Two for Tuesday: Chef Sweetling

We try to periodically do a kid's cook night. I'd like it to happen once a week, but the reality is more like every other week.

Still, it's a great tradition. Not only is it a great learning experience, but it's a real confidence builder for each of my children.

Sweetling and I were at Meijer on Saturday. We were on our way home from a women's self-defense class and had gone in to look for an ink cartridge for our color printer. It was lunch time, and we were hungry, so we decided to swing through the grocery section to look for a few yummy food samples.

Little samples of baked salmon were being given out...along with a 10% off coupon, a little fish-thickness measuring ruler, and a pamphlet on easy, fool-proof fish cooking techniques.

Meijer didn't have the ink cartridge we needed, but at Sweetling's request, a large "family" pack of a salmon fillet weighing 1.3 lbs came home with us.

Baked Salmon

Ingredients:

• salmon
• seasoning of choice

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 450.
2. We lined a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. I have no idea if this is necessary, but I didn't want to be scraping fish chunks off the baking tray.
3. Place salmon on tray. (I know this is complicated, but just bear with me.)
4. Season. (I just put out all my seasoning blends and let Sweetling go at.)
5. Bake for 10 minutes per 1 inch thickness. (We baked ours a little longer, because we had never baked fish before and I was worried it would be underdone. It wasn't. In fact, we overbaked ours a tiny bit and it was a touch dryer than it could have been.)
6. Sweetling served her fish with butter noodles, microwaved broccoli and cheese, and homemade corn muffins....

Homemade Corn Muffins

Really, Sweetling made these before making the fish. She cleaned up her mixing area while they were in the oven. She also started the water boiling for the butter noodles. When they came out, she put them in a basket lined with a tea towel and put another clean towel on top of them to keep them warm. By that time, her noodles were ready to go in the water. Then she seasoned her fish and popped it in the oven. She got the broccoli in the microwave and turned off the noodles while the fish baked. The timing would have been perfect if Mommy hadn't insisted the fish stay in the oven well past its bake time. In the end, she looked up the proper internal temperature for cooked salmon and stuck a meat thermometer in the fish to prove to me that it was just fine.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup buttermilk (we keep buttermilk frozen in 1/2 cup amounts. We thawed the buttermilk in the microwave for this recipe.)
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 egg, beaten

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl. 
3. Add wet ingredients and stir with wooden spoon till combined.
4. Spoon into paper lined muffin cups.
5. Bake for 15 minutes.