It is difficult to raise children after all! And a special problem at first - feeding, and most importantly, lure. What to feed, when and how much? How to cook properly? To and useful, and by age, and delicious! Closer to a year the child starts to understand tastes. Fresh mashed potatoes and cereals he does not like, and have to start up culinary delights. Here one steam omelette will puzzle, not to mention children's meatballs, cutlets and soups. And recipes in cookbooks do not help much. Probably, here, as in everything, there are secrets.
Grandma is coming to visit us!
How to use the good advice of an experienced woman! But my mother was no longer in the world. And with my mother-in-law ... For the first time in my life my sincere disposition and desire to become closer remained unanswered. Gifts were not suitable, purchases were unsuccessful, warm words - inappropriate. "What would you like?" - consoled me friend, who married two years before me. "It's common for two women and one man." Years passed, and suddenly, in a mail box, a telegram about the arrival of mother-in-law was found. By that time we already had a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter. everything is upside down, my husband is from morning till night at work, I have Sunday duty, my daughter has decidedly not wanted anything lately, and the sonny sweeps everything that you can not prepare, but only at home. "In the kindergarten for the whole day-no spoons in the mouth does not take, only compote drinks and tea .The teachers are indignant, the husband is distressed And I'm spinning in the kitchen like a squirrel in a wheel, and then I eat everything I've prepared for my daughter, choking with tears, maybe I'm not cooking that much, and I'm not feeding that the wrong way?
"Well, what about you?" You cook well, - my new mother-in-law authorized my doubts.
Our relations suddenly changed. Grandchildren conquered the heart of my grandmother, and she was at one with me.
"Oh, I get a steam omelette that is gray and not airy at all," I complained, "although I do everything according to the recipe from the book."
- It's about the quality and freshness of the eggs. So I took a dozen with me, my neighbor in the country house keeps chickens. Let's try to make an omelet of them! It will be an absolutely fantastic dish.
A royal gift
How to properly breastfeed - this question sets itself, almost every young mother. Grandmother took 3 eggs, beat them up with a mixer, added a touch of salt and once again whipped, and then slowly poured a cup of milk and whipped the mixture completely. Then I poured it into a greased little mold and put it in a preheated oven, where dried bread crumbs were already dried.
- And I added only 3-4 tablespoons of milk, as in the recipe.
- Probably, so it is also possible. But I'm doing it differently. The main thing - thrice well beat and put in a preheated oven.
Soon a lush golden omelet was covered with a delicious rosy foil. Grandmother, softly cooing, took out her "sweet nehuchushechku" from the bedroom and gave me a precious load.Then she put a scoop of fragrant omelet in a new bright bowl, put a piece of butter on it and solemnly handed it to the girl.Seeting at the table, we with my mother-in-law began to write the delicious breakfast, we were distracted by the conversation and left the baby sitting in a closed chair, alone with an omelette. I heard a smack, but I was afraid to lift my eyes from the plate, frighten off her appetite, the daughter, ignoring the spoon, took a piece of the omelet with her hand and became it's ridiculous and pretty clever to eat it out of my fist.I wanted to help, but my grandmother made me a sign to "freeze" and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. We talked and talked, but what about the daughter?
Soon her bowl was almost empty. True, most of the omelette, not reaching the mouth, settled on a napkin, on hands, cheeks, on a table and even under a table, but all the same it was a victory. Then we began to make an omelet in a double boiler simultaneously with the rice, buckwheat or vegetables being cooked there, inserting a plastic mold into the empty space. Even more convenient, it turned out to prepare an omelet in the microwave, and once, when only a tiny portion was needed for the daughter, we treated ourselves with a primitive steam bath, placing a bowl with an omelette in a pot of boiling water. My mother-in-law showed me how to cook a useful omelet with meat and vegetables. She mixed a little minced meat with chopped onions, added a piece of butter and put it for 1 minute in a microwave. During this time, she chopped half a sweet pepper, finely chopped a small tomato. Extracted from the microwave oven minced meat with onions, connected it with vegetables and again put in the oven for 2 minutes. Then she beat 4 eggs and a third of a glass of milk, added a little salt and rubbed dried dries in her fingers, again beat up the mixture, filled her with vegetables and put in the oven for another 4 minutes.
