It’s one of those “wake up and smell the coffee” rituals.
Every morning, my daughters gallop out of the house at 7.52am. I take a minute to calm down after the snapped-shoelace crisis and the I-need to-take-a-purple-feather-to-school panic. Then I wander to my computer with happy anticipation, wondering what strange and sublime foods will be waiting there today.
Sometimes it’s ‘The Perfect English Muffin’. At other times a ‘Mac’n’cheese Donut’. Perhaps a watermelon lemonade. Or a zucchini chocolate cake.
These recipes have travelled from food websites around the globe. And I’m delighted to read about a fancy new fro-yo machines and the fiddly art of making ice cream cakes.
After all, till recently, my mailbox was filled with the dreariest missives: emails from the Budapest Airport offering parking discounts; urgent messages from a PR firm about a new range of bathroom fittings; stern correspondence from the children’s school about discipline policies and changes in timetables.
Now, though, its all about cranberries and caramel; chipotle sauce and cheer. There are recipes for ‘chicken with prunes and chiles’ (very nice) and recipes for yogurt-peach semifreddo (I’m waiting for peach season). There are videos demonstrating the art of spatchcocking chickens and juicing watermelons in seconds. And there are all those questions for which I truly have no answer: How to buy the right air-fryer? Why should you be grating tomatoes? Do you need a slow cooker? Should you be going Paleo? Can you use tahini as a substitute for Chinese roasted sesame paste?
One of the reasons that I had no answers to these kitchen questions is that I never bothered to ask them. I am not a tomato-grater and air-fryer-gawker by choice. The role was thrust upon me when my eldest daughter turned 13, rebellious and constantly hungry.
“What’s for dinner?” Aaliya would demand every evening, with a long-suffering look on her face. Then, no matter what my response, she would follow up with a pout and an indignant protest.
“Fish curry again?”
Or “But we just had chicken in pepper sauce last week!!”
Or “Why mutton vindaloo? You know I don’t love it. I’m sick of the same old food!!”
Then I would bristle and say the stuff that figures high on the ‘Top Ten Things You Don’t Say to a Mutinous Teenager’.
Next, I sought a creative solution. I asked my daughters to make a list of 12 dishes that they all enjoyed. We ended up with three suggestions and a marathon fight.
Then I turned to my mother for help. She contributed a couple of recipes and delivered a pungent lecture of the ‘Count Your Blessings’ variety to the children. They sulked. I screamed. Back to square one.
Matters remained fraught. Then I did what any sensible Millennial Mummy would have done in the first place. I turned to the internet.
Initially, my hunt for kid-friendly food ideas was haphazard. I found recipes but lacked essential ingredients. Then I bought the ingredients, only to realise that I had lost the recipes.
A few packets of tarragon later, I became more organised. I started an online recipe box into which I could copy the more promising recipes. Then I registered for a slew of daily or weekly newsletters.
This was when my mailbox began to fill and spill with food. Yummly started sending regular lists of “trending recipes”. NYT Cooking (which broke my heart when it became a paid website) dispatched chatty letters full of sensible suggestions for weekday meals. Then there was Epicurious. And Food.com. And Delish. And Tasting Tables. And Rasa Malaysia.
Often, I’m in a hurry, and delete the foodie mails. But there are other days when it’s wonderful to be part of this citrus and cinnamon community — full of people who roast grapes and grill watermelons and talk at length about the best way to clean a kitchen sponge. And to know that in the unlikely eventuality that I ever want to make jalapeno ice cream, somebody’s been there already.
The emails have certainly brightened my morning — but have they made a difference to our meals? Yes. Over the last few months we’ve made a startling array of dishes. A chicken roasted with cranberries, another flavoured with Japanese miso paste. Cold sesame noodles and burst cherry tomato pasta. A Moroccan lamb stew flavoured with tarragon and a Georgian chicken made with pomegranate.
Little wonder then, that Amazon is constantly ringing our doorbell bearing boxes of fish sauce and miso paste. sriracha paste and chipotle sauce. Blueberries and vanilla pods.
The most recent arrival is a packet of rolled oats, all trendy in brown paper and funky fonts. Which is why I’m wrapping up now, so that we can attempt ‘Anna’s Baked Oatmeal’ for breakfast tomorrow.
Anna’s baked oatmeal (from Epicurious)
Anna didn’t provide a recipe — she just made a series of suggestions. This is our interpretation of baked oatmeal. It turned out fabulously — a perfect breakfast dish.
Two cups dry ingredients — mixed together:
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup sliced almond
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Salt
Two cups wet ingredients — whisked together:
Two cups milk
A blob of butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (I would have used honey,
but my daughters protested)
A dash of vanilla extract
Two eggs
Two cups of fruit:
We used apple, pears, raisins and cranberry —
but peaches would also work. Or raspberries.
Method
1 Heat the oven to 180°C.
2 Butter an eight-by-eight baking dish. Then spread the fruits at the bottom. Evenly sprinkle the dry ingredients over the fruit. Then pour the wet ingredients over it all.
3 Pop into the oven for around 40 minutes.
4 You can save it in the fridge for breakfast. Cut slices, warm in the microwave and have it plain or with yoghurt or milk.
Shabnam Minwalla is a journalist and the author of The Strange Haunting of Model High School and The Shy Supergirl