Kids Creole Cooking

Creole cuisine is a style of cooking that originated in Louisiana and is best known for its emphasis on blending the culinary influences of African, French, Spanish, American Indian, German and Italian cuisines. While this type of food is enjoyed by adults all over the world, it's also a great way to sneak in some extra vegetables for picky kids.

If you're looking for fun cooking activities that your kids will enjoy, give them a taste of healthy soul food here at Prep Kitchen Essentials. Some of our most popular cooking classes give kids a glimpse into a different culture by teaching them how to make Creole cuisine. While the list of recipes that made Louisiana cuisine famous in its own right is endless, there are some fan favorites that we focus on when teaching kids how to make precious cuisines.

Kids Creole Cooking - Let's Make Creole Food!

The Creole culture is known for its resourceful people - and you'd be surprised what a population of people used to working with very little can create using just a few ingredients. Traditional recipes including ingredients like onion, garlic, shrimp, and green beans can be used to create delicious cuisine that the entire family is sure to enjoy. Foods like popcorn shrimp, gulf shrimp etouffee , and spicy red beans and rice are Creole favorites

What Is Creole Food?

What is Creole cooking? Louisiana Creole cuisine is a hybrid style of cooking originating in southern Louisiana, United States, that combines French, West African, Spanish, Indian, and other regional influences, along with influences from the wider regional cuisine of the Southwestern United States. It differs from its traditional cousin Cajun cooking in the sense that it incorporates a greater number of regional flavors and influences, frequently by substituting more "French-style" ingredients for "American" ones.

Today there is a relatively wide variation in recipes among the different regions of the United States, where the demand for Creole meals is high. In addition to New Orleans, many cities like Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Memphis, and St. Louis (St. Louis style) have also become major markets for Creole food. Many restaurants in these cities have emerged which specialize in this style of cuisine. However, it is now slowly making its way inland to areas in the northeast where availability and affordable ingredients are better. As a result, there is now a new focus on regional cooking, with restaurants specializing in a particular region creating unique dishes.

How Is Creole Food Different From Cajun Food?

Creole recipes are characterized by their heavy usage of cream, butter, eggs, spices, green bell pepper, onion, and carrots; they are typically rich in vegetables, meats, and seafood. Though the term is sometimes used to describe any kind of food prepared in the manner described above (sometimes even containing white rice instead of white flour or pasta), this term is most commonly used to refer to certain special dishes. For example, one of the biggest differences between Cajun and Creole cooking is the heavy use of cream in their recipes; this is both a result of different regional styles and an attempt to preserve the traditional ways in which these regions began their diets. Creole recipes tend to be higher in fat and lower in carbohydrates than those of Cajun cuisine.

Red Beans and Rice

From saveur.com

Ingredients:

• 1⁄4 cup canola oil

• 8 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 6 ribs celery, finely chopped

• 2 large yellow onions, finely chopped

• 2 green bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped

• Kosher salt, to taste

• 1 tbsp. ground white pepper

• 1 tbsp. dried thyme

• 2 tsp. dried oregano

• 1 1⁄2 tsp. cayenne

• 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

• 1 lb. dried kidney beans, soaked overnight

• 4 bay leaves

• 2 smoked ham hocks

• 1 tbsp. hot sauce, such as Tabasco

• Cooked white rice, for serving

• Thinly sliced scallions, to garnish

Instructions

Heat oil in an 8-qt. Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add garlic, celery, onions, and peppers, season with salt, and cook, stirring, until soft, about 12 minutes. Add white pepper, thyme, oregano, cayenne, and black pepper, and stir until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add beans, bay leaves, ham hocks, and 6 cups water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and cook, covered, until beans and ham hock are tender, about 2 hours. Remove hocks from pot, remove and discard bones and skin, and finely chop meat; return to pot along with hot sauce, and stir until combined. Serve over rice in bowls and sprinkle with scallions.

Buttermilk Beignets

via epicurious.com

YIELD Makes about 4 dozen beignets

INGREDIENTS:

• 3/4 cup whole milk

• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk

• 4 teaspoons active dry yeast

• 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar

• 3 1/2 cups bread flour plus extra for flouring work surface

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• Peanut oil for frying

• Confectioners' sugar for serving, as much as you think you'll need—then double that!

PREPARATION

Heat the milk in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until small bubbles form at the surface. Remove from the heat, add the buttermilk, and then pour into a stand mixer bowl. Whisk in the yeast and the sugar and set aside for 5 minutes. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt, and mix on low speed, using a dough hook, until the dry ingredients are moistened, 3 to 4 minutes. Increase the mixer speed to medium and continue mixing until the dough forms a loose ball and is still quite wet and tacky, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set the dough aside in a draft-free spot for 1 hour.

Pour enough peanut oil into a large pot to fill it to a depth of 3 inches and bring to a temperature of 375°F over medium heat (this will take about 20 minutes). Line a plate with paper towels and set aside.

Lightly flour your work surface and turn the dough out on it. Sprinkle the top of the dough with flour, gently press to flatten, fold it in half, and gently tuck the ends under to create a rough-shaped round. Dust again and roll the dough out into a ½-inch- to ¹/³ -inch-thick circle. Let the dough rest for 1 minute before using a chef's knife, a bench knife, or a pizza wheel to cut the dough into 1 1/2-inch squares (you should get about 48).

Gently stretch a beignet lengthwise and carefully drop it into the oil. Add a few beignets (don't overcrowd them, otherwise the oil will cool down and the beignets will soak up oil and be greasy) and fry until puffed and golden brown, turning them often with a slotted spoon, for 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to the prepared plate to drain while you cook the rest. Serve while still warm, buried under a mound of confectioners' sugar, with hot coffee on the side.

