Cook and learn

Take three children, a couple of sharp knives and one spotless kitchen. Mix thoroughly for an hour or two, being careful to drop a few key ingredients on the floor, and simmer over a low heat until your blood begins to boil.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? And it can be - honestly it can - if the kids are enthusiastic, the recipes are relatively easy and you are not unduly worried about having mozzarella cheese smeared generously across every available work surface.

As fewer and fewer children learn to cook at school (a recent survey by Kingsmill put the figure at less than four in ten), it is more and more important that they are allowed to hone their culinary skills at home. With that in mind, and The Giant Kids' Cook Book in hand, I took myself off to Rish restaurant in Fossgate, York, to test the cooking credentials of the three youngest resident chefs - Roman, aged five, Almaz, seven, and Max, 13, whose parents, Sam and Maria Rish, run the stylish city eatery.

"I like cooking," said Almaz encouragingly, before following up with the bombshell. "Me and Roman might burn the house down though."

The Rish family - there are six of them in all, including eldest daughter Lauren, 15 - live "above the shop" in a stunning converted flat above the restaurant. Luckily, their recently-installed kitchen is huge and relatively flame retardant.

"I used to cook a lot more before we moved in above the restaurant," said Maria. "If we have a night off and we're not too tired, we'll cook. Otherwise we send out for a Chinese or get something prepared for us downstairs. It's difficult to summon up any enthusiasm for cooking yourself when you've got fantastic chefs on hand just a couple of floors below."

As Max began zesting an orange for a batch of flapjacks and Roman hunted around for a large pan, Almaz explained that while she enjoys cooking, she doesn't see herself working in the restaurant kitchen when she's older.

"I want to be a detective," she said. "Do you think I could be a chef detective?"

Her favourite food is curry, although she is also partial to natural yoghurt, olives stuffed with anchovies and pizza topped with black olives and pineapple. Roman is a little less adventurous, although Maria and Sam have high hopes now that he has turned five.

"If he didn't like something when he was four, he always said he would eat it when he was older," said Maria. "Last week he ate mushrooms for the first time because he said five year olds liked them."

Like most teenagers, Max is not overly enthusiastic about food (or anything else), but he does admit that he can cook and that, occasionally, he enjoys it.

"I mostly cook when my friends come round," he said. "Nothing exciting though. I just do pasta and stuff like that."

The flapjacks and pizzas the kids cooked were quite straightforward, with easy-to -follow instructions and big, bold pictures showing them what the finished dish should look like.

"Recipe books have to give children the appetite to cook," said Sam. "This means the pictures are very important. This book is particularly good because it has nice big pictures to get the cooking juices flowing."

Max could have done the recipes by himself without too many problems, but Almaz and Roman needed help if a trip to casualty were to be avoided. In the end, with a little help from mum and dad, their creations were good to look at and even better to eat.

"Cooking is the perfect thing to do on a rainy day," said Maria. "Kids get so bored during the school holiday, it's nice for them to have something different to do."

"It was good," Roman agreed, with a note of triumph in his voice. "And we didn't burn the house down."

Jo's top tips from a couple of hours cooking with the junior Rish chefs...

- Set aside about three times as long as you would normally for cooking. The recipe might say 20 minutes preparation time, but children live in a completely different dimension to the rest of us; a dimension where 20 minutes can easily become an hour.

- Make sure your children are not too hungry otherwise they will eat all the ingredients before they have even touched the bottom of the mixing bowl. Similarly, make sure you have larger quantities of the ingredients than you actually need because some are bound to go astray (let's just say "Almaz" and "mozzarella" and leave it at that).

- Get everyone involved from the youngest to the oldest. If the little ones can't chop, get them to stir.

- Let the children get involved in choosing the recipes. Roman and Almaz were not particularly impressed by my choices: they wanted to do gingerbread men not boring old flapjacks. So let the kids decide from the off and save yourself arguing about it later.

