Happy New Year everyone! Just a quick post to let you know that classes at the Falmouth Police Athletic League will resume on Sunday, January 23! The winter session will run for five weeks, ending the Sunday before February vacation.
February vacation camp begins Monday, February 21 and runs through Febrary 25th. I hope to see you in the kitchen soon!
Be sure to check out the new website and click on the Schedule/Registration link at the top of the page to view the calendar.
Well, hi! It feels like it's been a long time since I posted here
because so much has been happening! First, we had our last week at
Highfield Hall. The Young Epicureans requested candy apples and taffy
(which they flavored with cinnamon and peppermint oils). Just for fun we
threw in some caramel apples too. 
In Kids Cafe we made my Kitchen Sink Chocolate Chip Cookies (because
there's a little bit of everything in them!) and Acai Berry Smoothies. I
think the smoothies were as big a hit as the cookies! 
This past Thursday I headed over to the Falmouth Senior Center to talk with the members of the Falmouth Beautification Council about what we're doing at the CCA and to thank them for the generous grant they gave us to use for the kitchen garden this past summer. Their support has meant a great deal to all of us and we hope to help them out again this coming spring during their big plant sale. Last year we made our own seed pots out of newspaper and planted bean seeds.
This time of year is exciting because the earth is warming, flowers are quietly unfurling themselves towards the brightest sun we’ve seen in months, and the grass is greening up. I start to anticipate the bounty the vegetable garden will yield long before the first chives emerge.
And they have emerged.
They were the first things I saw as I walked slowly up the garden steps this week. Bright green and eager, they stand at the center of what was a large patch of herbs. The rest of the garden is brown and black and a tangle of straw-colored stems left trapped under last season’s early snow.
There are already worms and weeds taking up residence. The worms we love. The weeds not so much.
Megan and Amelia gave us some young asparagus and strawberry plants. They were ready to be planted, so on Saturday I took the Kids Cafe class out to the garden after we made Chive, Ham, and Potato Frittatas and Blueberry Lemon Muffins and we put those little plants in the wet, warm ground.
I must admit that I had no clue how to plant asparagus. First we planted them upside down (!), but I quickly realized my error and ran out after the kids left to replant them roots down.
After I got home that afternoon I did some research and came to learn that although this time I’d gotten them the right way round they still needed to be replanted. Note to self (and anyone else wishing to plant asparagus):
1) dig a trench
2) make a mound of dirt the length of said trench
3) put asparagus plants along the trench, 12 to 18 inches apart, spreading their roots out over the mound of dirt.
4) cover with dirt up to the crown.
And now I have to hope that no one inadvertantly digs them up or steps on them (hello person with the giant shoe whose swirly-bottomed soles left prints all over the newly turned earth around the wrongly planted asparagus—USE THE PATHS!!)
Other than that this week we used chives in as many things as we could manage—frittatas, potato pancakes, and lovely green beans with lemon and butter. Nicole even said she doesn’t normally eat green beans, but she definitely enjoyed these!
Tots and Pans and Kids Cafe kids also made some truly yummy Blueberry Lemon Muffins (loaves) with wheat germ, yogurt, and oats. Delicious and healthy!
Young Epicureans also made Lime Shortbread drizzled with white chocolate, Ciabatta bread, and Sundried Tomato and Green Olive Stuffed Chicken Breasts.
Emily, our resident vegetarian, made some pasta and sauce, which everyone enjoyed.
(Huh? No, way was this picture staged!)
And now, some gratuitous cuteness:
Many thanks to Chloe for taking all these fabulous pictures for me and to Fran and Gina for helping with clean up again!
I know! I’ve been remiss! But I haven’t forgotten to blog, I’ve just been so busy I haven’t had the time to get on here and post the usual weekly reports about what’s going on in the kitchen these days. Busy because of the exciting upcoming April Vacation program, a bunch of birthday parties, the upcoming summer program (which is booking up so fast it’s making my head spin!), and some other projects that will hopefully be announced very soon. Time is just flying by here. I can hardly believe that we’re already two weeks into the Tots and Pans and Young Epicureans sessions and three weeks into the two Kids Café Sessions.
We kicked off Kids Café with Potato Gnocchi and Almond Pesto, which was a huge hit with the kids. That day we also had a visit from a writer and photographer from Cape Cod Magazine. Julie Arruda generously volunteered her time in the kitchen that day to help keep the troops in line while the photographer did her shoot and the writer interviewed and observed the class. Many thanks to Julie! As far as I know we’re expecting to be featured in the May issue. I’ll be sure to post details as they happen.
With the number of kids in some of these classes I’m starting to feel like I’m working the line in a restaurant again! Lots of pots and pans to keep track of.