Make ahead:

The beignet dough can be made up to 8 hours in advance of frying. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray it with nonstick cooking spray. After cutting the dough, place the beignets on the paper and place another greased sheet of parchment paper, sprayed-side down, on top. Wrap the entire baking sheet with plastic wrap and refrigerate. The beignets can be fried straight from the refrigerator.

The "Holy Trinity": A Creole Version Of A French Mirepoix

via louisianatravel.com

Ingredients:

• approximately 2-3 tbsp. pan drippings, butter or vegetable cooking oil (adjust amount as needed to ensure veggies do not stick)

• green bell pepper

• onion

• celery

Method of Preparation:

Using the same pan drippings from the meat you may have just browned for your dish — or starting with a healthy splash of oil, butter or (gasp!) bacon grease, if you don’t have pan drippings — heat the fat in a skillet over medium heat.

Add finely chopped green bell pepper, celery and onion to your pan in a 1:1:1 ratio, or use the amounts favored by many local chefs of 2 cups onion to 1 ½ cup celery to 1 ¼ cup green pepper.

Sauté the mixture, stirring just enough to prevent burning, until the vegetables start to soften and release their moisture, forming a glaze-like liquid in the pan. Reduce heat to low and continue cooking slowly, stirring often, until the vegetables are fully caramelized and darker in color.

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Quick Team Building Activities

 

Whether your team is fully remote or in the office, a great way to bring your team members together, promote deeper employee relationships, and increase productivity is through quick team building activities. Not all team building techniques require a weekend away or hours in a seminar. Instead, invest in your team members with quick, effective team building activities right in the office or online. It’s no secret that teams who work well together, stay together. As your team’s leader, it’s up to you to facilitate a healthy work environment and foster meaningful relationships with your team members.  

Remote Team Building Activities

For remote teams, it can be difficult to feel connected. Physical distance can often translate into emotional distance, leading to communication struggles and loss of coordinated productivity. Even apart, you can implement quick team building activities that foster cooperation and create a space for team relationships to grow. 

Victory/Struggle Activity

At the beginning of a work day or right before your team signs off for the evening, have your remote team come together and share the pros and cons of their day. Have each team member go around and share one win they experienced that day and one struggle they encountered. 

This allows remote teams the opportunity to cheer on their fellow team member’s successes and offer support for tough issues. Through the positives, each remote team member will have the opportunity to acknowledge the victories they are accomplishing as a team and experience a reward for their own successes. Through the negatives, team members may foster support through finding others with similar struggles or finding solutions through team problem solving.

Get to Know You Activity

It’s easy to get to know a team member’s work style or what they each for lunch break, but how well do the remote members of your team really know each other? Take slips of paper and write simple questions on each one, like ‘What’s your favorite food?’ or ‘What was your best childhood birthday present?’. Choose a slip of paper for each team member and have them answer the question. 

This team building activity is quick, but it provides the opportunity to get to know more about each member in a fun and light hearted way. Some might find they have a lot in common with their team and others might discover many unique qualities about those they work with.  

Remote Competition Activity

Get your remote team out of their desk chairs with exciting competitions and team building tasks. These competitions can come in many forms, so get creative. For example, have each team member grab a package of toilet paper rolls from their home. Have the host time a toilet paper stacking competition where everyone can race to create the tallest tower before time runs out. Enjoy some laughs and maybe a prize for the winner. 

If interactive competitions won’t work for your team, find a remote team building game website. Many sites offer games and challenges where your team can log on together and compete. 

In-Office Team Building Activities 

Even when teams can come together in the office, communication and cooperation still take work. Dedicating some time to team building activities can create a lasting impact for your team productivity and workplace environment. 

Describe and Guess Activity

Effective communication is one of the most important aspects of a healthy team. Create quick opportunities for your team members to work on how they communicate with one another. Write random nouns, on slips of paper. They can be office related, funny, or themed to add some excitement to the game. Have your team split up into two competing teams. Each team member will have 30 seconds to try and describe the noun on a slip of paper without saying the word. Their team will try and guess off of their description. The team who guesses the most words, and communicates the most effectively, will win!

This team building activity can emphasize the personal dynamic between team members and highlight areas of communication that can be improved. In addition, your team will have fun!

Team Scavenger Hunt

While it may take a little more time and effort, sending your team on a scavenger hunt around the office, or even around town, can provide a range of positive benefits. Let your team work as a whole or have each member team up with a partner. Create your own riddles to find clues or find an online company that can create scavenger hunt steps for you to enjoy. 

This type of team building activity allows team members to work on key problem solving skills, foster cooperative and engaging relationships with coworkers, and communicate effectively as a team. 

Human Knot Activity

Connect with coworkers while communicating and working together. Have each member of your team stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle. Each member will reach out their right hand and take the hand of anyone across the circle. They will do the same, grabbing a different hand, with their left hand. Set a timer and have the team work together to untangle their knot without releasing their hands. 

This team building activity will create laughs, team work, and communication between team members. Beyond the productivity improvements, this task can also help identify leaders by who takes charge of the tangled mess. 
Quick team building activities incorporated into your in-person or remote workplace can help improve productivity, foster meaningful relationships, and promote connectivity for your team members. Don’t spend hours listening to an un-engaging speaker or take a budget breaking trip for your team. Instead, invest in team building right from the office in ways that make a big impact in little time.

Read More :  https://www.prepkitchenessentials.com/blog/2020/11/22/quick-team-building-activities