BS: teaching a youth to cook

Subject: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: leeneia
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 01:04 AM

Okay, here's the situation, briefly. A friend is aged 71. He's now the full-time caretaker for his wife, who is failing. The grandson, age 20, is living with them and has never been any help around the place. Well, perhaps he mows the grass if forced.

It would be a good idea to teach the both grandfather and grandson some basic cooking techniques so they can prepare meals. I think they both would be amenable to me coming over and giving some hands-on lessons. Mostly I would like the grandson to learn, for obvious reasons. The kid isn't a rotter, he's just clueless. (Long story.)

Anybody have any suggestions or insights? I've never had children, my family is hundreds of miles away, and I'm out of touch with the younger generation.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Andrez
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 02:06 AM

Hi Leenia, it seemed simple to google something like: "Learning how to cook for teenagers" or "healthy recipes for teenagers" to find lots of resources to check out and find something suited to your grandsons needs.

That said, learning how to buy food is probably even more fundamental than cooking so the search I did using the phrase above gave me this link: http://www.thekitchn.com/step-one-buying-and-storing-food-222973   for starters.

One other thought, can he cook anything? Is he good at one or two things? Why not start with his strengths and build on what he can do if he has any in this respect? Nuff said for now.

Cheers,

Andrez

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 06:16 AM

Something quick and simple I saw on telly last week (on Gino's Italian Escapes) that gets you handling real ingredients and producing something delicious. You'll just have to gently instruct the fellow on not overdoing the chilli and how to get pasta al dente! For two people:

Half a pound of tasty cherry tomatoes, cut in half
One or two cloves of garlic
Dried chilli flakes
Bag of fresh rocket leaves (or use your own wild rocket)
Extra virgin olive oil
A dash of white wine if you have any
Salt
Spaghetti or linguine, about 250g for two people

Put two tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan. Chop up the garlic (no crushing). Put the garlic into the oil with a pinch of chilli flakes (you want it a little bit spicy but not blowing your head off).

Put the pan on a low heat and simmer the garlic and chilli for a couple of minutes. Don't let the garlic go brown. While you're waiting, you could put on your spaghetti or linguine in a large pan of salted boiling water.

Add the tomatoes and stir, bringing them to a simmer. After a couple of minutes add a little salt, then the wine, if using. Don't break the tomatoes up too much.

When the pasta has about two minutes to go, throw the rocket leaves into the sauce and stir them in gently.

Drain the pasta and stir it into the pan of sauce. I always keep back a splash of pasta cooking water just in case the mixture is a bit dry.

Eat.

This is far and away the best tomato sauce for pasta I've ever eaten. You absolutely don't need to put on Parmesan either.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 06:19 AM

And do like the Italians do, dribble a bit of your best olive oil on top before eating.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 06:24 AM

And add the tomatoes to the garlic and chilli pan, not the pasta pan! Duh...

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 10:19 AM

If he has no idea at all about how to cook, start him on things like canned soups. You can add things to these (pasta, instant rice, etc.) and of course seasonings. He can serve these along with good bread and cheese to make a meal to be proud of. Naturally he should learn to make tea or coffee from teabags and instant.

When he's proud that he can cook a "real" meal and he's comfortable with stoves, pots, pans, cooking utensils, and so on he'll be ready for the next step of "real" cooking. Simple frying and boiling, and perhaps cooking refrigerated pre-made doughs in the oven.

From there cake mixes, roasts, and he'll be a cook who is at least as accomplished at 99% of them.

This is the way my mother taught her three sons and daughter to cook -- a slow progression, building on the strengths of each step. Of course, shopping is part of the course.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 10:47 AM

YouTube. You can find everything there. I made several small videos I put up for my kids when they asked about recipes of mine. The videos were to offer techniques. Other times I've found videos that illustrate their question and simply sent the link. Want to know how to make good gravy? YouTube. Want to spatchcock a chicken? YouTube. It's all in there.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: leeneia
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 11:41 AM

Thanks. Keep the good ideas coming.

Fortunately, Grandpa knows how to shop, so he can pass those skills on. But it's good that y'all have pointed out that that needs to be done.

The kid grew up on an isolated farm in Missouri. One day he saw the Missouri River and said, "What lake is that?"

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: leeneia
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 12:17 PM

Here's the kind of thing I'm concerned about.

I was reading about remodeling the kitchen, and the author said that young people are afraid of stoves. All their lives they have heated things in the microwave and never turned on an oven. Obviously, one cannot become a good, lifelong cook using nothing but a microwave. Therefore, modern manufacturers are are producing ovens that look like microwaves.

So now I'm wondering what other unknown differences there might be between him and me. (Thanks, Rap, for the soup idea, which is based on true interactions between generations.)

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Janie
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 03:03 PM

Simply in the fwiw department.

1. Nothing like a good, simple, basic cookbook, then learning from mistakes.

2. My own son, soon to be 23 years old, learned to like cooking and to not be afraid of cooking from his young experiences with me in the kitchen, and my acceptance and personal observations about any particular dish once served - whether the result was good, bad or indifferent.