Kids Café’s new Saturday class made almond-crusted, oven-baked chicken fingers instead of Pinto Gallo, and they loved them!
Young Epicureans took a stab at a full Costa Rican menu, which also included Coco Flan (coconut flan) and corn and cheese empanadas.
The kids weren’t huge fans of the flan, but their parents were practically slurping them off the plates at pick-up, so I think it’s safe to say they were a success. We had some trouble with the cornmeal dough for the empanadas, but the kids had a good lesson in fixing things on the fly and ended up enjoying the empanadas more than I could have predicted in light of the ribbing I was getting over the goofy recipe I’d given them.
Tots and Pans made some tasty breakfast cookies in their first week. C.J. was nervous at first, but as soon as I let him put his hands in a big bowl of flour he was hooked. Big smiles for the rest of the morning!
Maci’s well into her second session with me and continues to be a great eater and a very attentive and independent mini chef.
Reilly, who has been with me since the beginning, is practically a pro at this point, and she seems to be adjusting well to her new baby brother. Morgan cracked me up last week with her white terrycloth visor.
Wheat-free cornbread and pumpkin bread (not wheat free) kept this lot of tots busy in their second week of class.
Kids Café this past Sunday created beautiful roasted vegetable tarts with part whole-wheat flour, herbed crusts.
Young Epicureans took on a huge challenge this week with Middle Eastern food. They made pita bread, falafel, lemon tahini sauce, and spicy ground turkey “kebabs,” that we grilled on a tabletop electric grill.
I’m thrilled to report that they challenged their taste buds and left the kitchen with some really great-looking food. (There were a few who burned falafel, but all in all, a great job.) I also finally got smart and implemented a cleaning schedule for both Kids Café and Young Epicureans and it worked beautifully. The list of jobs is posted on the refrigerator, so there’s no confusion about who should be doing what and lo and behold, the kitchen was pretty near to spotless when the Young Epis left on Friday night! Kids Café did a good job too. I’m looking forward to next week and the upcoming April vacation session!
Now that we’re all caught up we can wish Delaney and Allison happy birthdays!
Delaney’s group did pizza and cake and Allison’s party did oven-baked chicken fingers and Lava Cakes (at Allison’s request because this is her second birthday party at Highfield!).
***A HUGE thank you to Fran for all of her recent cleaning help!!!!***
A couple of weeks ago, I asked Reilly, one of my Tots, what her new baby brother's name would be. He was due to arrive within the month, so I figured they'd picked out a name already. Without missing a beat, Reilly replied, "Dylan Squidward!" For those of you living on Mars, Squidward is the name of a rather unattractive squidlike creature on the cartoon, Spongebob Squarepants. You know, the square, yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea…. Somehow I doubt the wee lad's real name will involve a Spongebob character, but when Reilly didn't come to class this week I had to wonder whether little Dylan Squidward had made his entrance. If he has, I'd like to offer my congratulations to Taylor, Barry, and Reilly, teller of tales and singer of songs (she does a fantastic rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, by the way).
In the kitchen, the week started with some gorgeous calzones in the two Kids Café classes. They began by sautéing spinach (the first time on the stove for some!), then they mixed the filling (ricotta, egg, spinach) together, rolled out some beautiful ciabatta dough, placed the filling on one half, folded and crimped. Then we popped them into a very hot oven.
Instead of the predictable marinara for dipping, we created an extra tasty honey-dijon sauce. A home run!
The week rolled on and on Wednesday afternoon I welcomed the Ostroff family and guests to a birthday party in the Highfield kitchen.
It was an afternoon of pizza, cake, and some good old fashioned birthday fun!
I think I can speak for all the adults who were present that day when I say that we thoroughly enjoyed Bianca's cake eating technique!
Thursday brought the Tots back into the kitchen for some Chinese dumplings and fortune cookies.
Morgan did some excellent tofu-dicing
And Maci enjoyed her dumplings so much there were none left for mom when she arrived to pick her up! (Although evidence of their consumption was all over the front of her white shirt!)
Friday brought an actual Henry sighting!
Not to mention some pretty tasty upside down tomato tarts,
chocolate dipped cream puffs,
and an oven load of French (equation) bread.
What could be better than a bread basket full of the (warm) formula for the area of a circle?
Chefs love a good charity event, especially when it involves getting a large group of chefs together to cook for each other and the community, so when Tracey Crago asked me to host a table at this year's Feasts of Falmouth to raise money for Volunteers in Falmouth Public Schools (VIPS) I was thrilled. Because Highfield doesn't have a restaurant and we don't do off-site catering it felt a little weird to me to be the sole representative of Highfield when it's really the kids who have brought the Highfield kitchen alive, so I thought about it for a while and decided to ask a group of kids from Kids Café and Young Epicureans to help make about 1500 of Highfield's spicy cheese sticks. They're proven crowd pleasers and they're easy to make, so I figured we couldn't go wrong.
