Adventures in Food
MyKidsEatSquid
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Posts by MyKidsEatSquid
Thai coconut soup
Apr 17th
Two months. It took nearly two months for The Sriracha Cookbook by Randy Clemens to work its way through the library system and into my waiting hands. Not familiar with Sriracha? Also called “rooster sauce,” this addictive, spicy Asian sauce perks up any dish. For me, Sriracha sauce has an instant heat that hits in the back of the throat, but goes away quickly. Really. I don’t like it straight, but mixed into dishes it adds that layer of interest that only chiles can.
I tried out Clemens’ Thai Chicken-Coconut Soup recipe. I found it was easy to put together but next time I’d definitely make some adjustments. Here are my notes:
- The mixture of chicken and fish sauce didn’t seem to fit. I’d use shrimp in the recipe instead.
- I didn’t buy the extra, pricier ingredients like lemon grass and kaffir leaves. Maybe one of these days, but the substitutes work well and the soup tasted nearly as good as the coconut soup from our favorite Thai restaurant.
- I didn’t want to bother with mincing the ginger so instead I put it on a skewer and let it simmer with the soup while it cooked then just threw it out before serving.
Ginger flavor, no mincing
- Looking at the fat content of regular coconut milk, I opted for the lite version.
- Clemens calls for a whopping 1/3 cup Sriracha in the soup. I like things hot, but my thought is it’s much easier to ADD more heat than to try to take it out so I used a couple teaspoons.
Recipe
Prep & cook time: 20-30 minutes
Servings: 4-6
Ingredients
3 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 stalk lemongrass, white part only (optional)
1 (2-inch) knob galangal (or ginger)
3 kaffir lime leaves or 1 tablespoon finely minced lime zest
1 (14-ounce) can coconut milk
1/3 cup Sriracha (uh, I used about 2 teaspoons)
1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken cut into 1-inch cubes (I used leftover cooked chicken)
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh cilantro sprigs
Directions
- In a medium-sized pot add the chicken broth, fish sauce, lemongrass (if using), ginger and lime zest and bring to a boil.
- Turn the heat down and simmer for 10 minutes. (Clemens points out you can strain out the galangal, lemongrass and lime leaves at this point but since I wasn’t using them, I didn’t have to.)
- Add the coconut milk, chicken and Sriracha and return the soup to a boil for 4 to 6 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Again, I used leftover chicken.
- Remove the soup from the heat and stir in the fresh lemon juice. Serve garnished with cilantro.
Soup's on!
Kids’ reactions: Okay, I wasn’t expecting rave reviews from the kiddos on this one. I thought the soup was excellent–soothing, spicy. The teen thought the soup was good but pointed out that shrimp would work better than the chicken. Agreed. My two younger kids thought it was on the spicy side and asked for extra servings of rice instead of seconds of soup. If only you could eat soup with chopsticks I think they would have given it more of a chance.
Buckwheat crepes
Apr 13th
My teen had one request for her birthday–breakfast in bed. And she wanted crepes. Mr. Squid usually handles crepe duty around our house. See he can flip the crepes in the air and have them land right back in the pan. Mine tend to land on the counter, when they don’t fly off to the floor.
But I’d been wanting to try a new buckwheat flour crepe recipe. At the Cleveland’s West Side Market one of the most popular booths is Crepes De Luxe, which touts their “authentic, Parisian style” crepes. (If you go, just ask someone to point out where “the crepe place is” then look for a long line.) I find that buckwheat crepes are thicker, bigger and heartier than your all-purpose flour variety. I like it. Usually buckwheat crepes are reserved for the savory fare. And you can use this recipe for a savory meal, I’ve melted fontina and roasted asparagus in these crepes for dinner. But this time it was all about something sweet for a special breakfast.
Notes:
I don’t use a crepe pan, I just bake ‘em in my regular, non-stick 9″ saute pan.
Recipe
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cleveland's Crepes De Luxe
Servings: about 15 crepes in a 9″ pan
Ingredients
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 cup water
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons sugar (optional)
1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
Directions
- Combine all ingredients in a blender, puree until smooth. I didn’t use sugar, but you could if you want these a little sweeter. (I was saving some for dinner and I don’t like too-sweet desserts anyway.)
