(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)
By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate
There are plenty of books that advise how to trick kids into eating vegetables by hiding them in brownies or pureeing them into sweet shakes. Usually no deceptions are necessary, though, when you add pasta to a soup also containing vegetables.
Unlike other combinations, kids and pasta do mix. Soup is fun to eat and prepare, so it makes it even more appealing. Seasonal ingredients also add pizzazz no matter what time of year.
That attraction doesn't only extend to children. Soup cooks get a real break from the drudgery of longer, more involved meals. Double or even triple duty is possible when preparing soup. In the soup that follows, for instance, both the garlic-sauteed broccoli and pasta cook right in the same pot.
The inclusion of pasta is also a way to make scrumptious, sophisticated heirloom recipes more accessible to children. Cookbook author Giuliano Hazan did that with three-generation specialties of his famed family (his mother is TV cooking star and best-selling cookbook author Marcella Hazan). His soup chapter in Giuliano Hazan's Thirty Minute Pasta is filled with kid-friendly recipes that even "minus the pasta" had been drawing raves in his family for generations.
Here are a few more ways to keep kids' attention when it comes to pasta in soup:
- Consider shape: Fun shapes, like alphabet letters, corkscrews or the tubular ones in the broccoli recipe below are almost sure to be welcomed.
- Consider texture: You might consider al dente pasta with a little firmness to it a gourmet delight, but your children are probably more drawn to the mushier varieties, like the ones included in canned products. Cook longer to please pintsized palates.
- Consider the fun factor: Long, thin, winding pastas, like spaghetti, are apt to hold a kid's attention be amusing for a bit of slurping once cool enough.
Fun fare like this also proves food preparation can be easy, nutritious, inexpensive, fun - and fast. They take just 10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare. The creative combinations are delicious proof that everyone has time for creating homemade specialties and, more importantly, the healthy family togetherness that goes along with it!
Another benefit: You effortlessly become a better cook, since there are no right or wrong amounts. These are virtually-can't-go-wrong combinations, so whatever you - or your kidlet helpers - choose to use can't help but draw "wows" from family members and guests.
Broccoli Soup With Pasta
2 medium cloves garlic
Salt, to taste
3/4 pound broccoli florets
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 large beef bouillon cube
6 ounces short tubular pasta, or other dried small pasta shape for soup, such as ditalini or small shells
Yields 4 servings.
Fill a pot with water that will accommodate the broccoli and place over high heat. Peel and finely chop the garlic.
When the water is boiling, add 1 teaspoon salt and put in the broccoli. Cook until tender, about 5 minutes after the water comes back to a boil. Drain broccoli and set aside.
Put the garlic and olive oil in a 4- to 6-quart soup pot and place over medium-high heat. After the garlic begins to sizzle, add the cooked broccoli. Season with pepper and lightly with salt and saute for about 5 minutes after the water comes back to a boil. Drain the broccoli and set aside.Put the garlic and olive oil in a 4- to 6-quart soup pot and place over medium-high heat. After the garlic begins to sizzle, add the cooked broccoli. Season with pepper and lightly with salt and saute for about 5 minutes. Stir periodically with a wooden spoon, suing it to mash the broccoli into small pieces.
When the broccoli has finished sauteing, add 4 cups water and the bouillon cube and raise the heat to high. When the water begins boiling, add the pasta and cook over medium heat until the pasta is al dente. Serve hot.
-"Giuliano Hazan's Thirty Minute Pasta: 100 Quick and Easy Recipes" by Giuliano Hazan.
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK: If you want a way to pep up, yet trim down, your kidlets' snack portions, consider playing games. Set up a small array of bite-sized healthful snacks, like mini peeled carrots, chopped walnuts, dried cranberries and sliced kiwi. This can even be done in the empty cups of a mini or regular-sized muffin tin. Have kids be taste testers closing their eyes or with blindfolds to see if, by flavor, texture and scent, they can decipher what the components of the small snack are.
Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling
The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes (Avery/Penguin Putnam) and
Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet (Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.
