kidsinkitchen_420
Hand your junior cook a whisk or wooden spoon and they might surprise you, even if they still don't eat broccoli. These top chefs share their secrets for giving children a taste for good food.
Donovan Sibley-Cooke adores coleslaw. At seven years old, he's not tall enough to reach the kitchen bench so the salad-mad boy stands on a stool to chop the cabbage, peel the carrots and sprinkle on the lemon juice to suit his taste. Naturally, Donovan's mother, Philippa Sibley, supervises. As head pastry chef at Circa, the Prince in Melbourne's St Kilda, she is the ideal mentor. "He used to wear funny aprons and stir things but it wasn't until he was about five that he became more useful and less of a hindrance," jokes Sibley. "I'll say, 'You can pick the parsley' but he wants the glamour jobs like breaking eggs and flipping omelets."
Unfortunately for Sibley's highbrow tastes, Donovan adheres to the Australian tradition of putting pineapple on pizza but, as she optimistically says, she's dealing with that one. Chicken cacciatore is another of Donovan's preferred dishes. Sibley prepares the chicken while her son chops the vegetables and pours in the white wine and chicken stock.
As for fruit, mangoes are Donovan's numero uno. "I've taught him how to cut off the cheeks and then do the little crisscross thing," says the proud mum. Apart from honeydew melon, there's nothing Donovan's not game to try. "He's been sitting on the bench since he was a baby," explains Sibley of her son's voracious appetite for learning about cooking. "His father [Donovan Cooke] is also a chef. It's a pretty cliched apron-string story but he's always been interested in food. He's the model child."
Donovan's culinary skills probably outclass those of many adults. In an age where takeaway meals are fast becoming the norm, kids helping their parents in the kitchen is a rare phenomenon. In 2005, Jamie Oliver garnered global media attention with his TV program Jamie's School Dinners. The consequences for children who exist predominantly on kilojoule-rich fast-food diets, as opposed to home-cooked meals, are dire. Health experts are vocal on the obesity epidemic. There are no national statistics on childhood obesity but a 2004 report, called the NSW Schools Physical Activity And Nutrition Survey, estimates that 25 per cent of the state's children up to the age of 16 are overweight or obese.
As the owner of Sydney's Bills restaurants, Bill Granger, also the father of three daughters, Edie, 6, Ines, 3, and Bunny, 2, is eager to instil in his children a love of nourishing, old-fashioned home cooking. "Teaching my kids to appreciate good food and look after themselves is one of the most important things I can do for them," he says.
Granger's daughters enjoy finger food so meatballs, dips and salads are the order of the day. And French toast. "The kids love breaking eggs into a bowl, adding the milk and squishing it with their finger tips," says Granger of the simple dish's eternal appeal.
"It's good to do things with them that are messy and fun. Kids love cooking when they can touch things. They like the whole process of measuring flour and cracking eggs. Sometimes you have to pull out a few bits of shell but you can't be too precious about it."
A perennial favourite for the Granger clan is white chocolate and cranberry cookies. "I let them eat the cranberries and lick the bowl," says Granger, who sweetens the recipe with brown sugar. "The thing with kids is that often the end result isn't what they're wanting. They're always disappointed when we put the dish in the oven. It's the ritual of preparing the food that counts."
Patience, says Granger, is of the essence when cooking with kids. "They can be a handful. Sometimes I've got one in the chair, the other one next to me and I just want to get it done. But you've got to be patient and involve them. Often I'll make up a few processes that I wouldn't normally do. With three, I've got to make sure that everyone gets a turn. I'll have three eggs in everything, otherwise there's war."
Apart from greens, seven-year-old Ethan Best tackles new food with gusto. "Good food has brought me so much joy and I want it to be the same for my son," explains Mark Best, chef and co-owner of Marque restaurant in Sydney's Surry Hills. "We cook simple food together," says Best. "Pizza's good. He loves rolling out the dough and the texture of gooey foods. I have always emphasised good-quality ingredients."
The greens thing, admits Best, has come out of nowhere. "Ethan rejects anything green. It's a blanket statement that any seven-year-old can make and there's no rhyme or reason for it. Even with a green apple, I'll have to peel off the skin. We [Best and his wife, Valerie] hope he'll grow out of it. We explain the benefits of eating greens and lead by example by eating vast quantities of greens in front of him!
"We've never been fascists. We've always given him a ¿choice. We don't give him junk food. He's given chocolate but it's sophisticated chocolate - the high-cocoa ones. It's quality over quantity." It's why Ethan prefers crumbly well-matured reggiano to plastic-textured cheese sticks. Very occasionally, the Bests order takeaway. "Valerie gets Thai or pizza but we go to the local pizza place and not the chains," says Best.
Like father, like son - Ethan loathes sandwiches so his school lunch box, which is packed by his dad, contains separate containers with foods such as beans, tuna and fruit. Tuckshop lunches are off the menu but Ethan does, Best admits, succumb to the odd junk-food craving. Ethan has been to McDonald's parties with his school friends but eating fast food is more of a peer-influence thing, says Best. "He enjoyed it but once he came back feeling sick. We don't want to be control freaks about it. We've always let him make his own choices and now he's more informed."
