Life In 19x19

I'm more than happy to answer and help with and questions regarding food. I'm sure with the boost in popularity that cooking had in the last 10 years, the world over, that there are many experts besides myself on this board as well. Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts.

Just to kick things off, here's a really simple recipe that's good for the summer time.

Rose Wine Jelly with Strawberries

Ingredients
1 750ml bottle Rose Wine
1/2 pint Strawberries
100g Sugar
2 packets Gelatin Powder

Instructions:
1. In a small sauce pan, bring the wine and sugar to a boil.

2. While that's happening remove the stems from the strawberries and cut them into quarters.

3. Once the wine has come to a boil, take it off the heat and gently stir in the gelatin. Then put it back on low heat and let it simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes, in order to completely dissolve the gelatin

4. Once the gelatin has dissolved let the mixture cool at room temp until it begins to become visibly thicker.

5. Gently mix in the strawberries and place into a mould of some sort. Perhaps a bundt mold or martini glasses for individual servings, and let these completley cool in the fridge for about an hour. Serve with whipped cream, ice cream, or just plain or with whatever you want.

If you don't like wine, use some kind of fruit juice, like watermelon or whatever you want. If you don't like strawberries leave them out and add something else or leave it plain. If you can't find rose wine just mix red and white wine 1:1.

What kind of recipes would you recommend for teaching young children (kindergarten age) how to cook?

I suppose it depends. If you'd like to teach children the basics of cooking, I tend to thin that a soup is a great place to start. It teaches basic techniques like using a knife, sauteeing, simmering and it exposes them to a whatever ingredients you want to introduce them to. It's also a great way of teaching fundamentals. From a basic soup recipe, you have limitless variations. For example:

Vegetable broth

Ingredients:
1 Carrot
1 Onion
1 Celery
Salt to taste

Instrustions:
1. Shop the vegetables into bite size pieces. If someone asked me how big "bite size" is, I'd say "who cares". As long as the vegetables are in some manner of chunks, you're good.

2. Put the vegetables in a pot and add enough water to cover and then some. Add a pinch of salt.

3. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to a slow simmer. Cover and leave for 30 minutes.

4. Taste and adjust the salt.

This alone is a great soup. To shake things up, keep that basic broth and add a meat (bacon, ham, chicken, beef, pork, fish) of your choice, and a vegetable (tomato, cabbage, beans, capsicum) of your choice. Do whatever you want. Coups are a great way of building children's confidence in the kitchen. They're very difficult to screw up. If a child were to have a chance at cooking a steak, there's a chance of wasting a steak. Get them used to the basics first.