When Sanaa Abdussamad announced to a class of five-year-olds that she was going to make spinach chips, there rose a collective groan. One of them even said, “I don’t eat spinach because I don’t like the taste.” Many children nodded their heads. Unfazed, Sanaa gave them paint brushes and said, “We will put butter on every spinach leaf.”
Thereafter, the children sprinkled herbs and spices on the leaves, which were then kept on a baking plate, and put inside an oven. When the dishes came out, the chips looked like thin crisp paper. “I gave them a tiny flake each,” says Sanaa. The delighted children mobbed Sanaa. “In the end, we made four batches, so that the kids could take some home,” she says.
Every day, little ones aged between three and 10 learn something new at Kidchen—a first-of-its-kind kids’ kitchen in Kochi, where Sanaa introduces them to the joys of cooking.From chopping to baking to whipping, and folding, everything is done by kids to make all kinds of food. “But everything is prepared in a healthy way,” she says. So when the children make pasta, the dough is made using vegetables. “Instead of adding colour, we use beetroot to make red pasta,” says Sanaa. “Orange pasta is made of pumpkin or carrot.”
Dates replace sugar in cupcakes. “In the end, they are eating a healthy snack,” says Sanaa, who has an experience of 12 years in the advertising sector. She always wanted to start something of her own, and her love for cooking gave birth to Kidchen some months ago.She also teaches kids to boil eggs, and make appam and dosa but in a baked version. “I don’t use fire around the kids,” she says. “For boiling, I use the induction stove. The knives we use are nylon ones. They cut fruit and vegetables but not the skin.”
Depending on the modules—1.5-hour weekly class and a three-hour weekend programme—the fee varies between `2,000 and `4,000 per month.
The children are provided with an outline and they create their own dishes, ranging from energy bars, breads to pastas, crackers, and pies. “Kids fix the menu and that independence is what we encourage in Kidchen,” she says.
While the exercise is primarily about food and cooking, through these classes Sanaa also teaches them vocabulary. “We don’t use words like ‘yummy’ or ‘yucky’,” says Sanaa. “So, when we taste something, we use words such as acidic, pungent, bitter, sour or sweet to identify the taste of food. So, Kidchen is an ‘edible’ curriculum.”
The 33-year-old says the response has been positive so far. She has also held classes in schools and restaurants.Parent Angeleena Andrews says, “I have two daughters, Isabelle, aged six, and Abigail, who is four. They had a blast. They learnt a lot of new things. And they are now more than keen to help me in the kitchen.”
Hands-on training to make
● Burgers
● Breads
● Pasta
● Appam
● Dosas
● Crackers
● Pies