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Cooking with Kids: Banned Food

Posted by Matthew Amster-Burton, July 16, 2007 at 4:00 PM

Thanks to my wife, I discovered Roots and Grubs a few weeks ago. It's Matthew Amster-Burton's blog about his food life with his wife and young daughter. I really liked Matthew's take on cooking and eating with children and asked him if he'd blog on Serious Eats here and there. So every other week, on Mondays, we'll bring you a bit of advice from him. Here's his first entry. Enjoy! —Ed Levine

By Matthew Amster-Burton | The Man has crushed some of my family's favorite convenience foods under his twin jackboots of recall and import ban!

When the FDA announced a recall of salmonella-tainted Veggie Booty snack food in late June, I was concerned for the safety of its young consumers, but I was also smug. OK, I had a bag of the stuff on top of the fridge, but we're past the stage where my three-year-old, Iris, would request Booty and a cup of warm milk every afternoon for a snack. And adults don't eat that sort of thing. Maybe seven or 12 pieces here and there while preparing Iris's snack. That's it.

Then, the same day, the U.S. banned
imports of one of my favorite convenience foods: eel from China. (The ban also covers catfish, shrimp, basa, and dace. Sorry about that, all you basa and dace fans.) A package of barbecued eel in the freezer and a bag of rice on the shelf meant lunch was minutes away: Cook some medium-grain rice in the rice cooker, and when the rice is almost done, toss a frozen barbecued eel fillet on top and let it steam until the eel is hot.

The same meal will set you back maybe $12 in a Japanese restaurant; at home it's a couple bucks. If you have a little more time, you can buy unagi no shiroyaki, eel without sauce, and make your own sauce with soy sauce, sugar, and mirin.

Well, you could at least, before traces of nitrofuran, malachite green, gentian violet, and fluoroquinolones were found in the now-banned Chinese seafood.

So now our house is a Booty- and eel-free zone. To the global food industry: Please clean up your act. Nobody wants to see a frozen potsticker recall. That's one staple dad and daughter can agree on.

Is there a Veggie Booty or eel addict in your house? How are you dealing?

About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. His favorite food is pad Thai.

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Tags: children, Cooking with Kids, Roots and Grubs, snacks