Cooking | Guide for little cooks

For as long as she can remember, Sophie Grenier-Héroux has always loved cooking. At age 10, she was already preparing one meal a week for her family. The culinary journalist recently launched Make the meala book designed for children, but which, thanks to its simple recipes and clear explanations, will appeal to people of all ages who are starting to cook. What advice would she give to beginners who are still children? Here are his answers.

Start with simple recipes

To build your confidence in the kitchen and sharpen your skills, it is best to start with recipes with few steps and requiring easy manipulations. “Snacks are often quite simple,” emphasizes Sophie Grenier-Héroux. She gives the example of scoops of granola bars, muffins, dips or cookies – “a must”. Some main dish recipes also meet these criteria. In Make the mealincluding squash mac and cheese and tofu-broccoli casserole, two of the first meals her 7-year-old daughters started preparing. Dinners they love to eat. ” Really ? “, some broccoli detractors might ask. “When a young person has cooked an ingredient, they often want to taste it,” says the woman who gave culinary workshops for children for six years.

Be thorough

“One thing that is difficult to learn in cooking is attention to detail,” notes Sophie Grenier-Héroux. She notes that beginners often slice vegetables roughly. “Cutting finely is quite a task to learn!” » However, it is worth putting in the necessary effort to get there, according to the cooking enthusiast. “It changes everything. It changes the pleasure of eating. It changes the taste. Otherwise, the food will mix less evenly with the rest of the ingredients. In the mouth, it’s less pleasant when there are large pieces,” she describes. The key to getting there? “Take your time to do things well” and “practice”.

Taste

While preparing a dish, it is important to taste it to adjust the seasoning, if necessary. Some ingredients definitely add flavor. “I really like anything acidic,” confides Sophie Grenier-Héroux. It always gives a little pop of flavor. Lemon juice, for example, or sometimes I put pickle juice in a salad dressing or sauce. It can be really good. » To enhance a dish, she also likes to turn to Middle Eastern spices, such as curry or “good paprika”.

Take the time to read the recipe

Reading the recipe carefully before starting is a step that seems obvious, but is sometimes overlooked. “It’s important to do this to ensure that you have everything you need on hand to make the recipe and to know if you have the time you need,” says Sophie Grenier-Héroux. In Make the mealshe chose to emphasize cooking times and rest periods, but she did not indicate preparation times so as not to put pressure on the little cooks. “Every child has their own rhythm,” explains the author, who created this book in the image of the one she would have liked to consult when she began to take an interest in cooking.

Don’t be discouraged

It’s okay to make mistakes. As a child, Sophie Grenier-Héroux created all kinds of dishes…sometimes far from delicious. Among other things, she remembers a marinade that looked like soup, since she had replaced the cider vinegar with white vinegar and the orange zest with orange juice. “That didn’t make any sense!” “, she said, laughing. If you mess up a recipe, you shouldn’t get discouraged, insists the culinary journalist. “We ask ourselves what we could have done differently” in order to be more successful next time. Until then, “we can make an egg and two toasts for supper” if what we cooked is unfortunately inedible.

Advice to parents: give your child the freedom to experiment

The last tip is for parents: give your child the freedom to experiment in the kitchen. Yes, it can be stressful to see him wielding a knife. Sophie Grenier-Héroux felt it herself when her daughters started cooking. However, if the child notices that their parent is worried, this will have an impact on their confidence behind the counter, believes the recipe creator. “Stressing the child means slowing him down from moving forward,” she says. His recommendation? You have to find a balance. We make sure the child has the right tools and techniques, then we step back and let them work. We support him if he has any questions and we remain ready to give him a hand with cooking food. “But above all, encourage him,” suggests Sophie Grenier-Héroux, who is convinced that learning to cook is a “gift for life.”

Make the meal

Sophie Grenier-Héroux

KO Éditions

256 pages

Chickpea pasta

Among the “uncomplicated dinners” offered in Make the mealwe find this chickpea pasta. “It’s a dish very popular with my daughters,” emphasizes the author of the book, Sophie Grenier-Héroux. Everything is cooked in a single cauldron, so we say goodbye to the mountain of dishes. Yay! “It’s autumnal. It’s comforting,” describes the culinary journalist, adding that it’s a good meal idea for children’s lunches.

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

• 3 French shallots
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 tbsp. tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 lb short dried pasta (orecchiette, for example)
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 box (796ml) pureed tomatoes
• 1 box (540ml) chickpeas
• 1/2 cup parmesan
• Approximately 3 cups fresh spinach
• Salt and pepper

Preparation

1. Hold a shallot between your thumb and index finger. On a board, with a knife, cut it in the center, from the puff to the base. Remove the dry peels, then cut everything into thin slices. Repeat the operation with the other two shallots.
2. Then cut your garlic clove in half, remove the peel and chop everything into small pieces.
3. In a large saucepan, over medium heat, pour the vegetable oil and add the shallots and garlic. Let it cook for 3 to 4 minutes. You don’t want the vegetables to brown, but they can be lightly browned.
4. Then add the dry pasta, broth and pureed tomatoes. Mix well and cover the pan.
5. Increase the heat to high to bring the liquid to a boil. When it boils, remove the lid, reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir two or three times, slowly, to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom.
6. Meanwhile, drain the chickpeas in a sieve or colander and rinse them under water. Also grate the parmesan, taking care to protect your fingers.
7. After 10 minutes of cooking, check if the pasta is cooked. If they are slightly hard to the bite, that means it’s almost ready! Taste the sauce and season with salt and pepper.
8. Add the spinach, chickpeas and parmesan. Mix well between each addition. Let it cook for another 2 minutes.
9. When serving, you can add grated parmesan on top.

Note: The recipe preparation steps are written as presented in the book Make the meal.