3. He is a pretty good cook, and I take some credit for that. But once he had enough age on him, plus knowledge to experiment and learn on his own, we could no longer cook together because I could not keep my mouth shut when I needed to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: ranger1
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 07:25 PM

Leeneia, one of the most useful cookbooks I've ever come across is called "The Absolute Beginner's Cookbook, or How Long Do I Cook a 3-Minute Egg?" by Jackie Eddy and Eleanor Clark. There are very simple easy-to-follow recipes, along with tips for each chapter, and sections in the back that talk about the different utensils needed and how to measure ingredients. And many of the recipes come with serving suggestions.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 08:07 PM

The two cookbooks I learned from as a student: Katharine Whitehorn's "Cooking in a Bedsitter", which assumed you have only the most minimal equipment available, and "The Tassajara Cookbook", which is probably hard to get now but appealed to me because none of its recipes was fixed - it told you how to make different kinds of dish from different kinds of ingredient, rather than saying you had to have exactly the right product to get anywhere (the diametric opposite of Steve's suggestion). Tended towards vegetarian stodge, but there is probably something more modern that takes a similar tack. A bit later I came across Frances Moore Lappé's "Diet for a Small Planet", which takes the same abstract approach but is a bit more scientifically thought out. This is the kind of thinking you need when confronted with an assortment of random stuff in the fridge and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to turn it into something to eat.

Get him a very sharp middling sized knife, a wooden spoon and a thin flexible spatula. 90% of cooking processes use no other special tools beyond what you already have to eat with. OK, also a cutting board and maybe a grater. Having basic usable tools of your own makes a difference.

I find YouTube too damn slow, but there is certainly everything anyone could want there, in any language imaginable.

Have a dose of gloom:

British teenagers can be hopeless cooks

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 08:30 PM

My suggestion was merely that a good start is to handle real ingredients, as opposed to opening tins, etc. The idea is that you can make delicious food from real stuff. You can do the tommy sauce from Cirio plum tomatoes if you want and it'll be nearly as good (I wouldn't be without). But starting with cherry toms, and rocket and garlic that you have to chop yourself, just might enthuse you. Worked for me! It isn't, er, rocket science!

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Oct 16 - 08:42 PM

And a bit more motivation to think about what you're eating:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/85384254/fussy-eaters-could-be-faced-with-blindness-eyesight-experts-warn

That kid even looks like he's made of ten years' accumulation of stodge.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Thompson
Date: 16 Oct 16 - 03:50 AM

Find out what their favourite food is - the granddad's favourites that his ma used to cook, the grandson's that his ma used to cook. Start with these.
Get them interested in good nutrition. Teach them how to make smoothies.
Teach the young lad a basic repertoire of seven main meals that he's going to love - roast chicken over vegetables, stew, curry, stir fry, hearty lentil soup, fillet steak with potatoes and vegetables, Mac 'n' cheese, spaghetti bolognaise.
Teach him how to make a good vinaigrette, and how to make a salad.
Teach him how to bake a basic loaf. Then cup cakes. Then apple pie.
And all the time, praise, praise, praise.
If you can find an attractive young woman (if he's hetero) to help, you'll do well ;)

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Oct 16 - 06:48 AM

Blimey, who would let loose a callow novice on fillet steak with the price it is! 😂

Here is a dead easy thing to make that, admittedly, involves opening a tin. Enough for two people.

Two tins of mackerel fillets in oil, drained
One tablespoon of creme fraiche or Turkish-style yoghurt (not that low-fat crap)
One teaspoon of English mustard (the smooth, hot stuff, not that seedy sort)
A few drops of Tabasco
A grinding of black pepper
Juice of half a smallish lemon (I use the zest too, but you don't have to)

Put the lot into a bowl and smash it up together thoroughly with a fork (or use a stick blender if you have one). Chill for half an hour.

Serve with thin slices of buttered toast. Yum. Two-minute mackerel pâté on toast. Make this once and you'll be making it for the rest of your life. So easy!

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Oct 16 - 06:54 AM

I learned to make spag bol from Cooking In A Bedsitter, Jack. I've been doing more or less the same recipe for forty years now. I found out that it's actually completely inauthentic and that true Italians would sneer at it. But my family revolted when I tried the real McCoy on them. They are well and truly conditioned. So back to Katherine Whitehorn, Gawd bless 'her!

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Oct 16 - 07:21 PM

My kids started with, oddly enough, eggs. Scrambled are hard to mess up if you don't burn them, and you can also add stuff. Chopping can be fun.
The last thing the one who really cooks is mastering is pie, which is complicated.
Spaghetti and all its incarnations.
Rice ditto, and making too much so you can make fried rice. Which is also pretty hard to mess up and can be truly yummy when done well.
There are a lot of one-pot pasta things running around the internet, too.
Fun!

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: leeneia
Date: 16 Oct 16 - 08:03 PM

Thanks, everyone. I'm reading all your ideas.

Subject: RE: BS: teaching a youth to cook
From: leeneia
Date: 17 Oct 16 - 11:37 AM

Update. Grandpa says to wait a while. He is overwhelmed right now, learning how to care for his wife and himself.

I looked at the "Absolute Beginner's Cookbook." It seems promising, but as one reviewer points out, you have to know the names of kitchenware. It talks about "saucepan, skillet, doubleboiler, Dutch oven" without explaining what they are. (I learned just recently what exactly a Dutch oven is.)

Digression: Once I read a book called "Adopting the Older Child." The author told the story of a girl aged eleven, newly-adopted and trying to fit into a comfortable, middle-class home. She was willing to help out in the kitchen, but didn't know the names of anything in it. When asked to hand Mom a skillet, a spatula, a bowl, she was useless. How many of us could figure out what the child's problem was?

Poor kid. When I read that, I began to understand what cultural deprivation is. And I wonder if my friend's grandson will have the same problem. I'll check it out tactfully.