Photos by Nandini P.S
When children hear the word ‘cooking’, they normally picture their mothers cooking in the kitchen. But after they 
attended a book launch in Hippocampus in C.P.Ramasamy Road on Saturday, April 25, 2009, they could picture themselves making up quick snacks.
A group of kids and their parents or grandparents recently attended this launch of a cookbook for kids. The book Kids’ Kitchen is authored by Sabita Radhakrishna who is a freelance writer and broadcaster. She hosted a program called ‘Wonder balloons’ for kids on Doordarshan. She has already written two other well known cook books for adults.
Her first book, Aharam, on the traditional cuisine of Tamil Nadu, won her the Gourmand World Award for the Best Indian Cook Book for 2002. She published ‘The Quick Cook: 60 minutes menus’ in 2006.
Why a cook book for kids? Sabita says “My four grandchildren wanted me to write a cook book for them before I started writing novels and stories”. The four of them experimented with the dishes, made some changes and helped her greatly.
One of Mrs. Radhakrishna’s granddaughters Aditi has drawn the illustrations in the book. Aditi is a student of class 10, Abacus school. They were done when Aditi was ten years old. Aditi says, “I feel that kids would be able to identify with the recipes better if a kid did the illustrations.” She adds, she enjoys drawing very much. Aditi worked for over a year and drew over 350 pictures illustrating the various steps in each recipe. However only around 15 were used in the book.
The book has recipes of salads, snacks lunch and dinner, juices and milkshakes, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes for some of which you need elders’ help. Each chapter begins with a small story pertaining to the subject. For example she showed a milk story in the milkshakes section which tells the importance and goodness of milk.
Sabita says that the book was not aimed at any particular age group, but would be helpful to everyone. She told that they had planned to include more complicated dishes like cakes but had taken them away as it would be too difficult for small children to do them.
At the launch, the author taught the children to make two delicious, quick and easy recipes from the book – Chappathi rolls with cauliflower curry and ‘Smiling Biscuits’. On top of Marie biscuits kids spread panneer, shape the face using black currants, tomato, cucumber, capsicum and coriander leaves. But the faces didn’t have time to smile (or frown!) at the visitors or the cameras as they were quickly eaten up by everyone! The kids clearly enjoyed making as well as tasting the recipes.
The children and their parents were served some refreshing jeera flavored lemon juice before they left.
Published by Westland, the book Kids’ Kitchen is priced at Rs.195.