Four Days in Maja’s Kitchen!
Eleven years old and already exhibits passion for cooking!!!!!!!!
This was her first time away from home and was the most independent and pleasant little girl with an innate self-confidence, followed instruction precisely, was pleasant at all times, punctual, never had to wake her in the morning, she set her alarm clock when she went to bed and got up on time….showered, washed her hair and was ready for the day. And, and, she made her bed everyday! I loved her the moment she arrived and loved her even more while she was here with me. With her soft voice saying: “Yes Mam! Thank you Mam! in her southern most precious way……how could one not love her!
First Day!……..Thursday
As soon as her parents dropped her off and left, we made a grocery list and headed to the store for ingredients that we were going to need for the dishes she wanted to learn to cook.
Found the ingredients we needed!
Tasted Crystallized Ginger for the first time!
I could see by her eyes when she experienced the hot bite of the Ginger, she was quite surprised……..but, liked it!
Dinner we had out on that evening, but as soon as we returned home we went to work to make a dessert. We made…….
Strawberry Napoleons
We used large butter cookies for the layers, and made the Vanilla Custard Cream. The strawberries were macerated with sugar and some lemon juice. There were three layers of cooky, berries, custard cream and all was topped with some unsweetened whipped cream. It was a quick way of making the Napoleons and very delicious! My little student was very pleased!!!
Custard Cream
1 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp cornstarch
2 egg yolks
Into a sauce pan pour the 1 cup milk, add the sugar and cornstarch…… mix well until all lumps of the cornstarch disappear…..then add the egg yolks and mix well……..
Heat all these ingredients until it begins to simmer……using a whisk with constant mixing until the color changes to a glossy yellow…
Remove the cream from the heat …..and continue whisking until the color of the cream intensifies and the whisk is coated with the cream.
If it did not thicken……return the cream to the heat and keep whisking and stirring until it thickens…….
Do not boil the cream……it will curdle ……and you will have to start from scratch…….
When cream has thickened transfer it to a cold bowl…..and cover with a plastic wrap.
Cool at room temperature………then refrigerate until ready to use for the Napoleons.
If the cream is too thick after cooling……ads a little heavy cream to thin it…..
Second Day!……….Friday
This day was our hardest ……we were going to really work and learn most of the recipes that she had on her list.
We started with Crepes in the morning, and had them for breakfast!
Austrian Palatschinken
(Crepes)
3 whole eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 cup half and half cream – or 1/4 cup oil
1 ¼ cups milk or more till batter has the consistency of heavy cream.
Mix the above ingredients in a bowl with a hand mixer.
Let the mixture stand for at least 30 minutes or
refrigerate overnight.
Strain the mixture thru a sieve to
get all the lumps out of the batter.
Bake the crepes in a very hot crepe pan.
For lunch we made a simple Soup!
Creamed Tomato Soup
1 can (28 oz) of Crushed Tomatoes
1 can Tomato Paste with Roasted Garlic – optional
2 cups of chicken broth….either home-made or store-bought
Chicken Broth (use Chicken Base – McCormick…(2 tsp paste + 1 cup of hot water)
1 small onion – sliced in big pieces
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 cup Heavy Cream – more or less as desired
1 – 2 Tbsp sugar – optional
Salt and Pepper to taste
In a Dutch Oven add 1 Tbsp of oil and the sliced onion.
Caramelize the onion until light brown.
Add the Crushed tomatoes and the Tomato Paste.
Add chicken broth
Add sugar…..and taste…..
Bring to a boil and simmer for about 15 minutes
With a slotted spoon remove the onion pieces
Salt and Pepper to taste
Serve in bowl and add a swirl of heavy cream
When we finished with lunch we made two pastry doughs that needed to go into the refrigerator for a while. One was a pie crust and the other was a butter dough for cookies.
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At this time we cleaned up the kitchen and took an hour for some rest. We each went to our bedrooms and spent a little time to recharge.
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Upon returning to the kitchen we put together the peach pie. The crust pastry was already made and was taken out of the refrigerator to bring it slightly up in temperature.
Here is how we made the crust and proceeded with finishing the pie.
Peach Pie
Crust
1/4 teaspoon salt
In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.
Peach Pie Filling
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)
8 medium peaches (peeled and sliced)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Mix together dry ingredients (flour, sugars, spices) in a large bowl. Stir in peaches and lemon juice.