- Refrigerate the batter for 30 minutes to an hour.
- In a 9″ saute pan or crepe pan melt 1 teaspoon butter to medium-high heat.
- Pour about 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan and swirl until it stretches out over the pan. Cook until the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 60 seconds then carefully flip. I no longer try to toss mine in the air, but rely on a large spatula.
- Cook for 45 seconds on the other side then transfer to a plate. Repeat with the rest of the batter, placing pieces of waxed paper between the crepes so they don’t stick.
To serve:
For a sweet crepe I keep it simple: I cut up strawberries and let them sit in a sprinkling in sugar and fresh lemon juice while I was preparing the crepes. On the plate I swirled Hershey’s chocolate syrup just for decoration then slathered Nutella on the still-warm crepes. I also tucked strawberry slices inside before rolling them up, placing them on the plate and garnishing them with another strawberry and a sprinkling of powdered sugar, just cuz.
Basic chile salsa recipe
Apr 11th
Have you ever tried making salsa from scratch? I’m not talking about pico de gallo, the chopped up tomato-onion-cilantro combo that sometimes gets mistaken for salsa. Nope, I’m thinking of Mexican salsa that comes in endless varieties and has as its base dried chiles.
Making salsa is actually easy–promise!–and doesn’t take much time. I had fun whipping up a batch yesterday with my teen and her friends. It took all of 20 minutes. We probably could have made it faster but we were chatting and sampling as we went.
Here are the basics:
- You can find dried chiles usually in the produce section or in the Mexican food aisle of your grocery store.
- My suggestion would be to start with larger chiles, like Ancho (my fav) or Mulato. They’re easier to seed than the smaller (but still tasty) Arbol chiles. Guajillo is right in between, but for newbies Ancho is also milder.
- You’ll need to remove the seeds from the chiles before pan roasting them.
- Plan on tweaking the salsa to suit your tastes: If you want to add some tomatoes to the mix, canned or fresh, by all means, go for it. If you want it sweeter, a little honey; more tart, a little vinegar. You get the idea. (I added sundried tomatoes to this batch.)
- I triple the recipe below and then save the extras in cleaned out raspberry jam jars.
My salsa recipe turns out differently every time, so I’m passing along a tweaked version of Rick Bayless‘ Toasty Arbol or Guajillo Chile Salsa from his excellent cookbook Mexican Everyday.
Recipe
Prep time: 20 minutes
Servings: About 1 cup
Ingredients
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 dried Ancho chiles
3 garlic cloves, peeled
4 medium tomatillos (or Roma tomatoes), cut in half
Directions
- Remove the stems and seeds from the Ancho chiles. How? I use kitchen shears to cut around the stem and then shake the seeds onto a paper towel, then discard.
- Bring the oil to medium-high heat in a heavy bottomed skillet.
- Add the chiles and watch carefully until they begin to soften, then remove (about 1 minute). Submerge the chiles into a bowl of hot water and let them sit while you’re preparing the rest of the ingredients.
- Wipe the oil out of the pan and add the garlic and tomatillos (or tomatoes), cut side down. Cook for about 2-3 minutes then place the tomatillos and garlic in a blender.
- Drain the water from the chiles and add them to the blender.
- Pour in 1/2 cup water and puree until smooth. Continue adding in water until the salsa reaches your desired consistency. I like to make it a little runnier since it will thicken a bit as it cools.
- Now for the tweaks: I usually add salt, a teaspoon or two of red cider vinegar and a pinch of sugar or a drizzle of honey.
- Serve with tacos, chips, or tostadas.
Basket cookies & bunny bread
Apr 6th
Anybody want a cookie?
For Easter I wanted to pass along a couple ideas I came up with while roaming through our neighborhood Italian shop, Alesci’s. Over the holidays, the bakery puts out their version of pupa cu l’ova, or basket cookies, a traditional Italian Easter treat. The idea behind the cookies is to bake an egg tucked into a cookie dough “basket.” Roaming online recipes, I found various ways to do this–sometimes the egg was hard-boiled, other times it wasn’t. Sometimes the egg was already dyed, others went sans color.
