At what point are you a
foodie, or part of a foodie family? My wife and I don’t regularly read
food blogs, but we do get the magazine Fine
Cooking each month and save each issue for occasional reference. We
don’t pay attention to restaurant openings, but we usually make good use of our
local Zagats whenever we cobble together a last-minute date night. My
kids, ages 7 and 11, would probably go bonkers if I asked them to watch a TV
show about the culture of food like Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, but turn on a food show with a dash of competition,
like Food Network staples such as Cupcake
Wars or Chopped—and they are
riveted. I may not be able to get my son, the 7-year-old, to help me make
pancakes, but the kid talks about Iron Chef Morimoto with the passionate
idolization I used to have for Dr. J.
“Daddy, Chef Morimoto is
on! Come watch!” Adam will shout at me. “He’s going to cream him, right?”
Likewise, my 11-year-old
daughter, Elena, can happily watch cooking show re-runs of for as many hours as
her lazy parents let her.
All of which begs an
important question: Are my kids little foodies in the making, or couch potatoes
in training?
I can tell you this: For
Elena’s 11th birthday last May, we agreed on the idea of a cooking party. She
had never been to one before, so it had the appeal of feeling new and different.
It tapped into her growing interest in food and cooking, which some of her
friends also shared, and on the most basic level it sounded like a formula for
a lot of hands-on fun. You make something yummy, then you eat it.
A company called Home
Cooking New York offered just the kind of party we hoped for. Specializing
in adult cooking classes at their loft and private classes and parties at
people’s homes, Home Cooking also has a kids division led by chef-teachers
with a lot of experience in knowing what kinds of culinary feats children are
keen on and capable of achieving at different ages. Their website lists quite an
impressive variety of global food themes for their kids classes and parties,
including an Iron Chef Party, Italian Night, Mexican Fiesta and a Brunch
Party. The owner of Home Cooking NY, Jennifer Clair, a mother of two, is
not only passionate about food and cooking, she’s open-minded and practical—and
we agreed on a pan-Asian menu largely derived from one of her kids cooking
classes, focused on three dishes: Shanghai Potsticker Dumplings, Vietnamese
Shrimp and Mango Summer Rolls and Soba Noodles with a Citrus Soy Sauce.
How did it work?
Home Cooking sent over
one of their top guns, Julie Negrin, the author of Easy Meals to Cook with Kids. The main action was centered around
our dining room table, where Julie led Elena and seven of her friends (and
their mascot, Elena’s younger brother Adam) through an impressive amount
of food prep and team work. Everyone sliced and diced, measured,
kneaded, stirred and tossed—and of course goofed around…but never so much as to
put the party in disarray. Most of them were focused and agreeable
(saving the tween drama for later that night in a big battle over who sleeps where).
I’m not sure if any
future chefs were born that evening. But, at the very least, I feel like
Elena and her friends are now well on their way to joining my wife and I in the
ranks of quasi-foodies.
Eric Messinger is the Editor of New York Family.
For more on Home Cooking New York, visit
homecookingny.com.
