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Kid in the Kitchen

100 Recipes and Tips for Young Home Cooks: A Cookbook

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Hardcover
$24.00 US
7.63"W x 9.38"H x 0.94"D   | 34 oz | 12 per carton
On sale Nov 10, 2020 | 288 Pages | 9780593232286
Age 10-17 years | Grades 5-12
The New York Times Food columnist and beloved home cooking authority welcomes the next generation of chefs into the kitchen with 100 recipes that are all about what YOU think is good.

IACP AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND TOWN & COUNTRY


Whether you’re new to cooking or you already rock that kitchen, these 100 recipes make it easy to cook what you like, exactly how you like it. 
 
In Kid in the Kitchen, Melissa Clark, who has been cooking with her own kid for years, takes you step-by-step through how to understand and create each dish. These recipes are fun, insanely delicious, and will help you become a confident cook. There are tons of tips and tweaks, too, so you can cook what you want with what you have. Make amped-up breakfasts, sandwiches that slay, noodles and pasta for every craving, plus sheet pan dinners, mix and match grain bowls and salads, one-pot meals, party classics, and the richest, gooiest desserts. This is the fun, easy way to awesome food.

Recipes include: Fresh Custardy French Toast • OMG, I Smell Bacon! (spicy and candied, too) Granola Bar Remix, feat. Cranberry and Ginger The. Last. Guacamole. Recipe. Ever. Fast Pho Garlicky, Crumb-y Pasta Classic Caesar Salad with Unclassic Cheesy Croutons • Crispy Pork Carnitas Tacos Mexican Chicken Soup & Chips Shrimp Scampi Skillet Dinner Korean Scallion and Veggie Pancakes (Pajeon) Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuits Put a Spell on You Rise & Dine Cinnamon Raisin Bread Buttery Mashed Potato Cloud Deep Dark Fudgy Brownies Think Pink Lemonade Bars
 
Melissa will explain the most helpful kitchen tools and tips, from the proper way to hold a chef’s knife to why you need a Microplane grater right now. She’ll even clue you in on which recipe rules you can break and how to snap amazing food photos to share!
“With plenty of customization tips, this cookbook lets kids figure out how to make a meal their own.”—Washington Post

“This isn’t a regular kids’ cookbook, it’s a cool kids’ cookbook.”—Atlanta Journal Constitution
© Amy Dickerson

MELISSA CLARK is a staff writer for the New York Times where she writes the popular column "A Good Appetite," and stars in a weekly complementary video series. The winner of James Beard and IACP Awards, she is a regular on Today and NPR (The Splendid Table, The Leonard Lopate Show). Melissa earned an MFA in writing from Columbia.

View titles by Melissa Clark
Hi!

If you love to eat, you should learn how to cook. Because no one cooks or eats exactly like you do. You have your own tastes and needs. Maybe you need school snacks and after-school snacks. Maybe you want to cook for sleepovers or video game parties. The things you’re into aren’t always what grown-ups are into. Your tastes may change and evolve, but you definitely have strong opinions about what’s good. And learning how to make food YOU think is good is what this book is about.

Making the food I wanted, when I wanted it, was why I baked my first cake without any help at the age of eight. I desperately craved a purple layer cake with rainbow sprinkles, and there was no way my mom was going to make it for me when it wasn’t my birthday. So I dug out the Joy of Cooking and made a floury mess, dyeing the batter with red and blue food coloring. It turned the batter a lovely shade of lavender—and I ate so much of it that my tongue and fingers turned lavender, too (yum). But when I took the cake out of the oven, it baked up into a scary shade of gray. And, apparently, I forgot to add the baking powder, because it was flat as a flip-flop. But I frosted it in violet-tinted buttercream and topped it with sprinkles. I was psyched to share it with my best friend, Kimmy, who lived down the block. We thought the gray flip-flop cake tasted amazing.

So, yeah, I’ve come a long way since then. I write cookbooks and recipes for The New York Times for a living, and now most of what I cook turns out pretty well. When it’s flat and gray, it’s flat and gray on purpose.

But ever since sharing that flip-flop cake with Kimmy, I realized that one surefire way to make myself—and my friends and family—really happy was to make (and share) the food I loved to eat. Cooking never fails to bring joy. I strongly believe that everyone who loves to eat should learn to cook.

That flip-flop cake taught me another lesson, too: Cooking isn’t about getting things perfect—it’s about having fun (and licking the bowl) while you do it.

You do have to learn some basics to get going. Every dish has a few fundamental steps that will make it work. In this book, I take you step-by-step through the process of understanding and making a recipe. You’ll find a set of rock-solid starting points that will help you cook exactly what you want to eat. The Tips & Tweaks will teach you how to adapt each recipe to suit your current mood or that of the people you are cooking for.

