Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Teaching Kids to Cook

In my actual career, the thing I do that actually makes money, I teach. I teach social studies at a small private school here in Roswell. Most of my students have some sort of learning disability, or "quirk". It's an interesting job and I'm happy to do it.

One of my classes is an elective called "International Studies". Unlike my core classes, this class has no set curriculum or textbook. It's supposed to be project oriented and experiential, as that's how these kids learn best. As we get closer to the end of the year, we start doing more and more "fun" projects. For the next couple weeks, we're doing foods from around the world.

Today's project was a simple version of Pad Thai Noodles that I've developed. It's definitely not an authentic recipe by any means, but it's tasty and it introduces the kids to tastes and flavors they might not have experienced before.

Cooking with kids is an exercise in patience and controlling your anxiety. It's very hard to give someone who's safety you are responsible a chef's knife and say "Go to town on these onions". But all kids are enthusiastic about cooking and want to at least stir the pot for you. Cleaning up afterwards, is an entirely different story.

We started with plain fetticini noodles. The sauce, which the kids assembled was mainly peanut butter. They absolutely loved it and have asked me for a copy of the recipe. We garnished it with fresh limes, cilantro and scrambled eggs.

The recipe, is as follows:

Peanut Butter Noodles

1 handful of spaghetti or fetticini noodles
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/ cup chicken broth
1/4 cup minced onion
2 cloves minced garlic
2 teaspoons minced ginger
1 teaspoon peanut oil
hot pepper sauce to taste

Cook noodles according to package directions. Sweat aromatics in the oil until smooshy. Add peanut butter, chicken broth and hot pepper sauce. Mix with noodles. As I said, you can garnish this with cilantro, limes and scrambled egg and pretend it's Pad Thai noodles, or just eat it plain. A little chopped roasted peanut on top also makes a nice presentation.

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