The sizable basket cookies at Alesci’s are made with a stiff biscotti dough that’s thickly glazed with powdered sugar and then tossed with multi-colored sprinkles. From what I could tell (and I’d have to happily research this by eating more), the cookies are baked, glazed, and then while still warm the hard-boiled egg is pressed into the cookie. Some recipes call for baking the cookies with the egg inside. My thought is if you want to try this at home, you could make a regular sugar cookie dough spiked with a little bit of anise. I’m going to have to try that for next year.
Don't eat the egg in the middle--it's just for decoration!
But what I did make with my kiddos is some bunny bread. We used pizza dough to create our edible bunnies. I rolled out the dough and then had the kids use a biscuit cutter for the bunny heads and simply cut the ears out with a kitchen knife. For the eyes we used black beans, but olives would work well too. We experimented with the nose and teeth. An overturned mushroom stood in for teeth on a couple of our bunnies. My daughter made a pepperoni smile for another. We did make one big bunny by stretching the dough out into a circle but in the end my teen noted it looked more like a pig than a bunny. Ah well, I wanted some sort of Easter treat for my kids that didn’t involve sugar and this one turned out tasty–and fun. Happy holidays everyone!
The floppy eared bunny
This one looks more like a pig, huh?
Bye bye bunny!
Guest post: Brette Sember, The Muffin Tin Cookbook
Apr 3rd
Just in time for Easter, Brette Sember, shares some recipe ideas for making much more than sweets and sides in your muffin tins–you can make your whole meal! Thanks Brette, and make sure to check out her newly released The Muffin Tin Cookbook for more recipes.
Easter in a Muffin Tin
After the baskets have been found, eggs have been hunted, and chocolate has been consumed (or at least the ears bitten off), it’s time for Easter brunch. By the time I get through the festivities of the morning, I want something simple and delicious, and I’m thrilled if it’s a dish my kids want to help make. This Easter, I’m going to be cooking brunch in muffin tins. Muffin tins are my new go-to kitchen cooking item. Your muffin tins can do much more than just cupcakes and muffins! This versatile pan can be used to make entrees, appetizers, breakfasts, sides, breads, desserts, and much more.
One at a Time
Muffin tins are a handy way to cook a variety of dishes easily, but are also a great way to manage portion control. You can’t fool yourself by saying you’ll just have a little more—one “muffin” cup is one portion. Muffin tin cooking is easy to serve too. You can bring the whole tin to the table (cute if you have a blue stoneware muffin tin), or arrange the cups on a plate. Perfect for Easter brunch are the pretty cupcake “trees” you can buy; display your brunch delectables this way.
Kid Friendly
Muffin tin cooking is a great way to get your kids interested in cooking and eating healthy foods. They love choosing the liners, arranging food in the cups, and seeing the transformation when it comes out of the oven. There’s something about food that is round, small, and perfectly shaped that appeals to kids. They’ve been conditioned to believe that anything served in a cupcake liner is fun and delicious, so they’ll be willing to try many new foods this way. Since Easter is already a day filled with surprises and the unexpected, build on this excitement by serving up brunch gorgeous muffin tin cups.
Variety Makes Muffin Tin Cooking Fun
There are so many types of muffin tins available now. Not only can you buy cast iron, nonstick, and silicone tins, but they come in so many sizes: regular, jumbo, mini, and even in squares now. Everyone grew up with paper muffin cup liners, but today there are many choices in that realm as well. You can buy colored or patterned paper liners, foil-lined paper liners, and reusable silicone liners. The reusables are my favorite because not only are they nonstick, colorful, and green, but you can even use them by themselves on a baking sheet without a muffin tin pan. You can even use things like slices of ham, tortillas, and pie crust as your cup liners, for tasty results.
Recipes
Ham and Egg Cups
Makes 1 (make 1-2 cups per person at your table)
Ingredients
1 slice round or oval deli ham
1 egg
Salt and pepper, to taste
½ tablespoon shaved Parmesan cheese
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Prepare 1 regular muffin cup by spraying it or using a muffin cup liner.
