Cooking With Children

Caroline has developed an interest in the culinary arts.  This is not a sudden thing, it's been coming on for years.  When she was small and we had a large kitchen, we used to make bread together.  Well, I'd make the bread and she'd get all gooey.  But it was fun, and over the years I've encouraged her to help in the kitchen.  "Help," by the way, generally consists of spilling roughly half of the carefully measured flour on the floor and licking the beaters.

Lately, though, Caroline's interest has taken a more serious tone.  She's been copying recipes from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (that's the one with a cover that looks like a red-and-white checked tablecloth from an Italian restaurant - it's a very useful cookbook, if you don't have it, go buy it now).  Actually, she's not been copying recipes so much as copying the ingredients.  The recipes are, apparently, "too boring".  Not being much on following recipes myself, I say amen, sister.

A bit of background may be interesting here.  And if not, too bad - it's my blog.

In England, the Saturday Market is a staple of ordinary life.  In the US, you may have discovered the joys of the Farmer's Market.  Here, the buying and selling of recently exhumed produce has been going on since at least the Norman invasion.  Most towns have a small market area, ours is no exception.  Next to the Wimbledon Library is an excellent fruit and veg stand.  The guys who run it are friendly and knowledgeable (or at least they used to be; a new, younger, less committed crew seems to have taken over recently - I can only hope that Colin and Mick are just away on holiday), and I try to get there every Saturday.  The stall is in the car park shared by the Library and the Alexandra pub (the wine bar upstairs is called "Smart Alex," a name that I think is really very clever).

Parked behind the veg stall on most Saturdays you can find the fish man.  This is a chap in a van who drives the day's catch up from Hastings on the southeast coast, about two hours from London.  Accustomed to the sanitary nature of my local Wegman's in the US, it took a fair bit of doing to overcome my initial compunction about buying my fish from a guy in bright yellow waders with an eyebrow ring, but eventually the lure (pardon the pun) of the sleek silver-skinned fish was too hard to resist.  At Caroline's urging, we checked the fish man's stock.  Normally we buy a couple of nice pieces of cod to fry up, but that's more a winter dish.  As today was a really pleasant, warm day with a light breeze we wanted to cook out, so Caroline and I settled on two fat sea bass to throw on the grill.

While I filleted the sea bass, Caroline harvested a nice bunch of thyme from the plant outside the kitchen door.  This plant came with the house, and it's getting old and quite woody, but it's still got some thyme left.  Ha!  Caroline was initially a little standoffish about the dead fish, but she quickly developed a morbid fascination with the eye, poking it repeatedly and marvelling at how squishy it was.  She later moved on the the mouth, opening and closing it, and poking her finger inside.  I am really pleased that she wasn't overly precious about it.  I drew the line, though, when she eagerly tried to gouge the eye out with a spoon.

The fish now passably filleted (I'm not very good at it), we laid the two fish open on the counter, salted the flesh and laid pats of butter on top.  Into one, Caroline put thinly sliced lemons and some of the thyme, and into the other, slices of lime, chillies and thyme.  We closed them up and put them on a hot grill for about 20 minutes, turning them over after about 10.  The fish was delish, and Caroline was, understandably, proud of her contribution to the meal.

But what was Michael doing while all this was going on, you ask?  Why, making dessert, of course.  While I was busy butchering the fish, Michael asked for the box of strawberries he'd picked out from the fruit stall.  My hands covered in fish guts and not really paying him much attention, I pointed him to where they were in the fridge.  These he took into the dining room, and, while I wasn't paying attention, he took along the mortar and pestle.  He returned several times for more ingredients, arousing my suspicions, but by this time he'd been at it for a while and his enthusiasm for whatever project he happens to be involved in is as inevitable as a freight train.  By the time I'd finished with the fish, he'd made a sort of trifle consisting of lemon, lime, strawberry, honey, a bit of jam and two cream cookies.  It looked a lot like tomato sauce, but actually, was surprisingly good.

A few tense moments with the fish and a huge mess in the dining room from the trifle-making aside, it was actually a lot of fun cooking with the kids, and I fully intend to do it again.  Just as soon as I can get some more strawberries.