kids’ cooking

Real Food for Kids Recipe Contest

March 27, 2015March 29, 2015sheilacrye1 Comment

Chef Crye drove through a snowstorm to attend a cook-off at the Williams-Sonoma store at Mazza Gallerie in Chevy Chase. It was the first round of the KIDS COOK Original Recipe and Cooking Competition!

The contest is a collaborative effort of Real Food for Kids and Williams-Sonoma. Metropolitan Washington 4th-8th graders were encouraged to use their creativity to invent delicious dishes using fresh ingredients and following the www.choosemyplate.gov guidelines.

This girl demonstrated how to make a mixed nut, raisin and brown sugar topping.

This girl showed how to make a baked pear and goat cheese/dried cranberry salad.

This girl demonstrated her family’s favorite breakfast burrito.

This girl prepared a Thai-style shrimp and noodle dish–and she made her own oyster sauce!

Kids’ cookbook author Nevin Martell asked the contestants questions as they cooked. Culinary expert Katherine Newell Smith led the judging, which was based on taste, appearance, presentation, originality and nutrition.

Guess who won Round One? It was the second girl from the left, who made the Thai shrimp and noodle dish. She and three friends will receive a private cooking lesson at Williams-Sonoma. Her recipe will be sampled at the Mazza Gallerie store on Feb. 27-29. All the contestants received Williams-Sonoma gift bags.

On to Round Two on Feb. 28 at the Clarendon Williams-Sonoma store–what fun!

Happy Mardi Gras!

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015sheilacryeLeave a comment

Our young chefs have a culinarily-curious zebra friend named ZeBot, who occasionally visits cooking club meetings. He has his own website, ZeBot’s Kitchen.

Check out his idea of “ZePerfect Mardi Gras Celebration,” including the inside story on King Cake and a video about Young Chefs making gumbo (also featured below)!

Valentine’s Menu

Image February 14, 2015February 17, 2015sheilacryeLeave a comment

This week Young Chefs prepared Chicken Caesar Wraps, Garlic Fries and Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries just in time for Valentine’s Day.

The adult chefs worried about how to prepare enough oven-roasted, garlicky potato wedges to give up to 20 cooking club members a sample. Would we be able to split five pounds of potatoes between two baking sheets in a single layer? Should we use aluminum foil, parchment paper or Silpat?

On Monday Chef Crye used aluminum foil but did not oil it, thinking that the potatoes had been tossed in plenty of oil. Mistake! The potatoes stuck to the foil, and it tore when the finished potatoes were scraped out.

On Tuesday she tried oiling teflon-coated baking sheets with similar results. The young people said that the potatoes tasted wonderful, but they looked like hash browns.

Here is Team Silver Spoon’s amusing menu:

The consensus is: Line the baking sheets with aluminum foil, and oil it. Remove the “fries” with a silicone spatula, rather than a metal one.