PrintCooking with Kids: There Will Be Fish Blood
My daughter Iris, 4, always used to be interested in helping out with cooking, but lately she's gotten bored. Maybe I told her one too many times to measure the sugar, not eat it. But I think I have a new ploy.
Iris loves fish, and mackerel is her favorite. We typically buy frozen mackerel fillets at the Asian supermarket. Last time, however, Iris pointed out that they sell whole mackerel and suggested we buy that instead. I obliged. When we got home, I flipped through Mark Bittman's Fish, trying to figure out how to clean and cook a whole mackerel.
"Hey Iris," I called. She was in the living room watching TV. "I'm going to clean this fish. Want to help?"
"No."
"There'll be fish guts."
"I'll pause!" She appeared in front of me instantly. I slit the fish open and pulled out the viscera. Then we went for the gills, which were somewhat harder to extract. Iris was especially curious about the blood and why the fish's mouth opened when I rinsed it in the sink. When my wife Laurie got home, Iris quizzed her: did she know the color of fish blood?
I roasted the mackerel with lime slices, parsley, shallots, and butter. Iris ate a huge serving and was disappointed that the eyeball wasn't particularly good to eat. She asked how long it took the fish to die after they caught it. "Not long," I speculated.
Now I have to think of the next cooking project gruesome enough to hold the interest of a child obsessed with Greek myths. Tête de veau, perhaps?
About the author: Matthew Amster-Burton lives in Seattle. His work appears frequently in the Seattle Times and Seattle magazine. He also maintains the blog Roots and Grubs. His favorite food is pad Thai.
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11 Comments:
That is so aweseome... Your kid rocks!
Amandarama at 10:55AM on 03/17/08
Who could pass up a chance to play with fish guts! Who being four years-old anyway?
Young children have a natural curiosity about how things work, which often involves taking things apart and getting inside them. Their fascination with blood, guts and bones, and other bodily substances, somethimes borders on the gruesome to us.
On a walk last summer with my de facto grandsons, who were 3 and 11, we came across a dead fox. For the rest of the summer we had to walk past that location once a week to check out the decomposition and disassembly of the unfortunate creature. (Zack, who was 3, speculated that the fox may have been killed by dinosaurs!)
Kids seems to particularly like bones and skeletons. This gives you a good opportunity for teaching/cooking demonstrations. Cutting up a chicken can be entertaining. Zack likes it when I remove the backbone to butterfly a bird, and insists on saving the bone to show his mom.
Making the connection between cuts of meat and the larger animals they come from is more difficult. Zack can't imagine how a beef roast or pork chop relates to a cow or pig, but I suspect that a fish might be manageable?
As for Greek myths, Prometheus has a good guts story:
Because of his actions Prometheus incurred the wrath of the god Zeus. Not only did he steal the fire he gave to humans, but he also tricked the gods so that they should get the worst parts of any animal sacrificed to them, and human beings the best. In one pile, Prometheus arranged the edible parts of an ox in a hide and disguised them with a covering of entrails. In the other, he placed the bones, which he covered with fat. Zeus, asked to choose between the two, took the fat and was very angry when he discovered that it covered a pile of bones. Thereafter, only fat and bones were sacrificed to the gods; the good meat was kept for mortals.
srhcb at 11:29AM on 03/17/08
srhcb, Iris loves that story! It's in her ghastly cartoon Greek myth book.
mamster at 11:59AM on 03/17/08
That's a great story. I appreciate a child who is fearless in the kitchen and curious about where foods come from. I'm sure she never runs out of questions!
LiveToEat at 12:25PM on 03/17/08
And by the way, when will Iris' column debut on seriouseats.com?
LiveToEat at 2:05PM on 03/17/08
LiveToEat, I'm a firm believer in cutting out the middleman.
mamster at 3:27PM on 03/17/08
That is fantastic.
What an entertaining story!
It's good to know there's at least one kid out there growing up knowing where food comes from and how to enjoy it!
Have you taken Iris to a fish market in a Chinatown? Live, crawly things abound! Frog season is coming, there should be big plastic trash cans of live croakers out soon.
fuuchan at 5:25PM on 03/17/08
Funny, I rarely cook whole fish but lately Izzy has been begging me to buy a fish ""with the eye balls on".. I now see that he would be positively enthralled if I did the whole cleaning which I usually leave to the fishmonger. You should have done a video of that one!
izzy's mama at 6:03PM on 03/17/08
And get fish guts on the camera?
mamster at 7:11PM on 03/17/08
@mamster: Your daughter Iris is some kid. I haven't really met any kid who was... well, INTERESTED in fish guts. Some would say it's only a morbid curiosity, but I think it's not.
Look at it this way: she'll grow up being unafraid of dealing with real food. That means a potential for real cooking.
levinedym at 7:24PM on 03/17/08
Wonderful story! We'll think of Iris the next time someone gives us a 12lb salmon.
islandexile at 9:18PM on 03/17/08