It turned out to be an airy fragrant "yummy" for the whole family .This made a variety in the rather poor menu of crumbs.
How to properly feed a baby with vegetables and mashed potatoes? For example, this dish combines beta carotenes, vitamins C, A and D, high-grade animal proteins, egg yolk fats, cholesterol for the development of the nervous system, choline, which is also called memory, iron and calcium. In the usual omelette there is no fiber, and in this - please, the cellular envelopes of vegetables. There is also lycopene, a useful substance that gives us tomatoes.
- Olga Ivanovna, but do you have any secrets, so that the cutlets turn out to be airy and tasty? And then they come out tough, tight. Probably, that's why I do not like my daughter. I take off all the fat from the meat. Maybe this is the reason?
- No, it's not that. Fat must be cut off. Digestion of such a small child can not cope with the abundance of fats, and a small amount of fatty substances is in the meat itself. Choose the meat of young animals.
- And how to recognize it?
- In young beef, veins and fat are white, without yellowness, and meat is light red, pinkish. If the fat and veins are intensely yellow in color, and the meat is dark red, almost burgundy, then the animal is old and, accordingly, the meat is too tough for the child.
"Is that the only thing?"
"Not really." To check in a meat grinder, meat for children's cutlets is necessary with the use of a frequent grating. You do not have it? No problem. Turn it through the meat grinder twice or even three times, after adding a little onions and white crackers without a crust, moistened in milk and slightly wrung out.
- Yes, I do not have enough time for one scrolling.
But it turned out that the repeated passing of minced meat through a meat grinder takes only 2 minutes, while the consistency of the minced meat changes significantly.
- Now add spices. There are special spices in bags with the inscription "for minced meat." Tomorrow we'll look for it in the shops .At the time you can add the dried basil and cumin, rubbed with fingers, it is not bad and finely chopped fresh dill greens.It is possible to add a bit of grated garlic. but try it, maybe the little one will like it even more. Then we mince the forcemeat, picking it up in a handful and striking hard against the cutting board. This will give him juiciness and tenderness.
- And it's all? Now it is possible to form cutlets?
- Yes, in general, minced meat is ready, but you need to add a little cream in it, just half a cup or a little more. We stir and thoroughly fry forcemeat with a fork so that it is loose. Then our cutlets will turn out to be more gentle, even airy. Formed small cutlets can be cooked in the usual way in an electric steamer, or even in a frying pan for a couple. Very convenient microwave oven. We put all cutlets in one layer in a special glass container, turn on the microwave and cook for 10-15 minutes.
Even tastier it will turn out, if the cutlets roll in diced homemade croutons or in cubes of dried bread, not too pressing them into stuffing. Gently fry the cutlets in olive oil under a lid or bake in the oven. This is a recipe of the domestic culinary specialist Palkin, a real delicacy, but only for adults. And with a cutlet designed for the child, crunches or slices of dried bread, toasty with roasting, will have to be removed. Only such a "peeled" cutlet is suitable for a child. Do not forget the main thing - it's better not to show the cutlet in rusks to a toddler, otherwise she will certainly want to eat it with toasted bread, and with this it is better to wait for up to four or five years.
- Olga Ivanovna, and I still sometimes do the cutlets on holidays in the test according to the recipe of the famous Pohlebkin. My men just adore them.
- Very interesting! Something I did not hear about that. What is special about it?
- From the wheat flour on the water I knead the dough, as for pancakes, only the sherbet, I dip into it flat small cutlets and immediately spread them on a heated frying pan into olive oil. But bread (or biscuits) in cutlet minced meat should be at a minimum, or you can even without bread.
The main thing is that the cutlet is completely wrapped in dough, as in a cocoon. If, suddenly, during the frying process, a hole is formed, it is necessary to immediately put on it a patch made of dough
Fry these meatballs exactly as pancakes, and just as quickly. Inside such a "dressing-gown", apparently, temperature conditions are created, in which the meat is cooked very quickly.Pohlebkin argued that you can also cook meat with pieces, but I have not tried it.