Add more peaches if desired. Adjust sugar as needed.
Fill the bowl with the peach filling and cover with the second crust.
Bake the peach pie at 375 F for about 40 minutes. If the pie gets too brown around the edges, cover the pie with a ring of foil. Fold a square piece of foil first in half and then again in half.
Now cut the center out from the folded square of foil to make the ring.
Bake the pie until golden brown!
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Dinner was next on our schedule.
Wiener Schnitzel made with chicken breasts, and cucumber salad, dessert, of course was the peach pie.
Wiener Schnitzel
To make the Wiener Schnitzel with chicken breast, one has to first wash and dry the meat, then cut each one in half…. horizontally.
We put two slices in a gallon size plastic bag and pounded the meat gently until it was very thin. The same procedure was done with the rest of the chicken pieces. The pounded chicken pieces were lightly seasoned with garlic salt.
We took another gallon size plastic bag and added about 1 1/2 cups of flour, then another plastic bag was prepared with 2 cups of unseasoned home-made bread crumbs. 2 eggs were scrambled with a little water in a separate bowl.
Each Schnitzel was first dunked into the flour, excess flour shaken off, then dunked into the bowl of eggs, coating it on both sides, then transferred over to the bag on bread crumbs.
Then laid on a board to wait to be fried in just a little olive oil in a non-stick frying pan.
Austrian Cucumber Salad with Dill
6 large Cucumbers
1 cup dairy Sour Cream
1 tsp Garlic Salt
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 to 2 Tbsp fresh chopped Dill or 1/2 Tbsp dried Dill
1 Lemon – juice and zest
More lemon juice and salt if needed
Peel cucumbers and scoop out the seeds, slice them in a food processor with a #1 blade. This can be done the day before and kept in the refrigerator over night. The next day, just before serving add the sour cream, zest of a lemon and its juice. Add the mustard, garlic salt and dill to finish the salad. Mix gently until all the cucumber slices are coated and serve.
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After dinner we made a Quiche which we refrigerated for our dinner the next day.
Maja’s Ham Quiche
Use a store-bought – Pillsbury Pie Crust
1 cup any kind of grated cheese
I like a combination of Swiss and Cheddar
1 cup of finely chopped cooked ham – all fat removed
4 large eggs
1 ½ cups Heavy Cream
McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning
Use a 10 inch Quiche baking dish or a 10 inch deep-dish Pie baking dish
Spray the baking dish with Pam or grease the Quiche pan with Crisco before placing the pie crust into it.
Add the chopped ham and the grated cheese into the unbaked Quiche pan.
Mix eggs and cream – and pour mixture over the ham and cheese
Sprinkle Montreal Steal Seasoning over the ham and cheese
Optional…….add and decorate the Quiche with slices of tomato and bell peppers.
Bake in a preheated oven – 350 F for about 1 hour – or until Quiche puffs up and begins to brown.
Bake on lowest shelf in oven to enhance browning of quiche’s bottom.
Let the Quiche stand for a few minutes before serving, or if not served immediately let it cool and freeze until ready to serve.
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Third Day!……….Saturday
This day we spent at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The Science Center was of great interest and after lunch we took a Water Taxi to Fort Mc Henry where the largest United States Flag was grandly displayed and was proudly flying the breeze.
Dinner was the Quiche that we prepared the evening before with a bowl of ice-cold fruit. No sooner did we clean up after dinner when – my little cook was ready to cook some more.
Out of the refrigerator came the butter dough and while it was warming a bit, we made Buttermilk Biscuits. A simple recipe from one of the Southern Living Cookbooks.
Buttermilk Biscuits
1 cup butter or margarine
4 cups self-rising flour
1 ½ cups buttermilk
¼ cup butter or margarine, melted
Cut 1 cup butter into flour with a pastry blender or fork until crumbly;
Add buttermilk, stirring until dry ingredients are moistened. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface;
Knead 3 to 5 times. Pat or roll dough to ½ inch thickness, and cut with a 2 inch round cutter. Place dough on lightly greased baking sheets. re-roll excess dough, and proceed as directed. Brush with ¼ cup melted butter. Bake at 425 F for 10 to 13 min. or until golden.
Makes about 5 dozen.
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The butter cookie dough was just the right temperature when we finished with the biscuits.
Austrian Butter Cookies
2 1/2 cups flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
lemon zest
1 whole egg + 1 Tbsp brandy
Process the above ingredients in a Food Processor to make a dough.
