THE CURE FOR PICKY EATERS
Have a picky eater who won’t try new foods? Send him or her to cooking school.
At Sarah Moudry’s Montessori-style Studio June in Bellaire, Moudry teaches kids as young as 18 months old to bake. Taking turns using a hand-cranked beater, they mix ingredients to make muffins, croissants and pastries from scratch.
Moudry uses clear bowls so the kids can see what’s going in the recipe. She tries to show ingredients in their whole form when possible, like whole nutmeg, which the kids grate.
Because they’ve made the effort preparing the dish, they feel pride about the finished product and want to taste it, she said. When kids see what ingredients go into the food they’re eating, they’re more likely to eat it.
They’re also influenced by watching their peers try new things.
One of the more popular recipes is lemon lavender shortbread, Moudry said, which gives kids the chance to crush the lavender and zest the lemon.
That’s a good teaching recipe, she said, because they learn through each of their senses. “As they build their experiences, they’re building their intellect,” said Moudry, a former teacher.
There are more experiences like this. Kids ages 3 to 6 can enroll in a weekly after-school Pastry School, taught by a former pastry chef. Four-week classes start at $125.
At Cook2Learn Academy, Tiziana Triolo starts her classes with a PowerPoint presentation. The native Italian teaches about the history of the recipe the kids will prepare and shows pictures of the region where it originated.
To make dishes like struffoli, biscotti, castagnole and torta pasqualina, the students view the recipe in both Italian and English and learn about the different metric systems.
Tiramisu is a favorite to make, she said, especially layering the lady fingers.
“I try to immerse them in my Italian culture,” said Triolo, a former Italian language teacher. “Being an expat, it’s nice for me to share with the younger generation a different culture than the one they are exposed to everyday.”
The one-hour classes are $45.
At Figlia Kitchen, which she runs out of her home in Memorial, Brooke Daniel has adapted some of the classes since her daughter Kate, 13, appeared on the television competition show “Chopped Junior.”
To mimic the show’s challenge, the kids are given mystery baskets with ingredients they must incorporate into their own recipe. For example, they create dishes from graham crackers, bananas, cocoa powder and chili powder. “It gets interesting,” Daniel said. When she hosts “Chopped Junior” birthday parties, Kate often makes a cameo so the student chefs can ask questions about her experience on the show.
Daniel said parents tell her their kids expand their palates as a result of learning to cook. Before she teaches a class on pasta primavera, she asks the kids to raise their hands if they’ve tried vegetables like squash and bell pepper. Most haven’t and are skeptical, she said. But once they’ve had the fun of chopping the veggies and watching them simmer, they have a new appreciation.
At Figlia’s parent-and-child macaron classes, the pairs learn the complexities of making the delicate pastry, from aging the eggs to sifting almond flour and dropping the formed pastry to eliminate air bubbles.
And there may be a new class at Figlia soon. Brooke just finished filming for another well-known cooking-challenge show, but she isn’t yet allowed to name it yet.