So I hope you’ll mess around with these recipes, hack them, hype them, make them yours. As long as you’ve got the basics and you’re having fun, whatever you make is bound to be delicious!

Now get in that kitchen and own it!

—Your friend, Melissa

About

The New York Times Food columnist and beloved home cooking authority welcomes the next generation of chefs into the kitchen with 100 recipes that are all about what YOU think is good.

IACP AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND TOWN & COUNTRY


Whether you’re new to cooking or you already rock that kitchen, these 100 recipes make it easy to cook what you like, exactly how you like it. 
 
In Kid in the Kitchen, Melissa Clark, who has been cooking with her own kid for years, takes you step-by-step through how to understand and create each dish. These recipes are fun, insanely delicious, and will help you become a confident cook. There are tons of tips and tweaks, too, so you can cook what you want with what you have. Make amped-up breakfasts, sandwiches that slay, noodles and pasta for every craving, plus sheet pan dinners, mix and match grain bowls and salads, one-pot meals, party classics, and the richest, gooiest desserts. This is the fun, easy way to awesome food.

Recipes include: Fresh Custardy French Toast • OMG, I Smell Bacon! (spicy and candied, too) Granola Bar Remix, feat. Cranberry and Ginger The. Last. Guacamole. Recipe. Ever. Fast Pho Garlicky, Crumb-y Pasta Classic Caesar Salad with Unclassic Cheesy Croutons • Crispy Pork Carnitas Tacos Mexican Chicken Soup & Chips Shrimp Scampi Skillet Dinner Korean Scallion and Veggie Pancakes (Pajeon) Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuits Put a Spell on You Rise & Dine Cinnamon Raisin Bread Buttery Mashed Potato Cloud Deep Dark Fudgy Brownies Think Pink Lemonade Bars
 
Melissa will explain the most helpful kitchen tools and tips, from the proper way to hold a chef’s knife to why you need a Microplane grater right now. She’ll even clue you in on which recipe rules you can break and how to snap amazing food photos to share!

Praise

“With plenty of customization tips, this cookbook lets kids figure out how to make a meal their own.”—Washington Post

“This isn’t a regular kids’ cookbook, it’s a cool kids’ cookbook.”—Atlanta Journal Constitution

Author

© Amy Dickerson

MELISSA CLARK is a staff writer for the New York Times where she writes the popular column "A Good Appetite," and stars in a weekly complementary video series. The winner of James Beard and IACP Awards, she is a regular on Today and NPR (The Splendid Table, The Leonard Lopate Show). Melissa earned an MFA in writing from Columbia.

View titles by Melissa Clark

Excerpt

Hi!

If you love to eat, you should learn how to cook. Because no one cooks or eats exactly like you do. You have your own tastes and needs. Maybe you need school snacks and after-school snacks. Maybe you want to cook for sleepovers or video game parties. The things you’re into aren’t always what grown-ups are into. Your tastes may change and evolve, but you definitely have strong opinions about what’s good. And learning how to make food YOU think is good is what this book is about.

Making the food I wanted, when I wanted it, was why I baked my first cake without any help at the age of eight. I desperately craved a purple layer cake with rainbow sprinkles, and there was no way my mom was going to make it for me when it wasn’t my birthday. So I dug out the Joy of Cooking and made a floury mess, dyeing the batter with red and blue food coloring. It turned the batter a lovely shade of lavender—and I ate so much of it that my tongue and fingers turned lavender, too (yum). But when I took the cake out of the oven, it baked up into a scary shade of gray. And, apparently, I forgot to add the baking powder, because it was flat as a flip-flop. But I frosted it in violet-tinted buttercream and topped it with sprinkles. I was psyched to share it with my best friend, Kimmy, who lived down the block. We thought the gray flip-flop cake tasted amazing.

So, yeah, I’ve come a long way since then. I write cookbooks and recipes for The New York Times for a living, and now most of what I cook turns out pretty well. When it’s flat and gray, it’s flat and gray on purpose.

But ever since sharing that flip-flop cake with Kimmy, I realized that one surefire way to make myself—and my friends and family—really happy was to make (and share) the food I loved to eat. Cooking never fails to bring joy. I strongly believe that everyone who loves to eat should learn to cook.

That flip-flop cake taught me another lesson, too: Cooking isn’t about getting things perfect—it’s about having fun (and licking the bowl) while you do it.

You do have to learn some basics to get going. Every dish has a few fundamental steps that will make it work. In this book, I take you step-by-step through the process of understanding and making a recipe. You’ll find a set of rock-solid starting points that will help you cook exactly what you want to eat. The Tips & Tweaks will teach you how to adapt each recipe to suit your current mood or that of the people you are cooking for.

So I hope you’ll mess around with these recipes, hack them, hype them, make them yours. As long as you’ve got the basics and you’re having fun, whatever you make is bound to be delicious!

Now get in that kitchen and own it!

—Your friend, Melissa

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