Amuse bouche... cooking with kids

K itty had brought home a kids’ cookery book from the school library and her mother, Alice, had been dodging it all week. The prospect of cooking with Kitty filled Alice with even greater dread than Play-Doh,which was saying something.

Alice dreaded the mess. The book said to let children get used to cheese graters and cleaning up after themselves. It also promised that a child would eat red peppers if you used them as long ears on a baked-potato bunny.

When Alice’s friend Julie called in for her weekly Friday-evening glass of wine, she spotted the book. “Aw, look at the spud bunnies!” Julie said.

Julie didn’t have kids. Julie would love kids. Julie had been trying for ages to have kids. Alice felt guilty.

On her own, over the rest of the bottle of wine, Alice decided that, in the morning, she and Kitty would cook together. But nothing with a face on it. That ruled out the eggy bread with a bear’s face made out of mushrooms and the spaghetti bolognese that comprised curly pasta hair framing a visage of meat sauce with olive eyes and a cherry-tomato mouth.

The cook book’s author insisted that kids would eat anything if it looked “friendly”. The book didn’t mention if the author had children of their own. Maybe a little family made out of peppers, capers and radishes. The thought made Alice snort wine out her nose.

The next morning, Kitty was thrilled to be cooking from the book, but a little crushed that they couldn’t do every recipe before its return on Monday. Alice consoled her by letting Kitty choose their recipe, though she had to veto tofu teddies. “But I love toffee.” “It’s not toffee, trust me.” “Satay spiders?” Too spicy. “Piglet presents?” Ultimately decided against in the absence of a piglet-shaped cookiecutter. “Mini mousey pizzas?” No, because you hate every vegetable in the topping. “I could pick them off.” No.

In the end, they made their own breadsticks: easy and with the added bonus of being lunchbox-friendly for showing-off purposes. Kitty’s sieving made an unholy mess and the dough felt yocky, so she left Alice at it before they even got to the rolling-out bit that looked like such a bonding exercise in the book.

“Because I loved our cooking so much,” Kitty said as she unpacked her school bag on the Monday and held aloft another kids’ cook book. Alice hid it immediately. The mummy--daughter guilt was gone; she was cooked. A