Anyone who spent any time on Cape late last week got stuck in the rain. Lots and lots of rain. The forecast for Saturday (the scheduled day of the event) was grim when I left the house early Friday morning, but the Feasts would take place rain or shine. I worried a little over how the cracker-like cheese sticks would do on such a rainy day. Crackers are extremely sensitive to humidity and I feared we'd have soggy mess before the event even started. We stuck with the plan anyway and by late afternoon Friday Eva Sloate and her mom, Lisa, and Sarah Vaughan and her mom, Heather, arrived ready to roll, cut, and twist.
They did a great job and ate worked hard for two hours before handing the reins over to the Young Epicureans who finished up before throwing together a quick batch of cinnamon pecan sticky buns as their project for class that evening.
That night after the kids left, I triple-wrapped big foil tins of cheese sticks, cleaned the kitchen, and headed home hoping for the best. Morning brought cloudy skies, but no rain. By the time I headed out to get everything ready for the day's festivities the sun was peeking through the clouds. The weather forecast, thankfully, had been wrong. No tropical storm and no vicious winds to spoil the party!
Soon after I began setting up the table and wrapping individual portions Eva and Lisa arrived.
Then came Jenna and her mom, Julie, and finally, Stephen Cabral and his mom, Lisa. The weather held out for a while, but then the skies opened up and before we knew it we were standing in about two inches of water.
Tables were moved closer to the center of the tent, but the rain kept coming. When it finally did stop the water receded fairly quickly, and although it was probably one of the muddiest spots in Falmouth that day, it was also one of the tastiest.
The kids took center stage and handed out serving after serving of cheese sticks while answering questions about how they were made and what classes were like at Highfield. They were videotaped and photographed and got a taste of what it's like to be a chef and feed a lot of people at once. They also made the rounds in the tent, bringing back ice cream from Smitty's, pieces of pie from Pie a la Mode, and Cambodian soup from Stir Crazy. I'm pretty sure a good time was had by all, and I left there feeling so proud of those kids. What a great day! We can't wait to do it again next year.
The Young Epicureans are back after the summer off, and we kicked the first night off right with Mexican Mocha Chocolate Pudding with Pumpkin Whipped Cream (Vegetarian Times, October 2008 issue). Of course it appealed to the kids because it's got sugar in it, but it also gave me the opportunity to teach them about thickening agents (this one uses arrowroot), allowed me to torture them with some cream whipping (Stephen seems to think he always gets a defective whisk when we whip things), and it showed the kids that something mundane, like chocolate pudding, becomes infinitely more interesting with the addition of coffee and chili powder.
They're learning and they don't even know it!
That's Stephen right there. Defective whisk? You tell me.
Some of the kids finished early and had time to make some spun sugar (which they promptly ate!). Henry (striped shirt above) studiously avoids the camera, so it feels like I captured a shot of the Loch Ness Monster or the abominable snowman. He does seem to be glaring at me….
These kids are great. They love being in the kitchen and I love having them there. I'm looking forward to Friday night!
When I asked the Young Epicureans what they wanted to do for the last class Stephen piped up with a quick, "SUSHI!" Chloe, from the Kids Café is also a huge sushi fan and had been asking for it since the first session. I'd put them off because sushi requires a little bit of extra focus. Not to mention some tools I didn't yet have in the kitchen. Namely, these:
Rice paddles and bamboo mats. It's quite possible to make sushi without either of them, but I knew the plastic wrap method would be much too difficult for the kids, so I ordered a bunch from Ming's Pantry, which turned out to be right up the road in New Bedford, of all places!
When I told the Kids Café and Young Epicureans kids that we'd be making Sushi some of them were a little worried because they thought they were going to have to eat raw fish. I let them worry until the day we were scheduled to do it, and then explained to them that sushi is actually just "vinegar rice." It is often garnished with raw fish and vegetables, but it doesn't require raw fish. Sashimi, on the other hand, which we weren't making, is raw fish.
I gathered together some sushi rice (a medium grain), nori, a rainbow of bell peppers, celery, cucumber, avocado, carrots, tofu, and some fresh herbs, and we made sushi. The rice is easy to make. Just rinse the rice in water until it is no longer cloudy, steam it, and then season it with a mixture of rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and mirin. Some people recommend fanning the rice so it will become shiny and have a pearl-like appearance, but I wasn't particularly concerned about that for this exercise. I figured we'd be lucky to get something the even approximated the look of a California roll.