"A great burger on the barbecue is fantastic," says Neil Perry, owner of Sydney institution Rockpool and the newly opened Rockpool Bar & Grill Melbourne at Crown Casino. A stickler for fresh ingredients, Perry - along with his three daughters, Josephine, 12, Macy, 2, and three-month-old Indy - creates burgers from scratch. "It's important to do stuff that kids generally like so it's good to make things that kids recognise as fast food but to make it with quality ingredients. Get some good mince meat and make a fresh sauce."
Josephine has a penchant for stir-frying. "I get her to chop the ends off beans, stir the sauce and fry the garlic and she loves it," says Perry. "I'll introduce her to tofu, chicken stock and oyster sauce. If we do pasta, I'll show her how to fold the ricotta through the sauce. We use extra virgin olive oil, sea salt. It's about quality ingredients."
Getting children to relish cooking, according to Perry, begins with shopping. "Cooking for the family starts with thinking about the food, going to the markets and getting the best ingredients you can afford," he says.
"If you shop in season, you usually get good-quality food. Josephine loves the fish market and playing with the yabbies and looking at the live things. All that stuff helps connect kids with the fact that food doesn't come in a plastic bag."
Renowned chef and author of the best-selling The Cook's Companion, Stephanie Alexander agrees. In 2001, Alexander launched the Kitchen Garden at Collingwood College, a project that gives the primary-school children at the inner-city Melbourne school the opportunity to grow food and learn how to transform the fresh produce into delectable dishes. On the school's premises, Alexander and her band of volunteers set up a vegetable and herb garden. The children learn about composting and land conservation as well as fun organic harvesting techniques such as picking snails off the lettuces and feeding them to the chickens.
"We try to make it as enjoyable as we can," says Alexander. "It's a lot of physical activity, like loading up the wheelbarrow. We encourage the kids to work and co-operate together. Children should understand that when you plant food, you have to wait for it to grow. That's a major thing for some kids."
Last summer, the school's garden produced 15 varieties of tomato. "Not only did they get the fun of seeing red, green, yellow, pink and orange tomatoes," says Alexander, "they got to chop them up, taste them and understand the differences - some of these kids have only ever seen tomatoes in bottles."
There's no such thing as children's food, insists Alexander. "For many of the children, it has been a revelation to cook such an incredible variety of recipes." When Jamie Oliver visited Collingwood College in September, the pupils prepared a treat: potato and rosemary pizza with fennel risotto.
"We're drastically underestimating what children are capable of," says Alexander. "So many parents who aren't comfortable in the kitchen themselves assume their kids can't cook or it's too dangerous. We show the children how to use sharp knives safely and about holding an oven tray with a cloth. Once they're shown a few times, they're very confident."
Ultimately, says Alexander, "the best way to influence children's eating habits is to offer them something better." The Victorian Government concurs. It has pledged $2.5 million to set up the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen model in 40 state schools over the next four years.
When enticing children to savour new flavours, there's no fast-track method to beat the green-eggs-and-ham syndrome, says Granger, whose youngest is just getting over the "white phase", a common childhood dietary phenomenon where children only consume white foods. In Bunny's case, this meant the toddler adhered to a diet of potatoes, rice and white bread. Granger cunningly got around his daughter by sticking malleable foods such as soft cheese and avocado onto the white dishes.
"Children have a natural refusal to try new foods," he points out. "It's an inbuilt human thing. They're wary of being poisoned. The best thing is not to become neurotic about it. I praise my kids for trying new things -even if they don't like them. Just don't stop serving new foods. A lot of parents get tired and they don't want a battle at the end of the day. Unfortunately, there's no easy way out. Just keep putting different food on the plate - perhaps add lemon juice or a tiny bit of salt - and don't make a big deal out of it. You don't want to give children a complicated relationship with food."
At 18 months old, Harry Moran was eating freshly shucked oysters. "I have a child who'll eat everything," says Matt Moran, owner and head chef of Sydney's Aria restaurant. Harry's now nearly five and can already spot the difference between Pacific and rock oysters (his favourite dish right now is prawn scampi with oysters). Moran's youngest child, Amelia, 15 months, has also developed an accommodating palate and he attributes his children's adventurous appetite to the fact that he was "anal" about their baby food. "Neither of my children was given tinned food," says Moran, who pureed peaches and apples and restaurant offcuts such as stewed fish and braised chicken. "I thought if anyone in the world can cook for their kids, it's someone like me," says Moran. "Part of Harry's palate is about genetics but he was also introduced to many different flavours at such a young age. Now he's obsessed with food."
Moran has no truck with the adage that children should be seen and not heard in restaurants. To date, Harry has dined at Sydney establishments Bistro Moncur, Tetsuya's and Balzac, where he developed a fondness for snails. "I want to eat out with my kids," says Moran. "Harry loves the whole ritual of eating out. He sits at the table with his hands folded and just waits. He knows to be polite to waiters and he's probably better behaved than many adults in restaurants."
Granger has also ensured his daughters are restaurant-trained. "It teaches kids about discipline around the table," he says. "Cafes are great because you can take them out without having to order a whole meal. You've got to remember that, with kids, they'll be your dining companions for life."
Weaning children off frozen chicken nuggets and onto pumpkin gnocchi with sage won't happen overnight but Alexander is optimistic. "If you open children's eyes to alternatives, they'll hopefully go on to be adventurous down the track. It's setting up a pattern for life."