- Probably, in this way you can cook both fish and vegetables - anything! The recipe is very good, I'll try it.
- But it does not suit for children, they, you can not fry anything.
- And what if you take the cutlet from the "clothes"? After all, only it is fried, and the cutlet itself is obtained as if in a steam bath, an absolutely safe dish from the point of view of proper nutrition. Yes, our girl is already a year old, what's she like for you? It's easy to cope with such a cutlet, but this is how you decide. Your child is your main word, I can only advise something.
- Let's try! Olga Ivanovna, do you also cook fish cutlets with secrets?
- Well, of course, daughter. And with pleasure we will transfer these recipes to you. Let the family eat.
- Now I will do everything myself, but I do not remember anything. And you sit next to you and say what you're after. Where necessary, correct, tell me - and learn!
Caught a fish!
On the advice of my grandmother, I bought three small frozen saithees (carcasses), the length from the elbow to the hand. Fillet, "chained" in a block of ice, neither my mother-in-law, nor I bought.
- Defrost the fish better in cold water, so it quickly wins and retains its juiciness.
- How so? Is it not faster in warm water?
- In warm water can not be, from such defrost the fish will become flabby and not tasty. Now hastily, without any saving, cut out the flesh from the fish and pass it through a meat grinder with onions and damp white bread soaked in milk. Do you remember veal cutlets? The same must be done in the case of fish. Once again, quickly check forcemeat, and better - two times. All - as for cutlets from meat. Only minced meat from sea fish, and even frozen, needs a binder, or you will fall apart from the cutlets. Break into minced meat 2-3 eggs, a good mix it - now the cutlets will keep the shape well. Add a little salt solution to the stuffing, which I prepared yesterday, and put a special seasoning from dried herbs, with the inscription "For fish." You will buy it yourself - look carefully what is in the composition .It should be a quality seasoning, without preservatives and colorants, and the herbs in it are collected in a clean zone.If there is no such seasoning, you can, as in meat cutlets, add grated dried basil or dried parsley greens.Take a nice aroma of fish and ground allspice.It can now be cutlets, but there is one more secret! the minced beef is slightly flattened, put a piece of butter in the size of a hazelnut into the center of the resulting chubby flat cake and connect the edges of the flat cake to make a pie, which is much more useful for a child than a softened butter mixed with minced meat. The fact is that in the center of cutlets butter is more gentle temperature treatment, while the cutlet itself turns out to be much more juicy and tasty. You will feel the difference. Cooking for a couple, like meat cutlets.
Such different soups
I do not know what to do with the remains of fish, from which I so uneconomically took the pulp - can I really throw it away? Half of one fish was superfluous. My mother-in-law, as always, came to my rescue:
- Well, what about you! We will now build a noble fish soup on a double broth. I learned this from my friend's husband, the chef of one big and respected restaurant in the people. - Grandmother extracted the chicken breast from the pan in which it was boiled.
- This breast in the evening will go to the Caesar salad, for which I toasted and toast, but you can also cook another salad with chicken, no less tasty - any, at your discretion. "Caesar", "Meat", "Spring", " Yes, even "Olivier" - because you also need to treat yourself to my son with a tasty pamper.In the chicken broth the grandmother put the fish left over from the cutlets and put the pan on the fire, adding a large cut carrot and peeled bulb into it. ready, and together we strained the broth through a sieve, so that the bones did not fall into the soup. alshoy cooked soup broth in this conventional method, with potatoes, carrots, parsley roots and bay leaf.
- 5 minutes before the readiness is useful to add to the soup a handful of frozen vegetables from any set, preferably with sweet pepper, onions, greens and carrots. Let's take pieces of fish pulp, carefully select all the bones and put them in soup with these vegetables. For adults, I cook soup with black pepper and fried onions, carrots and white roots, but for the sake of the granddaughter, it is possible to do without it - still the fried vegetables are not for such crumbs.
Fish soup with the use of chicken broth turned out to be extremely delicious, with a wonderful, not too "rybisty" aroma.Prepared soup in plates we generously sprinkled finely chopped fresh parsley, added a little dill, and these herbs brought the bouquet of food to perfection.
- In fact, a pediatrician from the polyclinic said that soups on broth every day to prepare for children is undesirable.
