A couple of Saturdays ago, two adults, one child and a baby went off to take an old car to the National Car Test Scrapyard in the Sky, and another adult (me), niece Sarah (11) and nephew Liam (8) stayed at home to conduct a pioneering experiment - cooking lunch for the others. "I'd hate to be a supermodel because I wouldn't be able to eat as much as I'd like," confided Sarah, as she looked through Easy Peasy; Real Cooking for Kids who Want to Eat. There are a fair few cookery books for children around, but this one stood out in the bookshop. It has a bright orange cover, with a child-pleasing layout within, of wonky lettering and catchy recipe titles such as Pig and Fungus Sauce (bacon and mushroom pasta), Cows Cows Salad (couscous), and See in the Dark Soup (carrot soup).
There is also a mock sticker on the front which declares Warning, Not Suitable for Adults! Children Only, which both children got a big kick out of. The language of the recipes is simple, and the book is full of things children really do like to eat, such as pizza, French toast, potato wedges, scrambled eggs, muffins, and chocolate mousse. Liam, a fan of Woody and Toy Story, was fascinated by a recipe for something called Cowboy Soup (a variation of minestrone), and they both lingered long over the photograph of chocolate muffins.
"I like this book because it has nice pictures, and it tells you what you need before you start - and there's no adults allowed have it," Liam reflected. "And I like the names."
Sarah had considered making Baltimore Fish Pie, which was in her Kids Can Cook book, by Sarah Webb, but decided she'd make that next time. The menu for lunch they'd settled on was Sticky Chicken, Potato Wedges, and Roast Parsnips, followed by Black Bananas with cream, and Pancakes.
Liam read out the ingredients while Sarah got out a big bowl and foraged for all the ingredients she needed to marinate the chicken drumsticks: oil, honey, soya sauce, and mustard. "What's a tablespoon?" Liam asked straightaway, so I explained it was two dessert spoonfuls, which they could both still remember the next day. Since we were doubling the recipe quantities, this made for quite a few sums. "So six tablespoons of honey is 12 dessert spoons?"
They took it in turns to measure out the honey, mustard, soya, and oil, looking down at the mixture with appalled fascination. "It smells awful," Liam said flatly, watching the drumsticks being dropped into the marinade. "It's not cooked yet," his sister said shortly. This was her dish, after all.
When the chicken had been set to marinade, Liam peeled the parsnips on the counter with gusto. "You should peel them over the bin," Sarah instructed, but he ignored her. "My friend Stephen can cook scrambled eggs and fried eggs," he said, as he peeled. "Is it a good thing to be able to cook?"
"I'd like to be able to cook lasagne, and fish dishes, and curries," Sarah remarked, as she got out baking trays for the parsnips and wedges. We all admired Liam's peeled parsnips, "my parsnips," and then drew his attention to the evidence on the floor.
"Who do you think is going to clean it up?" Sarah asked from the sink, where she was washing potatoes. Liam made the connection between his parsnips and his mess, and went off to fetch the dustpan. "This'll be a tough one," he sighed, sweeping up the elusive peelings.
I showed them how to use sharp knives, holding the blade away from their hands, and using the blunt back of the knife to push down, and let them at it to cut the potatoes and parsnips into quarters. "My hands are kind of tired," Sarah admitted at the end of her trayful of wedges, but they had each managed the knives with no trouble or fear.
She switched the oven onto 200C, and gave another stir to the chicken, and then put it in the middle tray after checking the time. "I have to look at them in 15 minutes." Then they poured olive oil over the parsnips and the wedges and mixed them around to make sure all the vegetables got coated.
After that, Liam geared up for making his pancake batter. He weighed out the flour on a digital weighing scales, although it took a while for him to get to eight ounces. "I keep going past it," he giggled, spooning back flour and then pouring out again. "It doesn't have to be exactly eight ounces," I pointed out. He looked amazed at this: "You mean the recipe'll still work?!"
After a bit of encouragement, he cracked both eggs perfectly into a cup, which impressed his sister no end: she looked a tad hopefully into the cup to see if there were any fragments of shells. He loved making the batter. "I'm mixing concrete for a brick wall," he told us, as he made a hole for the eggs and mixed away, adding the milk bit by bit.
He left off mixing to put his parsnips in the oven, alongside the wedges. "There are a few lumps," he confessed, when he returned and looked into the bowl (very few lumps, to be fair). "They must be the things that weren't mixed properly - I'll try and squash them away." He could hardly bear to be parted from his batter, but eventually allowed it to be put to one side to stand and "get nice before it gets cooked".
Black bananas were next. They broke them apart from the stems and took off the labels, and foraged around for another baking tray. The bananas were due to go into the oven when the main course came out of it. Liam poured the cream into a bowl and took out the electric hand mixer, and carefully fitted in the metal whisk bits.
There was a bit of chaos when he plugged the mixer in, since he must have switched it on at some stage while fitting the attachments, and the whisk immediately started spinning. Luckily no fingers were nearby, but it certainly gave me a nasty moment. We unplugged it and started again, and I showed him the switch with the speeds, and how it should be at zero when you plug it in.
The cream was whipped in a couple of minutes. "You know it's ready when it makes a kind of a peak when it falls off the whisk," Sarah observed. Liam's method of testing was simply to stick his finger into the mixture and declare it not to be "runny" any longer.
By then, the kitchen was full of good smells, and both children set the table. They'd cleared up as they went along, so there was actually very little mess. By some happy miracle of timing, the others returned from the National Car Test Scrapyard wake just as everything was due out of the oven. It would be accurate to report that both parents looked astonished at the result.
Four-year-old Lucy made a beeline for the wedges as the trays and baking dish were set out on the counter. Sarah and Liam served up, and plates were cleaned, hoovered, and pretty much licked, apart from Lucy, who declared the chicken was "too spicy". The baked bananas, which emerged from the oven duly black and split ("I love the way they explode," said Liam) were less of a hit.
"I don't really like bananas," Sarah confessed, poking gingerly at hers. One member of the household who will remain nameless couldn't be persuaded to try a bite, but I ate two and a half, and so did my sister, Caitriona. Since we were all rushing off after lunch, Liam's pancakes didn't get made until the following day, but I was reliably informed that they were all wolfed on the Sunday afternoon and declared delicious by all.
"It was more easy than I thought," Sarah said afterwards. "Once you do one thing, you think the rest of the recipes aren't that hard, if you managed to do one of them all right." She definitely wants to try out more recipes.
Liam had missed his football practice for the cookery session. "Was it worth giving up football for the morning?" I asked him later that day. He considered for at least 15 seconds and then replied with the diplomacy of a politician: "I have no answer to that."
Easy Peasy; Real Cooking for Kids who Want to Eat, by Mary Contini and Pru Irvine is published by Ebury Press, price £15.85
