Education

This is a fictionalized account, I won’t really write about my kids

There was a bad link in my reminder about No Recipe last week, here is the real one. Class starts Wednesday and it will not be as chaotic as what’s described below — but if it is, I can handle it.

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Chloe bullies her younger sister Lily, but is patient with the other kids. Olivia and Emma are best friends, but when grouped together they start playing and don’t follow the directions, which annoys Madison, who wants everything to be done perfectly. Alicia is good at knife skills but not as good as she thinks. Andrew becomes distracted if he’s near the back of the kitchen-classroom. Given any opportunity, Jason will begin eating the ingredients — he is polite when you ask him to stop, but implacable. Leah is allergic to 6,000 different foods and Riley won’t eat anything that someone else has touched. Ginny is cheerfully uncoordinated. Hannah is bad at taking turns. All of this must factor into your group assignments.

You are yanked from these calculations by several things happening at once: Group One has poured two cups of water into their pie dough and will have to start over. Ginny knocks the glass soap dispenser to the floor, causing it to shatter. Olivia runs out of the bathroom and collapses on the floor, shrieking “She’s trying to murder me!” As if in slow-motion, you see Lily reaching for the baking sheet you just took out of the oven. “Lily! Don’t touch that, it’s hot!” Her fingers close around the edge of the pan and she yanks them away with a wail. “I thought you meant something else,” she says accusingly. Jason is eating brown sugar out of the box. Emma is back at the iPad even though you told her before that it was the last time she could change the music. “But it’s not playing Midnights, it’s doing a suggested playlist.” She’s not wrong. Andrew’s shoelaces are untied as he runs past you. Hannah is alone at her table using Alicia’s chef’s knife, which leads to demonstrably poor outcomes. You are 15 minutes behind schedule.

You ask your kitchen assistant Amir to mise out another pie dough recipe and you tell the kids to back away from the glass. You warn Jason that touching the ingredients with hands that have been in his mouth will spread germs. On your way to get the mop, you take away the knife from Hannah and bring Lily to the bathroom to run cold water over her fingers. Toilet paper is unraveled all across the floor. You quietly say the word “bathroom” and add it to your mental checklist after “Check on the pie in Oven Two,” “Preheat the griddle pans,” “Set up double-boiler,” and “Get the meringue mixture into piping bags.”

Group One is still waiting for their dough ingredients and in the meantime everyone has started crushing eggshells with their hands. “Why are you guys doing that?” “Because it feels cool,” they say as if you’re dumb. “Just wash your hands after.” Jason is still eating brown sugar. “Jason, I told you not to do that!” Jason holds up a hand in a kitchen glove. “No, you said it would spread germs, but that’s why I’m wearing gloves.” Alicia is trailing three inches behind you as you move around the kitchen, but to her credit she’s announcing “Behind!” every few seconds. You show her how to set up a double boiler and she does the rest for you. The pie crust in Oven Two is perfectly baked when you take it out (and Lily is far away from the ovens now). Amir helps Group One roll out their dough. You begin showing the other groups how to pipe meringue.

When the parents arrive, you’re still behind schedule but the kitchen is orderly and the kids are quiet. You’re demonstrating to them how to use a blowtorch. A hush has settled across the room in the presence of something they recognize as legitimately dangerous. Their faces look like rosy cherubs in the glow of the 2,610°F flame.

Andrew is too scared to pull the ignition trigger. It takes him three tries but finally it comes out blue and hot and his breath is shallow with concentration as he runs it across the peaks of his lemon meringue pie. He nearly points it at Emma when you tell him it’s her turn, but your hand is already on the gas knob and you switch it off. Andrew runs to the corner of the room to do some kind of jumping victory dance. Each kid gets to use the torch for a few seconds and their parents take one million pictures. “Look what I made,” Ginny is whispering to her mom. “I did it by myself.”

No one says bye to you as they scramble out the door with their coats and backpacks and to-go boxes of food but you wave them out anyway, and then turn to tackle the countertops while Amir brings the bus tub down to dish. Suddenly there’s a tug on your sleeve and Lily is standing behind you. She reaches her arms around your waist for a hug and then runs wordlessly out the door. You go back to scraping up dough, which has somehow become mixed with glitter.

What I’m Cooking

Two deep dish sourdough starter “pizzas”

The reason I’ve kept a sourdough starter going since early Covid is not because I bake bread all the time. It’s because every two weeks or so, I refresh it and get to use the discard for a sourdough starter pancake. Sometimes I add a bunch of toppings and broil the whole thing for a really easy version of a deep dish pizza. It lets me be creative or use up my leftovers, and the sour tang of the starter makes the pizza more interesting than one made with regular dough.

Here are two recipes for deep dish pizzas — spinach artichoke and eggplant parm. Both toppings would of course be great with a regular pizza crust, like King Arthur’s recipe, or you could even use some French bread or naan as the base. And hey, while we’re here, here’s another pizza I made last night: marinara, fish sauce, + mozzarella, and then when it was out of the oven, cilantro + fried onion. You couldn’t even taste the fish sauce, but it made the whole thing more savory. And cilantro on pizza was honestly a great idea, I’m going to do that again.

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Two deep dish sourdough starter “pizzas”