"That's right," my mother-in-law agreed with me. Tomorrow we'll make you a delicious vegetable soup! It does not require a lot of time and is useful for one year old children.
- Recently, specially for the baby I cook soup puree from frozen spinach. Preparation takes only 5 minutes, and this is the only dish that she eats without fairy tales and my dances around the children's table. In boiling water - spinach from the package, boil for 3-4 minutes and remove from the plate. Then in a hot soup I squeeze out the juice from the lemon, stir and try, until there is a pleasant sourness, like soup from sorrel. Then I send a tiny muffled garlic to the soup, and I cut a steep yolk into a plate and fill it with butter. So tasty! Gradually, the elder liked this soup, and the pope sometimes joins.
"Yeah, when there's nothing else for dinner, I really respect such a soup, and it's obligatory with pies," Papa unexpectedly corrected the sudden correction of the pies. - Next to our house are selling noble cakes right from the stove.
- It's bad that I have not taught you from such a childhood to such useful soups, - grandmother noted diplomatically in my support. - In a healthy body healthy mind! Remember this, son.
- Well, yes, in spinach soup and vitamin C, and beta-carotene, and almost a full complex of B vitamins. There is more iron in it than in apples, which is important for hematopoiesis. Spinach leaves are rich in calcium, and phosphorus, and potassium, and magnesium, - I gave out information obtained from the magazine. "Folic acid is especially important, without it, not only the physical, but also the mental development of the child can suffer. And, by the way, not only the child, - I added vengefully, looking at the value of the hushed husband - and now the lack of folic acid is the most widespread form of hypovitaminosis around the world.
The husband was in the minority and quickly retreated. And I turned to my mother-in-law:
"Only my soups-mashed potatoes are not very successful: I will let the boiled vegetables through the sieve, boil in vegetable broth, fill with oil, and in the dish a thick sediment settles on the bottom, and the liquid is on top. All the time the soup in the plate has to be shaken, but it does not help either. Some completely wrong soup I have.
"Nothing, and this has its secret, and I'll give it to you now, as they say," I'll give it up. "While vegetables are being boiled for soup, put a dry pan on the stove, put a spoonful of flour on it and dry it, stirring all the time. butter and gently for a minute on low heat, and then put in vegetable broth and cook for 10 minutes.You correctly did not add this dressing to the soup for the baby, because even carefully heated oil for children up to a year is undesirable. it is possible, especially since fueling is required quite a bit. And there will not be any sediment in the soup.
Soups can be cooked not only on vegetable broth, but on any broth, adding to it and meat, and liver, and fish, and champignons.
Butter is put directly on the plate, then the soup will certainly be especially tasty and, importantly, attractive in appearance. In fish soups from above it is appropriate to put a teaspoon of red caviar, eggs will decorate the soup and add a piquant taste. Vegetable soups-mashed potatoes are decorated with slices of vegetables and green peas, chicken - cubes of chicken meat. And for all the soups, toast and croutons will suit. And there's nothing to talk about pies.
Fruits of enlightenment
The next day my grandmother went after the grandson to the kindergarten, looked at the entrance of the menu for the day, talked with the teacher, with the nanny, with the clerk. After graduation, she worked as a tutor in a kindergarten, and before that she worked part time on the summer vacations. And the difficulties of work, and the meager funding, were familiar to her. Grandmother brought from the store a huge plastic can of dried basil for supplements to kindergarten food. The granddaughter so loved the fragrance of this plant! It was agreed that the boy would no longer be forced to eat in the group and kept at the table for a long time, but would give him very small portions, almost half. "Do not worry, he'll get home at home," my grandmother promised. "It does not matter that he's skinny, it's important that he grows healthy and does not get sick." Thank you very much for this. "I received teachers with red tomatoes, who knew how to salivate masterfully, I learned the secrets from my grandmother, everyone started to write down the recipe." I broke off with friends. "I do not know if our child was more eager to eat at the kindergarten, but now he's going to eat in the mornings There, without moods, moods, and one day the teacher told me in the ear, like a secret: "Your supplements began to ask." And I began to wait for the arrival of mothers in the next year.