Let it rest in refrigerator for 30 minutes or longer.
When starting to work with the dough it should be cool to the touch. Cut the dough into four sections and roll each piece on a flouer dusted surface…..to about about a 1/4 inch thickness. Use cookie cutter to make any shape you like. Bake this pastry in a 375 F oven until barely browned.
Here are the different cookies we made!
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Fourth Day!……Sunday
Sunday morning we went to church and after ward we visited an Herb Garden at the Historic Hampton Mansion which was near our church. My little cook wanted to start an herb garden when she got home and wanted to see what one looked like. It just so happened that the Garden Club that I belong to is maintaining the Historic Hampton original herb garden. We talked about the herbs, rubbed and smelled them, she learned how they are used and in what dishes that they are most prominent…….and in what countries that they are favored.
We had omelets for lunch which I prepared and then we needed to do one more recipe that her mother requested……….dinner rolls!
Dinner Rolls
1 cup whole milk
2 packages of dry Yeast
½ cup butter – melted
1 tsp salt
¼ cup sugar
2 eggs – warmed to room temperature
4 ½ to 5 cups all purpose flour
More melted butter….to dunk the rolls before baking
Use a medium size bowl….
Warm 1/3 cup of the milk to luke-warm……baby bottle temperature
Add 1 tsp of the sugar
Add the 2 packet yeast
Mix well…….and let the yeast stand until it is bubbly
Use a large bowl………or put into the electric mixer bowl
Add 3 cups of flour
Add the salt…….and mix well
Add the rest of the sugar
Add the 2 eggs
Add the ½ cup butter
Add the rest of the warm milk
Add the bubbly yeast
Mix all these ingredients in an Electric Mixer, and while mixing add the last 2 cups of flour
Mix well…….for about 3 minutes…….the yeast dough has to become stringy…..in the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place…about 40 minutes.
Transfer the dough unto a well floured surface and knead for several minutes.
Now punch it down and transfer it to the well floured surface…add more flour if it is sticky
Cut the dough into 4 sections and pat each section down to about 1 inch high…..and make small rolls
Dunk the rolls into melted butter and place them into round baking pans. Let the rolls rise another 30 minutes or so…..and bake them at 350 F for about 30 minutes or until nicely browned. If the tops gets too quickly brown……cover the rolls with a sheet of foil to prevent the rolls to burn.
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Auntie Maja’s Cooking Camp….. ended the next morning when I took my little cook to the airport and handed her over to her father who came to pick her up to take her home to Georgia.
It was a strange feeling when I returned home to an empty kitchen. I missed the whirlwind activity and the gentleness of this little girl who was so eager to learn all she could in just four days.
What a charming, entertaining post! From beginning to end, it was complete fun to read and I know your recipes are all wonderful. You have/had a very lucky student who appears to be quite talented too (not to mention pretty)!
Between you and I, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that you too use a Pillsbury Pie Crust once in a while ;-)!
Melanie…….I actually use the Pillsbury Pie Crust quite often…..mostly for Quiches……I find that people leave the crusts on the plate more often than eating it…….so…….why go through all the trouble of making a crust??????
Thank you for your very nice comment…..I already have had inquieries about youth classes………who knows this might be a beginning of a new phase in Maja’s Kitchen………I am always open to try something new!
Hugs to you……
Maria
What a gorgeous, skillful and brave little girl she is, and what wonderful dishes you two prepared!
If all the kids this age would spend time in the kitchens with their moms or aunties, daddies or uncles, learning to prepare healthy and delicious food we would be a lot less of an obese nation….
Well done you two, let’s hope this is just the first of the Cooking Camps and many more will follow 🙂
Nina………thank you for your nice words……it was great fun for me! I so agree with you about children cooking with their family in their homes…..but, the problem is that many moms and dads do not cook at home…..we need to teach them to do the cooking first…….However, as cooking teachers, we need to grasp any situation that is offered us to teach preparing healthy meals when ever we can…….
Thank you again for your very nice comment…….I so appreciate hearing from you………..
Hugs……
Wonderful post! I am shring this with Tiffiny our 11 y/o grand daughter who also loves to cook. She helps her dad almost every night as he prepares dinner. Rob has cooked for his family since April and he got married 17 years ago!
Tiffiny and her dad did a Thai whole fish in banana leaves the other night-they send photos as they do this from the iPhone.
