HotmailNigella’s yummy recipes get kids in the kitchen
Lure your kids into the kitchen with fried mozzarella sandwiches and Snickers muffins, courtesy of cooking star Nigella Lawson
Today Show |
If you want to get your children to help you in the kitchen, here are some recipes that’ll do the trick. Cookbook author Nigella Lawson, host of the Style network's "Forever Summer with Nigella," visited “Today” to show parents and kids how to make everything from muffins to meatballs. Here’s Nigella's kid-friendly menu.
Serves 6 INGREDIENTS for the meatballs for the tomato sauce This is definitely time-consuming, but here I make no apology for that. There is nothing like serving up a bowl of pasta with meatballs to make you feel like an Italian mama out of a Hollywood film. I don't mean one of those redoubtable types in amorphous black: think Sophia Loren in the kitchen. It works for me. The trick to these meatballs is to keep them small. Don’t actually use a teaspoon, but use about a teaspoon's amount of ground meat to roll each ball. If there are children around, so much the better; they tend to like making these. But otherwise, they're easy enough, and the slow repetitiveness of the action can be rather calming. For the meatballs: Just put everything in a large bowl and then, using your hands, mix to combine before shaping into small balls. Place the meatballs on baking sheets or plates lined with plastic wrap, and put each in the refrigerator as you finish them. Put the onion, garlic and oregano into a food processor and blitz to a pulp. Heat the butter and oil in a deep, wide pan, then scrape the onion-garlic mix into it and cook over low to medium heat for about 10 minutes. Don't let the mixture stick, just let it become soft. Add the tomatoes and then add about 3/4 cup cold water to the pan with the pinch of sugar and some salt and pepper, and cook for about 10 minutes. The tomato sauce may appear thin at this stage, but don't worry, as it will thicken a little later. Stir in the milk, and then drop the meatballs in one by one. Don't stir the pan until the meatballs have turned from pink to brown, as you don't want to break them up. Cook everything for about 20 minutes, with the lid only partially covering it. At the end of cooking time, check the seasoning, as you may want more salt and a grind or two more of pepper. Serve over pasta. MANAGE YOUR RECIPES
Serves 2
INGREDIENTS
This is Italian food before Tuscan rustic chic. The "in Carrozza" bit means "in a carriage" and doesn't really explain what this golden-crusted fried mozzarella sandwich is about, just gives an indication that the milky cheese is somehow contained. What you should know if you've never tried it (apart from the fact that it is one of the quickest, most gratifying dinners imaginable) is that it is somewhere between French toast and grilled cheese. For children (and do bear this in mind for a quick, hot filler when they get back from school) it is desirably like a pizza sandwich, and could be made more so with tomato sauce smeared within the bread's tender interior.
It works, as well, served with a tomato or, for adults, chili sauce alongside, into which you can dip the corners of the oozing sandwich as you eat. And, unorthodox though this is, I love it with a fierce sprinkling of chopped, fresh red chili to counter the gorgeously melting blandness of the mozzarella.
I can't pretend this version is absolutely authentic; it wasn't invented using soft white bread. But white sliced is just fine and, frankly, what I use. For one thing, if you have children it's what you tend to have in the house. Just be sure to use the lightest hand when dunking it into the milk; more than a moment and the bread will have dissolved into unredeemable mushiness. But don't be cautious about this: it's quick and easy to make, and requires very little in the way of shopping. Speaking of which, it's not worth buying the better, and more expensive, buffalo mozzarella here. The milky dampness of that cheese is not required; it is anyway too liquid and, besides, ordinary cow's-milk mozzarella produces just the right fleshy goo, oozing out of the cut sandwich into stringy, chewy ribbons.
Make sandwiches out of the bread and mozzarella, leaving a little margin around the edges unfilled with cheese, and press the edges together with your fingers to help seal. (One of the advantages of soft white bread is that it is easily smushed together.) Pour the milk into one soup bowl, the flour into another, and beat the egg with salt and pepper in another. Warm the oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Dunk the sandwiches briefly, one by one, in the milk, then dredge in the flour, then dip in the beaten egg. Fry in hot oil on each side till crisp and golden and remove to a paper towel. Cut in half and serve.
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(Makes 12)
INGREDIENTS
These muffins have a special charm: I think the ingredients speak for themselves. But what I should perhaps add is that they taste seriously good to adults too.
Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the peanut butter and mix until you have a bowl of coarse crumbs. Add the melted butter and egg to the milk, and then stir this gently into the bowl. Mix in the Snickers pieces and dollop into the muffin cups.
Cook for 20 to 25 minutes, when the tops should be risen, golden and firm to the (light) touch. Sit the pan on a wire rack for 5 to 10 minutes before taking out each muffin in its paper cup and leaving them on the wire rack to cool, if you can.
MANAGE YOUR RECIPES
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