Unfortunately one of the areas that I find myself lacking as a parent is teaching the kids to cook meals. The kitchen has always been my domain and I find it 10 times more difficult to have them cook with me than to do it myself. (The only exception to that is baking -- they have helped me with that and we usually have a grand time.)
This weekend when I was preparing our menu for the week I decided it was about time to give up a little control in the kitchen and let Adrienne try to cook us dinner. I thought I was picking an easy recipe for her out of one of our children's cookbooks: DK Children's Quick & Easy Cookbook by Angela Wilkes. Wow, I can tell you this was not easy. Adrienne got bored with it after the first 40 minutes and left me to finish it up. I'd love to say the taste was there but besides the topping, it was just bland and not something worth all the trouble. I think next week (if I'm brave) I'll have to choose something even easier to get her started on.
I am, however, submitting this to Ruth's Once Upon a Feast for this week's Presto Pasta Night, and letting everyone know that you could probably streamline the recipe and let the kids do most of it.
The recipe I chose was titled "Perfect Pasta" and looked like something everyone would like. We started with chopping some onion and a garlic clove and cooking it over low heat until it was soft. That in itself was difficult because even after 5 minutes on low we still were nowhere near being "soft". I cranked up the heat a bit and shortly it got itself ready to add some canned tomatoes and a small amount of tomato paste. That mixture then gets simmered for 10 minutes. The only seasonings the recipe wanted you to add were salt and pepper and a pinch of sugar after the simmering was done. That seemed way too bland for us so I had Adrienne add a little over a tablespoon of Italian seasoning from Pampered Chef before the initial simmer time. (I also had her add a can of tomato sauce because I thought there was no way that little amount of tomato anything would coat almost a pound of pasta)
Our next step was to boil the pasta (thankfully I had started the water to boil before we started cutting the onion), and cook a pound of sausage. The recipe wanted us to broil them so we tried but ended up with a warped baking sheet and sausages that stuck to the pan. We improvised with that and took them out slightly browned but still raw and cut them into chunks and threw them into the sauce to cook through. (I'd recommend doing what I usually do with sausage: put them in the microwave covered with water and cook them for about 8 minutes. Then remove the skin and slice them for your sauce.)
Once the pasta was done (we used penne), you mix the sauce and pasta together and stick into a baking pan. A topping consisting of grated stale bread and cheese mixed together completed the dish and then it was baked in a 425 degree oven until the topping is crisp (20 minutes). The recipe called for cheddar cheese but we opted for some freshly grated Parmesan.
Don and Adrienne both really liked it but like I said above I found it bland. I did love the topping, though it seemed like it would be more at home on a dish of macaroni and cheese rather than this tomato based one.