- Place the center of the ham into the middle of the cup, and arrange the edges along the inside of the cup. If it sticks up a bit above the cup, that’s fine.
- Crack the egg, and place it inside the ham.
- Season with salt and pepper, and add the cheese.
- Bake for 15 minutes, until the white of the egg is set.
Buckwheat Pear Muffins with Glaze
Makes 12
Ingredients
1 egg
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons skim milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup buckwheat flour
½ cup flour
1 pear, peeled, cored and chopped (about 1 cup)
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
Glaze (recipe below)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400°F, and prepare 12 regular muffin cups by spraying with cooking spray.
- Mix egg, milk, oil and sugar, then add dry ingredients.
- Stir in pear and spices.
- Divide among muffin cups and bake for about 16 minutes. Drizzle with glaze if desired.
Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon milk
- Completely combine in a bowl, then drizzle over the tops of the muffins. Serve.
Along with The Muffin Tin Cookbook, Brette is also the author of The Parchment Paper Cookbook and The Organized Kitchen. Her web site is BretteSember.com and she blogs at MarthaAndMe.net and NoPotCooking.com.
30 minute Italian shrimp
Mar 31st
My youngest used to love shrimp but now she’s going through denial. So we’ve been having shrimp a lot lately. Even with our ‘you’ve-got-to-eat-at-least-a-bite’ rule around our house she hasn’t budged to sampling more than she has to. I have hope: As a kid, I didn’t like shrimp either.
Recipe
Prep time: 30 minutes
Servings: 4
Ingredients
1 pound spaghetti
20-30 medium raw shrimp
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon olive oil or butter
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1/2 lemon (optional)
1 jar spaghetti sauce
Directions
- Cook the spaghetti according to package directions.
- Prepare the shrimp. Note: I usually add half a bag of the medium-sized shrimp from Costco into warm water while I’m making the pasta. By the time the pasta is done, the shrimp is thawed. I removed the tails and dry off the shrimp before sauteing.
- Bring the olive oil to medium-high heat in a large skillet.
- Place the shrimp and garlic in the pan and cook until the shrimp begins to turn pink, about 3 minutes. Add a squirt of fresh lemon juice and the cayenne pepper, then pour the spaghetti sauce (Barilla is my fav) into the pan and cook until heated through, about 4 minutes.
- Serve the shrimp over the spaghetti.
Kids’ reactions: Well, you know what my youngest said. My teen gave it two thumbs up; my tween was mediocre on this one. She ate it, didn’t love it. But Mr. Squid (not technically a kid) was a fan and even finished off the last three shrimp left in the pan.
Carrot garden on a plate
Mar 29th
I’m always looking for ways to get my kids to eat carrots. This idea comes from one of my favorite places in Ohio–the Culinary Vegetable Institute, CVI. If you’re not following Farmer Lee Jones’ twitter feed–the man behind CVI–you should. (He tweets from his tractor.) That’s where I saw this picture of this ingenious idea using fresh carrots.
Now Farmer Jones has the benefit of pulling carrots from his own garden. I bought my at a local grocers Mustard Seed Market. I couldn’t find any with the leafy greens close to the carrot so I had to improvise. I wedged the greens into the cut stalks before placing the carrots into the black beans.
I did steam my carrots briefly before serving them, but you could also offer these raw. Next time I’d add some asparagus and radishes maybe too.
Kids’ reaction: My youngest, already a carrot fan, loved the playful presentation and cleaned her plate. My tween reminded me that she, “didn’t like carrots,” took a couple bites, finished the beans and left most of her carrots on the plate. Ditto for my teen. But that’s about two more bites than they’d normally eat, which I consider success.
A week’s worth of chocolate
Mar 27th
Did you know chocolate is a vegetable? That’s right. Explaining her recent study results, which showed that people who get a daily dose of chocolate are slimmer than those who don’t, Beatrice Golomb, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego said, “It’s my favorite vegetable.” Dr. Golomb cited chocolate’s antioxidant prowess when comparing it to other vegetables. She also relayed that chocoholics those in the study who ate chocolate each day had a lower Body Mass Index (BMI) than those who didn’t.
