My daughter is a rock star. She’s a brilliant, straight-A student. A gold medal gymnast, first year in competition. She’s adorable. “So what’s your point, Mom, besides bragging about your kid??” My point is, that for all her great talents, cooking was not really one of them. Say what?! How did she manage to avoid it even if she tried?? Well, my son was always the one more interested in the kitchen, and Bella expressed very little motivation to make her own food. Over the past few months however, when I wake up on the weekends she is the one in the kitchen sneakily making chocolate chip pancakes or scrambling eggs. Because of her newfound culinary curiosity, I have let her take the lead on several Ree dishes lately; here are a couple in which I barely did any of the work!
Note: These are out of order, because that Tofu Wrap inspired me – in a bad way! – to write about it instead. I just had to get it out of my system!
Bella loves Chinese food, fried rice in particular, so she was excited to give Recipe #132, Pork Chops with Pineapple Fried Rice, a go. Given the 612 ingredients that are typically in fried rice, it was great having a partner in the kitchen; I chopped and prepped stuff, she threw everything in the pan and made sure it didn’t catch fire. Teamwork!
Before I get too far into the story of this dish, I have to tell you that this was the final recipe in the chapter, “New Favorites”. New. Favorites. You know what else was in this chapter? You guessed it, Tofu Lettuce Wraps. Whose favorite is THAT?!? A better title could have been, “The Reasons Ladd Might Divorce Ree”… Of course that would never happen, but I guarantee their marriage endures because she eats these weird things when he’s out of town! Sigh… Back to these pineapple-y pork chops: the key step to bringing out the flavor was grilling the pineapple in butter until it got really juicy and caramelized. Bella had to be especially brave here, because I can assure you that grilled pineapple spits as viciously as bacon!
I thought the combination of fruit and meat seemed pretty weird to be honest, but somehow it still worked. I’m trying to think of other times this is true; prosciutto and melon is a good example. That stuff is delicious with a balsamic reduction! Orange and chicken; actually, I don’t like orange chicken, but I realize the majority of other humans do! Bananas and steak? Ok, maybe not. (But if someone out there makes a ribeye/bananas foster combo, I’d be morbidly curious to see that!) Onions reduced in soy sauce, vinegar, and sriracha made a flavorful topping for the pork, but I must need to use 2-inch thick chops to avoid that nemesis of pork…dehydration. If only the fried rice step didn’t take so long, perhaps the pork chops wouldn’t have “rested” until they fell asleep. In the end I don’t know that we would make this again, but Bella learned how to seriously multitask in the kitchen, and get everything on the plate at once without burning anything. Slightly dry pork is a small price to pay for my daughter to learn this cooking principle early!
Another life lesson she learned courtesy of kitchen experience? Boiling sugar will take your skin off! Before you freak out, I don’t mean she learned “the hard way”, but without a doubt, she got the message. Her second dish was #134, Quick Caramel Sauce, which is so simple it barely counts as a recipe. Butter, brown sugar, heavy cream, salt and vanilla. 
That’s all that is in caramel, and you might think anything with so few ingredients HAS to be child’s play. Au contraire! The concept is easy enough, but the execution can go badly wrong. Anyone who has ever made candy can attest to this fact. Cook it too low, nothing is ever going to happen; the sugar will remain stubbornly granular. Take your attention away for a split second at the wrong time, and it will go from “pleasantly caramelized” to scorched earth in that moment! This particular recipe did not require the use of a candy thermometer, but that may not be a good thing. The steps for bringing the sauce together are A) dump all the stuff in a pot, B) stir to combine over heat until the temperature reaches roughly that of the 7th circle of Hell. This is NOT a task you can do while scrolling through YouTube cat videos on your phone and idly whisking. When things started heating up (literally), I took over and let Bella observe. I wanted her to see the progression from “oh look, the butter is melting” to “OMG it’s ALIVE!!” in under three minutes. 
For those of you who have only ever purchased caramel in a jar or a squeeze bottle, I’m talking about the boiling point of sugar and cream, which is approximately 235 degrees (also known as the soft ball stage). By comparison, water boils at 212 degrees, and when you take it off the heat, the boiling stops almost immediately. You know what happens when you take boiling caramel off the fire? This:
Basically it holds on to its heat and roils and bubbles until it’s good and ready to calm down. When Bella looked into the pan sitting on a cold burner and saw that it was still actively trying to climb out under its own power, she gained a whole new level of respect for kitchen safety. I daresay an After School Special would not have been as effective! Little Miss Bella Boo has helped me narrow this project down to the final three with the completion of these recipes. Spending time together, learning new skills, and trying new flavor combinations were all great things that came out of the experience, but we both know there is one thing that tops all of that:
Have Book, Will Cook 