Near Misses #2: Cheeseburger Ramen

My kids are often the driver for food ideas. Sometimes, I am trying to think of something that they will love and other times, it is me trying to make their idea into a reality. It is when I am stretching for something that I can learn something new and make something incredible or it can fall flat.

Here is a flat recipe inspired by seeing a recipe for cheeseburger soup and wondering if ramen would make a good switch up.

The recipe as made was:

Cheeseburger Ramen

1 slice of ham steak

1 lb frozen italian meatballs

2 sliced green onions

1 cup frozen corn

3 rafts (?) instant ramen noodles

4 cups ham broth

2 cups water

1 tbsp ketchup

1 tbsp mustard

Cheese to top

Fry ham and then add liquid. Bring liquid to a boil. Add condiments. Add meatballs and warm through. Add ramen and corn cook until done. The pkg I had said three minutes. Then add onions and pour into bowls. Top with cheese. 

What worked: Overall the flavours and concept were sound. It tasted just a little bit like a cheeseburger. It was good that the corn was there to provide some juicyness.

What didn't: Lack of concentrated beef flavour. Should have used beef stock and swapped the ham out for bacon. The original idea was a bacon cheeseburger but I got lazy on the bacon. 

The condiments were a nice add but needed a stronger foil of some type of spice or robust flavour. The broth was the thing that the kids actively disliked. 

Should have broken the meatballs down into smaller pieces. This was the kids favourite part but once they were gone, there was not much else to hold the soup together. 

What to do different: 

Use beef stock. Add some spices. Use bacon or eliminate ham altogether. Break down the meatballs.

Now, will I make it again? The kids were lacklustre about the whole affair. My eldest did not finish the broth and my youngest only ate half his bowl. They bowl were not sure that they would want another attempt. Unless I am hit by inspiration, I will give it a pass. 

Kids Ideas: Breakfast Ramen

Family Day 2016. My kids and I have been trying to make a breakfast ramen for a while. This mythical beast includes bacon, broth, carrot, onions, and egg. 

So, being the dutiful dad, I have had for about three weeks, the essential ingredients handy. The following is a general guide on how to achieve a child's dream.

We took a package of bacon and put it in the oven at 350C to get it to the point where it is crispy; Kid took apart the bacon and loaded it onto the tray. After the tray went in the oven, he cut baby cut carrots into the size he wanted, followed by a green onion per person, whites separated from greens. I poured off the bacon fat and he added both beef and chicken broth and heated to warm. Once it got there, we added the carrots. Then we waited until bacon was done. 

When the bacon cooled a little, we poured some bacon into a fry pan for the eggs. He crumbled the bacon and ate a few pieces. I may have had a few too. Added udon noodles, onion whites. When they began to separate, we added green peas sliced thin and the onion greens. This is what it looked like.

After a few minutes while everything was separating, I fried an egg in excess bacon fat. The bowl went something like this.

 It was really amazing. The original conception called for shrimp and it could be done. The other adjustments would be more carrot and bigger slices of peas. My point is that it got my son into cooking and coming up with a concept that he owned. We ended up spending 45 minutes of time together in the kitchen where it didn't feel as if I was guiding the process but just offering suggestions to what he was doing. Grace notes to his whole piece. If felt good to offer suggestions and help when he needed instead of being about helping me. I helped him. More importantly, he wants to do it again.

Happy Family Day, all.

Kids Ideas: Breakfast Pancakes

I know, "Aren't all pancakes, breakfast pancakes?". Well...

It's Canada Day and my son's birthday. This is the first year of living apart and I have enjoyed making things with the kids in the kitchen. Both of them are in the early stages of recipe creation. They have passed the whacky ingredient stage of putting a pile of things together. Now they are headed into the substitution stage. It is interesting to see how they develop their own sense of how recipes work and how you cook. I'm learning a lot about how people see cooking and recipes.

