Cooking with kids: Peeling Eggs and an Egg recipe

It was almost 11.30am and my husband comes home for lunch @12'o clock. It was a busy morning and multitasking day. The lunch menu was Vegetable Biryani and pepper Egg. The egg recipe is from my mom. She used to prepare this simple recipe for my lunch box. The egg recipe is simple but the main course, Vegetable Biryani needs to be cooked. CJ(My four year old daughter) was interpreting me many a times, "Mama can you fix this? Mama can you play with me? Mama can you read a book." "Errr!!" Was little frustrated, and asked CJ not to disturb me since I was already running late. Suddenly I remembered nurturestore's Cracking the eggs post, "Oh my!" why not involve CJ in preparing the Egg recipe. She can very well help in peeling the eggs. I asked her "Do you want to cook eggs for daddy?" She came jumping, "yeah sure mama, sure!!!"

I was about to blog it this week and its coincidence that I came to know about the contest contacted by Womensweb from readingthroughrsmind(R's Mom) blog. The theme of the contest is "Let’s make Cooking child’s play - write an interesting recipe that you can cook WITH a child".

Usually CJ helps me in simple cooking steps like

• Switching on the microwave and setting the timer
• Switching on the Mixer/Blender
• Pouring water while grinding Dosa batter
• Mixing the ingredients while baking
• Applying Jelly/Jam to the bread
• While cooking rice, measuring rice, water and switching on the electric rice cooker

For the Egg recipe, She helped in 80% of the cooking. So here is our entry to the contest

Pepper Egg rings:

Ingredients:

4 eggs Boiled
1/2 teaspoon pepper powder
1 teaspoon oil
Salt

Peeling the eggs - While CJ was peeling the eggs I finished cooking the main course. Since she is well versed in peeling oranges peeling eggs was easy for her. Its a Fine motor skill too(fun learning) and busy little hands made me cook with ease.

This is how we did the peeling of shells:

In a bowl filled with water, I placed the Boiled eggs and let it cool.

After the eggs were cooled, I made gentle taps on the eggs to make small cracks. After that I let her to peel the egg shells.

Slicing the eggs:

Egg slicer: Recently we got an Egg slicer gadget from Wal-Mart. This gadget quickly slices eggs, with ease.


To use, simply lift the top, place the egg into the holder and lower the top.






The stainless-steel wires cuts the egg to slices.


No need to worry if you don't have the gadget, I think a blend butter knife or plastic knife is good enough to cut the eggs. With adult supervision, the kids can try cutting the eggs.

CJ doesn't like the yellow portion of egg and Since its not healthy for us, we just remove the yellow portion.

Saute the egg:

Heat the teaspoon oil in a pan. Sprinkle pepper and salt.


Place the eggs on the pan(CJ is very cautious near the stove. She stands few steps away)




Caution: After this step I asked CJ to stay away for a while because sometimes the boiled white egg bursts out.

Mix till egg gets a nice coat of pepper and salt(I did this step)

Serving the Eggs:

After we cooked the eggs. We thought dad would love a beautiful presentation of the eggs. So we placed the eggs as shown and decorated with a carrot flower, topped with cherry.


We used a carrot curler for the flower.


Can you guess! the presentation increased CJ's appetite and she finished the decorated plate of egg. So Dada(Dad) didn't see the pepper egg presentation. But he loved the pepper eggs.

"Cooking is at once a child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love." --Craig Claiborne