Summer Is Here

Summer is here and we just finished our first week of cooking camp at Little Feet in the Kitchen, the camp for adventurous young chefs!

Though it’s hard to pass off something like tart flambe as adventurous when it’s really just puff pastry with a creamy, luscious filling, topped with  caramelized onions and bacon…

Oh, how I loved this group of campers. It’s always so amazing to see children of all ages working so well together (last week it was 10 kids, ages 8-13) — they really came together like a family.

making Martha Stewart crudite centerpieces

We started our week out making appetizers… tarte flambes, white bean, sage and truffle crostini, bruschetta — and individual “crudite centerpieces”  – veggies suddenly became popular when presented in pretty flower pots & served with a delicious cucumber dill dip.

We moved on to salads and made Salade Nicoise, Caesar Salad (we learned how to pasteurize egg yolks in the microwave) and our own signature salad dressings.

The theme of this camp was “That’s Classic,” so we wanted to make some other classics, like chicken pot pie (yum) and roast chicken.  We found that the perfect roast chicken is one that’s stuffed with garlic, lemon, onions, rosemary and fresh lemon-thyme from the garden… we roasted it at a high temp for 5 minutes, then turned the oven down to 400 degrees for another hour and a half.  In the interest of having a perfectly moist bird, we don’t go in for those silly “the chicken is done when the juices run clear” directions.  We use a meat thermometer to make sure we didn’t overcook it.  The result was golden, crispy skin on the outside, and insanely moist meat inside. And our onions, garlic and carrots were so caramelized by the time our chicken was finished, we couldn’t stop eating them.  Please excuse our breath after all that garlic!

Our herb roasted chicken with garlic, onions and carrots was divine

What to serve with roast chicken?  Pommes anna, of course, along with an apple tart.  We were treated to a demo by my friend Claude Tait, one of the best (French) home cooks I know.  Her tarte aux pommes is one of the prettiest I have ever seen.

making tarte aux pommes with Claude

A field trip to Porto’s Cuban Bakery with the incredibly generous Executive Chef Tony Salazar leading the way was the highlight of our week, however.  We watched as talented cake decorators created magic in Swiss meringue, chocolate and glazed fruit…

Porto's Bakery Field trip with Exec Chef Tony

Swiss Meringue - an artist in the kitchen

Field trips are no fun without something sweet, though, so campers were given pastry bags full of chocolate and vanilla frosting, along with some fluffy cupcakes, and put straight to work.

During our “That’s Classic” week, we fit in an Iron Chef contest (secret ingredient: ricotta cheese), some homemade chocolate bars…

… and a very noisy (and fun) “whipped cream race.”

whipped cream race

Along the way, we agreed that the “real” Caesar salad with anchovies is much better than that nasty bottled stuff, that we like truffle butter on our potatoes, and that great friends can be made  in the kitchen. As the lovely Julia Child used to say, until next time, Bon Appetit!

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