Well, of course, I want to make sure that we’re all getting enough vegetables in our diet so here’s a week’s worth of recipes so you can get your fill.
Monday
Whole wheat chocolate yogurt loaf
Keep 100% whole wheat bread moist by adding in plenty of Greek yogurt and chocolate, of course!
Tuesday
Blueberry-spinach chocolate brownies
Spinach-Blueberry Brownies
These brownies have a boost of extra nutrition from a blueberry-spinach puree that you mix in the batter. My teen loves these brownies even though they do turn out a bit softer than your straight-chocolate recipe.
Wednesday
Easy peanut butter cups (no bake!)
These homemade peanut butter cups are easy to put together. Thanks for the idea Martha and Me.
Thursday
Chocolate chocolate chip cookies
From Garlic Girl, add cocoa to your chocolate chip cookies for a extra boost of the good stuff.
Friday
Chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake
My signature dessert that I try to make infrequently because it’s soo tempting. (I should point out that technically you should be sticking to around an ounce of daily chocolate so you’d need to be nibbling your cheesecake slice.)
Saturday
Lemon Ginger Shortbread S’mores
Chocolate and lemon make such a surprisingly perfect combo–add a toasty marshmallow topping to make this updated kid classic from Good.Food.Stories.
Sunday
End your week with these simple treats that have both cocoa powder and mini-chocolate chips (although feel free to add the regular size if you feel like you haven’t been getting enough chocolate in your diet).
*Special thanks to the National Institutes of Health for funding this study and others like it. Dr. Golomb mentioned she needed to do additional studies. The big question: WHERE CAN I SIGN UP?
Why aren’t you eating … Pocky sticks
Mar 23rd
It’s a Pocky stick invasion. That’s right it used to be you could only find these Japanese treats at an Asian market. But now I’m seeing them pop up at my neighborhood grocers too (hint: look in the Asian food section or they’re sometimes stashed with the candy).
For Pocky newbies, here are the basics:
- Pronounce it pock-e, not how I sometimes say it to rhyme with hockey
- These are biscuit-like sticks that are coated in with a variety of flavorings, like chocolate and strawberry
- In a well-stocked Asian grocery store, you might be able to find Pocky sticks coated with crazier flavors like green tea, sweet milk, cookies ‘n cream and more
- Don’t buy just one box of Pocky sticks, get a couple since you’re likely to go through them quickly
- These make for great on-the-go treats as long as they don’t sit in the bottom of the bag–they crush easily
Ready to try Pocky sticks? Or are you already a Pocky fan?
Rocky road pizza
Mar 20th
When I picked up the phone this afternoon at first I thought something was wrong. On the other end, my mother-in-law just didn’t sound like herself. When I asked what was up, I had to laugh at her response: “Kris, I finally tried Nutella today. It was a-m-a-zing.”
Even though she spent part of her childhood overseas, my mother-in-law had never tried Nutella. She’s hooked now. We talked about all of the ways she could use it, but one of my newly discovered favs has to be rocky road pizza. Bonus: these mini dessert pizzas are fun for kids or grandkids to make!
Recipe
Prep time: 15 minutes + baking
Servings: 4 mini pizzas with 4 slices each
Ingredients
1 package pizza dough
1-1 1/2 cups Nutella
1-2 cups mini marshmallows
1 cup smoked almonds, chopped (optional)
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Lightly coat a baking sheet with cooking oil.
- Divide the dough into four equal pieces and roll each one out to a 6-8-inch circle.
- Spread Nutella on each pizza round using a kitchen knife.
- Place the mini pizzas onto the baking sheet.
- Sprinkle marshmallows, nuts and chocolate chips (if using) on top of the Nutella.
- Bake the pizzas for 20 minutes or until the marshmallows become golden.
- Cool before slicing.
Kids’ reactions: As you might expect, all of my crew, including Mr. Squid raved about these mini pizzas. We also tried mixing apple slices with Nutella on pizzas too. The pizzas were harder to slice than the rocky road version but at least I felt like they had some nutritional value. I’m thinking when raspberries are in season it would be tasty to spread the pizzas with Nutella and white chocolate chips and once they came out of the oven I’d pop on fresh berries.
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