Cooking up a Storm

Me. I like cooking. It's just making meals every single day that bores me.

So I was thoroughly delighted when no 1 received a copy of Sam Stern's Cooking up a Storm for Christmas. To those not in the know, this is a fantastic cookery book for teens written by an improbable cooking prodigy. However, I'm not complaining, I tried his scones recipe and it was fantastic. Plus, if my children learn to cook from him, in a few years time I can put my feet up, while they LOOK after me (ah bliss). I am trying to get them trained to see that cleaning bathrooms isn't something their mother should always do, but funnily enough that doesn't seem to have quite the same appeal.

However, the cooking thing seems to be really tickling their fancy. So the other week, no 1 announced she wanted to cook us a meal. She and no 2 poured over recipes in the book before plumping for pizza and chocolate roulade. Actually, this wasn't quite as straightforward as it sounds as they made the mistake of consulting their little sisters about the menu and no 3 refused point blank to eat chocolate roulade (not that she knew what it was, but still...) and then going off to have a huge strop. As this is par for course at the moment with no 3 (she seems to have taken over from no 2 as my drama queen. It is REALLY trying to have not just one, but TWO middle children), everyone of course ignored her.

We then realised that the roulade recipe called for five eggs, and of course we didn't have any (mainly because Spouse does the shopping and he doesn't like eggs, so ergo he doesn't buy any. It never occurs to him that you can use eggs elsewhere in cooking, and just because HE doesn't like fried eggs, other people might). Neither did we have any chocolate. So the chefs had to go to the local corner shop before they left - though not before they had made the dough for the pizza. I think they both need a few lessons in forward planning before they really get the hang of this cookery thing, but at least their dough was rising while they were shopping. (Miraculously, I did have yeast in the house.)

They came trotting back from the shops and then, with a bit of supervision they made a really yummy roulade mixture. Separating the yolks from the whites was a little interesting and no 2 spent rather a long time fishing egg shell out of the bowl, but we got their in the end. The only trouble was I had a very thin baking tray, so while the roulade cooked beautifully and tasted scrumptious, roulade like it was not, as the whole thing crumbled up when we got it off the tray. Never mind... it was rather an ambitious thing to cook on your first attempt.

This weekend we held a dinner party and no 1 rather startled me by offering to make the starter. Call me a control freak, but I like to plan my menus myself, even if I leave it to the last minute (a trait that never fails to infuriate Spouse, who can't understand why, on Wednesday I cannot think far enough ahead to Saturday and work out what we're having.) He and no 1 plumped on making vegetable kebabs using tomato/feta/olives, which didn't really go with my plan of chicken in wine and onion sauce, but hey ho, I cannot complain about no 1's culinary enthusiasm.

She also decided to cook burgers and potato wedges for our friends' children who were coming round too, but having still not worked out that cooking takes time, she left it till the last minute. So while I was in the bath, Spouse took over and defrosted some burgers for her, though she did do the wedges.

I am now looking forward to her suggestion for next weekend. Is she going to try rack of lamb or herby chicken? Anything but pizza again (they made so much first time, we froze two and had them for Saturday lunch)...

If she'll let me, I'll teach her how to do a roast, and then I won't have anything to do on Sundays.

In the meantime, I can thoroughly recommend Sam Stern's book to anyone with children old enough to cook. It is quite possibly the best investment you're ever likely to make...