- Encourage them to wash their hands at regular intervals. If they are going to stick their fingers into all the ingredients, which they absolutely will, those fingers might as well be vaguely clean.

- Children are easily distracted, so don't be surprised if you find yourself cooking alone every now and again. Max and Almaz kept taking regular drawing breaks and Roman disappeared off to the loo at five-minute intervals, but Sam and Maria ploughed on regardless.

- Don't act like you're the boss. If the kids think they are in charge, they are more likely to stick with it. Let them read out the step-by-step instructions and don't try to muscle in. Max put it most succinctly when he said "we're not at school now you know - this is just supposed to be a bit of a laugh". Point taken.

- Be prepared to make do. If you haven't got fresh basil (a restaurant without fresh basil - what is the world coming to?) or unsalted butter, who cares? Cooking isn't an exact science, so bung in whatever you have got. Just think of it as encouraging your child's creativity.

- Let them lick the spoon.

Recipes:

Quick French Bread Pizzas(serves four)

You will need:

1 baguette about 35 cm long or two 20.5 cm pizza bases

3 plum tomatoes

125g (4 oz) full fat soft cheese

1 garlic clove, cut in half

60 ml (4 tbsp) fresh pesto

1 tbsp pinenuts (optional)

freshly ground black pepper

a little olive oil for drizzling

fresh basil sprigs, to garnish

AND

chopping board

kitchen knife

small knife

baking sheet

oven gloves

pizza slice

palette knife or fish slice

4 individual serving plates

Method

Before you start, turn the grill on to high and the oven on and set it at 230 degrees C (450 degrees F), gas mark 8.

1 On a chopping board, using a kitchen knife, cut the baguette in half and then slice each half in two again lengthways. Place the baguette or pizza bases under the grill with the cut side facing down for 2-3 minutes or until lightly toasted. Thinly slice the tomatoes and crumble the cheese. Rub the toasted side of the bread or pizza bases with the cut side of the garlic. Arrange on a baking sheet.

2 Spread 15 ml (1 tbsp) of pesto over the surface of each piece of toasted bread or pizza base. Place a layer of tomato slices over the pesto then top with crumbled cheese. Sprinkle over the pinenuts, if using. Season well with freshly ground black pepper and drizzle over a little olive oil.

3 Place the sheet in the oven and bake for about ten minutes or until heated through. Wearing oven gloves, take the baking sheet out of the oven.

If you have used pizza bases, cut each pizza in half using a pizza slice or kitchen knife. Using a palette knife or fish slice, carefully transfer each pizza to a serving plate and garnish with basil sprigs.

Orange Flapjacks (makes 18)

You will need:

vegetable oil for brushing

1 large orange

250g (9 oz) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

250g (9 oz) golden caster sugar

175g (6 oz) golden syrup

424g (15 oz) porridge oats

AND

19 x 27 cm (10 v 7 inch) baking tin

pastry brush

citrus zester

large heavy-based saucepan

wooden spoon

palette knife

oven gloves

chopping board

kitchen knife

Method

Before you start, turn the oven on and set it at 180 degrees C (350 degrees F), gas mark 4.

1 Pour a few drops of oil into a baking tin, then use a pastry brush to spread it all over the inside. Set aside.

2 Place a citrus zester against the orange and draw firmly towards you to remove the orange rind in fine strips. Put into a large heavy-based saucepan with the butter pieces, sugar and syrup. Turn the heat on very low and cook the mixture gently, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon, until the butter has melted and sugar and syrup have dissolved.

3 Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the oats. Mix thoroughly until the oats are evenly coated in the syrup. Spoon the mixture into the baking tin. Level the surface with a palette knife.

4Place the tin in the oven and bake for 25 minutes or until the flapjacks are golden around the edges, but slightly soft in the centre. Wearing oven gloves, take the tin out of the oven. Leave the flapjacks to cool in the tin for about ten minutes or until almost cold, then turn out onto a chopping board and cut into 18 bars.

Updated: 09:08 Saturday, August 03, 2002