How does cooking start out?

“What does butter start out as?” I ask the room.

“Well, there’s a field,” one of the younger kids begins. I’m so tired by my fifth full day of summer camp but most of the time, via disaster or delight, they make me forget. I’ve been saying the word emulsion every day to them, but unlike mayonnaise it isn’t sticking, so when someone asks me about butter I decide we’re having a teachable moment. Anyway she’s right, butter does start out with a field. Or maybe it starts with the sun. Sometimes kids make you rethink the borders of things.

My favorite week of camp is themed around Culinary Competitions, and instead of following recipes, they surprise us with creations they come up with in the moment. One morning, I dramatically pull a laundry bag off a sheet tray that holds chickpeas, cauliflower and tortilla chips. Their challenge is to use them all in an original dish. 90 minutes later, I’m presented with: A plate of flank steak, seared mushrooms, and tortilla-chip-crusted deep-fried cauliflower, topped with a chickpea-thickened salsa. A snack plate of tortilla chips and spicy roasted cauliflower, served with a bowl of hummus topped with paprika oil on one side and a sort of tabouli on the other side. A coconut milk chickpea curry with roasted cauliflower and lemon-ginger-turmeric rice, with tortilla chips as garnish. A salad that’s just got raw cauliflower and chickpeas and no dressing, but is surprisingly moist and flavorful because of the finely grated carrot and diced tomato it’s tossed with — on a plate with tortilla chips and fresh guac. And a tortilla-chip crusted chicken katsu, served over Indian-style cauliflower chickpea curry, with rice and fresh naan. I have to eat everything* because I’m the main judge, and that’s just the first challenge of the day. It’s kind of like being the CDC at a restaurant where every line cook has a different menu, doesn’t know where anything is, and can’t reach the plates. But they work as hard as any chefs I’ve met and I love seeing what they come up with.

I’m trying to pitch my workplace on teaching this kind of class to adults, but my coworkers think the adults won’t be able to handle it. Adults tend to fixate on doing things the “correct” way which makes them anxious about just starting. Or they might use their phones for all the ideas, which would ruin the fun. The kitchen manager says that when adults have too much freedom in what to make, they become assholes about the ingredients — either not sharing or requesting some highly specific thing and getting pissed off when it’s not available. The kids ask me for stuff too (“Chef Kate, I need grenadine”) but I’m constantly surprised by how quickly they readjust when I tell them we don’t have the thing or even that another kid used it all up. I’m afraid of disappointing them, but every day I observe them handling conflict and obstacles better than most adults I know.

My job as a teacher feels a lot like my job as a parent: to teach them rules, but not too many. It’s a kitchen, so there are plenty of rules (don’t walk away from a lit stove, cook chicken all the way through, control the temperature of your frying oil), but there are other things I’ve learned about cooking that I see no reason to push on them (why can’t you start a bolognese with a roux? Who says green salads need a dressing?). They walk into the kitchen with their own strong taste, and it’s up to me to respect and create space for it. I think of the classroom as a kind of bowl — providing structure and stability — that will be filled up by their creativity. If I can help them grow and mature their state of play into a practice of cooking they can sustain through the tempests of teenagehood and TikTok trends and formal education, that’s all I could hope for. (Though I’ll have to imagine it, since I’ll probably never know.)

I also have a little more faith in adults than my coworkers do. I don’t think this kind of play is a property that’s inherent to kids over adults, but is more a question of practice. So many activities of adult life are passive, so it’s easy to get out of practice. Even for those of us who define ourselves as “creative,” we tend to restrict our creativity to certain areas. (Making visual aids, I’ve found myself drawing for the first time in 20 years. The kids say my drawings are “kind of scary” but that they have “character.”) But drawing is like cooking is like dancing is like writing and everything is a way in. You just have to choose somewhere to start.

*Twenty years a vegetarian, and nothing has motivated me to eat meat until now. I want to give them feedback, so I take tiny bites and am surprised that I remember how this chewing flesh thing works.

Chicken katsu platter

I love the strawberry sculptures

11 canapés to judge

What I’m Cooking

Honestly, not a lot! I’m sorry I haven’t been coming through with the recipes for the past few weeks. Working full-time without childcare is not a sustainable situation, but I’ve only got one more week of camp.

Here’s a small thing I’ve been doing:

Pickle-brined tofu

So I cut my tofu block into slices and leave it in a jar of leftover pickle juice. For a day or 5 days, it doesn’t really matter (though I bet after a week it would start to disintegrate). Then I toss the slices in oil, salt and pepper and lightly fry them, or dredge them in flour / egg / panko + salt and get them crispy.

Then I put them in a sandwich, like a Reuben with cheese and sauerkraut or this Pickle Pickle Pickle sandwich, with hummus-remoulade and sliced pickles.