KEY POINTS:
Today is Children's Day. Just what this means depends on your orientation. For me it means be good to the little devils once a year, for others it may mean be good to them all the time, and for others the kids have to be good to us.
The Victorians used to say that if you are good you will be happy, and if you are happy you will be good. In my opinion, one of the best ways to be happy and good is to learn how to cook, eat and love food. Best to start right at the beginning and teach them how to do this, then they will be happy and cook for you, their wise and beautiful parents.
The trick is not to give children good food, it's better to cook good food with them in the kitchen so you get to bond, have fun, learn something and eat, all in the space of an hour.
My friend Tara, of the wonderful Savour & Devour cafe in Grey Lynn, does this with her young daughters and is writing a book about it.
Whenever I ask children what their favourite thing is to cook, they invariably mention something sweet. We are born with only one innate taste preference - a desire for sweetness, which is fortuitous as sweet food makes you happy and stops you fainting in church.
I was asked to contribute to a French food book inspired by the madeleine cakes so loved by Proust. The idea was for various cooks to talk about a seminal childhood food experience and for the author of the book to invent a recipe around this.
One of mine would be scones. When I was a child my father used to leave Mass early to rush home and whip up a batch of scones to come out of the oven just as we came down the driveway.
By the time we got inside they'd be wrapped in a teatowel, smelling like the faith, hope and charity we still had in our hearts from Mass. They sometimes had dates or cheese in them and were eaten with thick slabs of butter.
As it's getting on for summer I think it would be fun for kids to make a scone dough and throw lumps of it on the barbecue. It's full of baking soda so rises and cooks quickly. In France, children eat bread and chocolate for breakfast so I propose tearing the little cooked scone droplets open and putting a square of chocolate inside. You can see I'm not a mother.
Then there were thin pancakes with lemon juice and sugar; flaky pastry spread with raspberry jam and baked; butterfly cakes, because they were easy to make, looked magical and you could make a mess with the colouring and icing. These things will make your children happy - which will, of course, result in high levels of goodness.
- Detours, HoS