week. I am interested to read about how she experiences the class as one of my teen helpers. She's been a student in most (maybe all!) of my Young Epicureans classes and has been a wonderful asset over the past three weeks. I'm looking forward to involving her more in future projects.

Stephen has been a great help these last three weeks too--arriving early to help set up, cleaning, helping the kids, staying late to make sure everything is put away, and bringing a new sense of maturity into the kitchen.

I am pleased to have them both in the kitchen with me.

I also wanted to thank Fran and Gina for donating a huge bin of cleaning supplies and paper towels to the kitchen--we've put them to good use over the last two weeks and have plenty more to last through the rest of the spring session. THANK YOU!!

The CCA is extremely fortunate to have so many wonderful people as part of its support network.

Stay tuned for Emily's post!

Paklava

  
When I made my decision about what we were going to cook in class last week I was confident it was the right decision. I was excited to teach the kids about this unique food from another culture. I was certain they’d love the flavors, the process—all of it.

And then I suddenly thought, “Are you INSANE?! Phyllo dough with nine kids under the age of 12?!” I flashed back to the time we used phyllo dough in one of my very first Young Epicureans classes. The kids in those classes are 12 and up, and they had a doozy of a time working with that paper thin dough. I can’t tell you how many damp paper towels I removed from cutting boards as they were about to be folded neatly into spanikopita triangles. The kids mistook the paper towels for dough over and over again. Laughter rang through the kitchen each time. They were having fun, at least! We threw away countless dried out sheets of dough, and I even had to have a friend run to the supermarket for more during class, which is something that had never happened before and has never happened since. 

I’d already purchased all the ingredients for Sunday’s class at that point. Too late to turn back.

We started out slowly, chopping walnuts and almonds, melting butter, grating orange and lemon zests, and then the phyllo dough. I cut sheets into quarters and handed everyone a small stack.   They brushed and stacked and filled and stacked and brushed their way to the tops of their mini loaf pans without incident. To my joy and amazement, using phyllo dough went incredibly well this time. 
No paper towels had to be removed, and hardly a sheet was wasted. I’d bought three pounds of dough in anticipation of the worst and we used exactly one. Every paklava (think baklava, but from Armenia, not Greece) that emerged hot from the oven looked and tasted wonderful. Um…that is, until I gave them forks, which they used to pulverize the perfectly browned phyllo into piles of sweet shards of dessert debris.

Ah well.  Perhaps in this case a third time will be the charm.

Back to School is Cool--If You're Cooking!

Today was CCA's first day in the new kitchen and by all accounts the kids were extremely happy to be there. Everyone was amazed by how big the kitchen in the Police Athletic League is--at least three times the size of the old kitchen. And for me, the best part is that the area where we cook is completely separate from the area where we do our prep work. Much safer for the little guys! 

As I mentioned on CCA's Facebook page a couple of days ago, the recipes for today's class came right out of one of my favorite books, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients. I started using the first book in this series, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking in class last year and the results were amazing! When I heard there was a second one coming I pre-ordered it immediately and waited anxiously for its arrival. Like its predecessor, it's worth every penny! I usually create my own recipes for each class, but the recipes in these books are perfectly suited to these two- and three-hour classes that I couldn't possibly come up with anything better.

For today's class we made the 100% Whole Wheat with Olive Oil dough and made made the Grissini and Spicy Whole Grain Crackers. I wanted the kids to see how easy it is to make a bunch of different things with one dough.

They enthusiastically mixed, rolled, cut, and sprinkled with herbs, salt, and chili powder and popped them in the oven to bake. The kitchen smelled fantastic and everyone was happily munching on their whole grain crackers and breadsticks (and extra sharp provolone cheese!) when their parents arrived.

 

I'm always trying to explain to the kids what gluten is and how developing it makes breads chewy (or how not developing it keeps pastries tender and flaky), and today I decided to have the older girls and my teenage helpers do a little gluten ball experiment.

Each of them measured a different kind of flour into separate bowls (in this case, rye, whole wheat, all purpose, and bread flours). Then they added enough water to create a dough ball, which they kneaded for about fifteen minutes each. After that they rinsed and squeezed their dough balls in water (Stephen said it was the weirdest thing I've made them do yet.) until the water stayed clear.
Then we baked the dough balls in the oven. The rye dough ball never made it to the oven because there wasn't enough gluten to make it work, but the whole wheat, all purpose, and bread flour gluten balls all went in the oven where they puffed up and showed us how flours with different gluten contents produce different textures in bread.

Here are the cross-sections:

The kids were pretty amazed when I told them that seitan is made from the wheat gluten left behind after the starches are removed (the stuff left after they squeeze and squeezed and rinsed the starch out of their dough balls). Something tells me the kids wouldn't believe the assertion in the link above that seitan is gaining in popularity (truth be told, I don't believe it myself!).

Little (Wet) Gardeners

Yesterday at about 6am the skies opened, dumping a deluge on our little seaside town. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I thought it couldn't be a good sign for turnout at The Beautification Council's annual plant sale, but...well...I was wrong! Intrepid gardeners--and their kids--came out in spite of the rain, searching for just the right flowers, shrubs, herbs, and vegetable plants for their gardens or for some last minute Mother's Day gifts.

Along the way, they visited the kids' corner (covered, thankfully, by an enormous tent) where everyone made biodegradable seed pots out of strips of newspaper and planted, for the most part, watermelon seeds. Some of them went for beans or peas, but watermelons were without a doubt the most popular.
  

 
 
 
 

Right next to us were some Falmouth High School students who were doing some face painting, which was a big hit with the little ones.

 
And we topped off the day with a gift from Ghelfi's--a basket full of chocolate pansies!

(I heard that my Facebook post of the picture of the chocolates is what got Jenna out of the house)

Hopefully The Beautification Council was able to reach their fundraising goals. We'll see everyone there again next year!

Happy Mother's Day to all the marvelous mamas out there!

And don't forget, classes start again this coming Sunday!

Falmouth Beautification Council's Annual Plant Sale

Every year, the Falmouth Beautification Council hosts a plant sale in Town Hall Square. This year they'll be there on May 8th, and as they did last year, they've invited me to spend some time planting bean seeds with kids.

  We make our own newspaper seed pots, add some rich soil and a few seeds and voila! Beautiful starter pots that go right into the ground--recycling at its best.

It sounds like this year is going to be even more fun because there will be face painting and possibly even some treats!

So, mom and dad, wrangle the kids into the car on Saturday between 10am and 2pm, find some amazing, well-priced plants for your garden (both flowers and veggies!), and get the kids involved in a fun, free activity!

See you there!