The substitution phase: You take something you know and swap out ingredients. It is an easy thing but it shows them how stuff works. My son wanted to make pancakes for his birthday breakfast but a cold and the lure of computer time interceded. His idea was to have something like a chocolate bar or jam in pancakes. So, dutifully I brought home a bunch of chocolate bars and several cans of pie filling. Hopefully, one of them would catch his fancy. On this day, his capricious self choice the Fruit & Nut bar. I'll leave the pictures to tell the story.

Look it even says on the back of the package that you an add stuff. Funny, I don't see any chocolate, candy or jam on the back. Most have been an oversight on the whole grain pancake mix. I could be all defensive and say the only reason that I bought the mix was the losing battle with grain moths but the real reason is the obvious one. I don't trust myself to get everything together enough to make pancakes in the morning. That gives me an idea on making my own pancake mix.

Also, when you have too hot of a pan and the butter starts to burn, turn down the heat and call it beurre noissette or browned butter. Tell the kids you pay extra for that in restaurants. Also note the lumps of treasure. Treasure pancakes is a good family name for this recipe, I think.

And this is what the final one of the batch looks like. I am sure there is a scientific explanation why the first few turn out a bit dodgy but by the end everything seems to work out. In reality, it is probably practice.




And this was our Canada Day and Birthday breakfast. It was fun to come up with the recipe with the kids. They do have a few more ideas for this one and a whole lot more.

Near Misses #1: Frittata and an attempt at Garlic Bread?

One of the comments I hear from people when they are listening to me talk about making supper or cooking something new is that they could never do it. Behind that is an assumption that somehow, cooking is a talent rather than something to work at and explore. It also doesn't help that there is always an idea that to make a good meal, it takes a lot of time.

So, going to start breaking down some of those myths by sharing my near misses and failures. It is only in the failures that you learn something. We had two near misses in my household this weekend; the first was a frittata that used goat cheese and the second was... interesting.

Frittata

Frittata is just an Italian word shortcut for puffy omelet. Take some eggs and milk or cream. Beat them together. Put them in hot pan that can be put in the oven. Put in some carbs and other tasty things. Wait for a bit of setting and then put it in the oven. I generally put it in at 350 for until it's set and then broil it for browning or cheese melting.

We always make extra pasta and serve our sauce on the side so as to have enough leftovers to make this omelet. This time there was butter sauce on it. That's just plain butter and a little salt. The filling this time was adding a little goat cheese. Also, had a little leftover mushroom soup that I flicked on. The kids did not like it. Even though, they both have had soft goat cheese before, this time it did not go over well. A couple reasons other than that the only substantial flavour was the tang from the cheese could have been the all day sucker that they finished only hours before. Trying something out of the box at the end of the day is always risky but even worse when you have tired and strung out boys. But we did agree to try a better grade of cheese sometime in a different manner to make sure it wasn't the cheese.

Something Else

At the cheese shop, the kids tried Lankaaster cheese and really liked it. So much that they wanted to do something with it for supper. The intention was to try Mark II on the Frittata and serve it with baguette. Somewhere along the way, the plan morphed.

We got this.

This is a baguette smeared with bacon fat, topped with pasta and cheese. The kids loved it. It didn't hurt that my eldest came up with idea. It was quite rich and should have been served with fresh veggies or something to cut the fat. It wasn't. As the meal went on, there were some concessions after the initial chowdown that maybe some garlic could have been used and yes, maybe a sauce would make it better. Regardless, there is a good germ of an idea here that merits exploration.

Playing With Your Food

Sometimes, all it takes to take an special event up to eleven is a little creativity. This past session, the kids both advanced their belts in karate. In order to celebrate the event, that night's dinner was pushed a little further.

Blue Belt food

Orange Belt food for me and my spouse

Green Belt food

So it was crudite and homemade biscuits with barbeque sauce. Taking an inspiration from something happening around you and just adding a little twist goes a long way into celebrating the ordinary milestones and makes them memorable. If you have picky eaters, it also shows that you can have fun with food. 

You eat with your eyes first. Also, we got to use those cocktail picks...