Last time Tiff and her 14 y/o brother had a sleep over we all made Cataplana w/chorizo, shellfish, tomatoes, peppers, garlic, etc. Other times home made ice cream, cut roller pasta, filled ravioli, meatballs, Chnese sticky rice parcels, Vietnamese Salad Rolls, etc.
We will have them for 4 sleep overs in August. Any suggestions what to teach them?
Maria:
What a clever idea and the story of all events is beautifully told.
I recall how our daughter loved to be in your kitchen when she was
a little girl. Now she is teaching her daughter how to do simple
cookies and gingerbread houses. “A great teacher affects generations.”
…..Keep teaching people how to love to cooking!…..Jack Felton
I read this and I think-I just you and what you do and ‘how’ you do it Maja. What a lovely soul God gave you and how sweetly you put it to good use…..a lovely spirit and an inner strength and you create such special treasures in your kitchen and in your stories. Keep them coming …..you are what this tired old world needs-a breath of fresh air! Thank you my friend.
I left out an important word in first sentence-I just love you and what you do…..
Loved your youth cooking camp posts with all the great recipes, Maria! You might like IACP’s Kids in the Kitchen Facebook page.
Two questions about the dinner roll recipe: How many servings does the recipe make, and how many layer cake pans do you need? Thanks so much!
Thank you for you nice comment…..Sheila…….I will check out Kids in the Kitchen FB Page……….I really loved doing this “first” kids Camp…..But, I had an amazing little student……
About the dinner rolls……….I used a 9 inch and a 8 inch pan…….and I think we made about 24 or 26 rolls………..hope your summer is going well!
Hugs……..
Wish my granddaughter was a little older!
From …….Allyson, via email…………..
Hi Malone clan, I do not know if all of you subscribe to Maria’s cooking blog or not. Thus I thought I would forward on this wonderful write up she did about Caylin at cooking camp. What a family treasure -magnificent gift- for Caylin to be featured in Maria’s internationally acclaimed* blog. 50 years from now Caylin can show her own grandchildren online what she did the summer she was 11 years old.
from – Dale……….via email
The house is getting back to normal following Caylin’s session of Auntie Maja’s Cooking Camp. Debra and Meredith (Connie’s daughter) have experienced this in the past.
The kitchen was covered in flour and powered sugar. I gained 4 pounds in 5 days sampling all the goodies (maybe it was more than sampling!). I don’t remember all the recipe names, you will need to ask Caylin. I was saved by the one day of recess when we walked all over the Baltimore Inner Harbor.
In the attached photos please note that there is only one Georgia Peach. Sue, watch out, in the future not all the peaches will go for home made ice cream. Caylin makes a great peach pie.
from Sue……..via email!
I just read your blog about Auntie Maja’s Cooking Camp !!! What a surprise to find Caylin’s story right there on my computer. She is spending the night with a friend, but she will absolutely love reading this when she gets home. So well done!!! And what fun she had. You two were such a wonderful host and hostess!!! Thanks so much for inviting her. Love, Sue*
*Caylin’s grandmother
Besides teaching her the wonders of your kitchen and sharing your expertise, you gave her lasting memories that will take her into the future! I foresee a time when perhaps she returns with her child to revisit the joy!
Additionally thanks for sharing the recipes.
From……Debra Hill …..via FB
I remember Auntie Maja’s cooking camp and I am sure Caylin proved to be one of your BEST campers ever. Thanks for posting all the recipes. It looks like you two had a ton of fun together, which means that Uncle Dale probably never had the chance to complain about being hungry.
What a remarkable lady and equally remarkable little one to enjoy time together cooking and learning. You both are amazing, and it looks like a lot of fun! Beautiful blog entry, makes me wish I was a youngster again.
Hugs from the farm, Maja!
Andi,,,,,,,,thank you for your nice comment! I loved having this little girl with me for a few days…….she was awesome………
Hugs………
Maria
From Phyllis………..via email!
totally inspired
i copied some recipes …with notes from your kitchen in case someone wonders and wants to look into your site
and plan to MAKE something…my mother did not teach me to cook so your family esp. granddgt will grow up loving to cook and BE a great cook what a legacy
p
Really enjoyed this blog, Maria! What a wonderful experience for you both to share!
Donna……….thank you for your comment……it truly was very enjoyable……little Caylin was a wonderful student!