I have to say that the kids, all of them, surprised me. The Kids Café cooks really enjoyed the prep. There were even some moments of extreme silence, which hasn't happened since the first day of the first class ever when they were all too terrified to do anything but stand silently at attention. The peeled and julienned and chiffonaded (is that a word?) their little hearts out.
They had the focus of a herd of Ninjas. And they made some pretty fantastic-looking sushi rolls.
We also made fresh Thai spring rolls
My teenagers did a great job the Friday before too
In addition to Sushi and fresh rolls, the Young Epicureans got to make Thai fried bananas—basically just bananas wrapped in eggroll wrappers and pan friend. I suggested rolling the banana in Chinese Five Spice powder and sugar first, but no one was brave enough to try.
Henry's a very nonchalant chef. Calm and collected.
Emily, on the other hand…I'm not sure who took this picture, but it's a beauty!
Stephen thoroughly enjoyed his Thai fresh roll (although I think the peanut dipping sauce was a little too spicy for him). AGAIN we missed Dominique—she was in a chorale competition. Her group won, so I guess it was worth missing all of us for something a lot less tasty.
I've kind of adopted this little policy in my head that if I know I'm going to challenge the kids' taste buds one week I'll spoil them a little bit the week before. Call it a false sense of security, if you will. This is not to say that we go crazy and make, say, candy houses and chocolate flowers (although now that I've said it the idea intrigues me) or break out a box of mac and cheese (I'm not the least bit intrigued by that idea), but I'll usually give them a break with something I know they're going to love—like things made with enriched bread dough. The only trouble with yeast bread was that I couldn't figure out how to accomplish some good artisanal loaves in these short, once-a-week classes. First of all, we don't have a mixer big enough to handle a large amount of dough and all that mixing and kneading by hand would more than likely be too difficult for all the kids (including my Young Epicureans) and secondly, there simply isn't enough time for all the mixing, rising, punching, rising, and proofing in one class.
And then I found this:
What a great book! The mixing is minimal and the dough does all the hard work by itself. All the kids have to do is combine the ingredients in a bowl, make sure everything is incorporated, and then leave it on the counter to rise. Then it goes in the refrigerator for up to five days. It's so easy that I was even able to have the Kids Café class mix small, individual batches and combine them in one big plastic container for later use. There were variations in each little batch, but together they made a great dough.
For Friday's Young Epicureans class I mixed the initial batch of dough (they mixed another one later for the Kids Café class). While I was mixing someone came into the kitchen to talk to me and I lost track of what I was doing. As a result I halved the amount of water I needed and doubled the amount of honey. Since we were doing sticky buns in that class I decided to let it go, but cautioned the kids that it was going to take extra time to rise. Because of my error we didn't bake any that night and instead everyone took them home to rise overnight for baking in the morning. Just so I could see the results myself I brought a batch home too and was pleasantly surprised.
(I'm most likely going to adopt the accidental recipe and use it instead of the recipe from the book!)
That same night the Young Epicureans made Souffléed Banana Pancakes with caramelized bananas and every one of them came out great. (Unfortunately I was camera-less that night, so you'll just have to take my word for it.)
Two days later my Kids Café kids made pecan sticky buns too, but they also made Challah bread.
They enjoyed rolling and braiding the dough.
And they decorated with poppy seeds. A few of them seemed underwhelmed with the size of their loaves, but their disappointment dissolved the moment the hot, steaming, golden breads emerged from the oven.
My favorite part of the day (and I think it might be theirs too!) is when they get to taste what they've eaten. Inevitably a group of them ends up under the small table having a conversation while they devour the fruits of their labor.
It is, really. Thirteen year olds are light years away from three year olds in so many, many ways, but when it comes to handling dough they're closer together than they might think. They also really, really like pizza.
In this class, of course, there's a lot more freedom (and time) to come up with some unique creations.
I was glad to see them using their sautéing skills to cook onions, and their newfound knowledge of stovetop pepper roasting to roast and peel peppers to use as another topping. Sliced mushrooms were also a popular addition.
As always, there was friendly goofiness, fun conversation, and lots of giggling, all of which I am not allowed to blog because I'm sworn to secrecy in spite of my whining that they are leaving me with very little blog fodder.
Instead of telling you about teenage romance, friendship dramas, and general goofing around I suppose all I have left to report is that we also made Italian sugar cookies, but none of us was particularly impressed with the results. They were dry and, in retrospect, could have used a generous drizzling of icing.
a chef, a mom, a writer, a chocolate maker, and an owner of chickens.
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