The eight-year-old can now prepare a classic nasi goreng (fried rice), fried tempeh and spaghetti.
Taking her food and cooking seriously, she said she helped the maid employed at her house prepare food daily. Good practice for the aspiring chef.
Cooking is often considered an adult activity as it involves sharp knives and burning stoves. Cooking techniques can be complex, but above all, require creativity and passion. Despite all this, many children enjoy cooking. And with the right supervision and guidance, they can excel at it.
Know your fruit: One of the presenters of Koki Cilik about to sow a ripe pumpkin
TV personality chef Farah Quinn said cooking, for children, was like any other activity. “Some children are good in sports, some are good in music; and some are good at cooking,” she went on.
“When you see your children are talented in the kitchen, you should support and help them develop that skill,” she said in a telephone interview.
Over the past few years, television cooking shows have popularized cooking and made it a fun activity for children. Famous British chef Jamie Oliver encourages kids in one of his TV shows to learn how to cook so they can eat more healthily. Those subscribing to cable television will find Australia’s Junior Masterchef an endearing cooking competition for young chefs.
Local TV stations also have their own cooking shows for children, like Koki Kecil on DAAI TV Koki Cilik on Trans7 — both translating as Little Chef. In Koki Cilik, the little chefs travel across Indonesia to learn about local food and try various recipes.
Koki Cilik producer Muhammad Asri Rasma said children and parents both enjoyed watching the show.
“The basic idea is to introduce good food to children; to show children that cooking is not that difficult; and to promote the nation’s culinary dishes to children,” Asri said recently at a café in Trans Corp.’s building.
“We want children to know about healthy foods and not eat junk food all the time,” he said.
Koki Cilik is aired five days a week, highlighting that anything dealing with food here is always going
to be popular.
Through cooking, Asri said children could also learn about different delicacies from across the archipelago. They could also learn about different cultures and even different stove types.
“We once did a story about stoves made of clay in Ternate,” he said. Asri recalled the little chefs also tagging along with fishermen, watching how they caught fish and how locals prepared it.
For Asri, producing a children’s cooking show has also expanded his knowledge of food. “I now know which food items are nutritious, which ones are bad and have lots of fat and cholesterol,” he said. His show has a segment informing children about nutrition.
Twelve-year-old Ardhia Pramesti Regita Larasati, one of the seven little chefs in Koki Cilik, said her cooking skills had greatly improved as a result of being involved in the show.
“I already knew how to cook but after being one of the little chefs I became a lot better at it,” she said. Laras, as she’s popularly called, has now been in the show for 10 months.
She loves the fact that cooking allows her to be creative.
“We can create our own dishes. We can add a little bit of this and that to our food. We can adjust our cooking,” she said.
Another aspect she enjoys about cooking is learning about different spices. She loves tauco — soy paste — which she once mixed in an omelette.
Laras practices the recipes presented on the Koki Cilik show at home. “My mom, friends and neighbors will taste the dishes.”
Her job at Koki Cilik has given her the chance to see Flores, Ambon, Manado, Padang, Lombok, Sumbawa and Pekanbaru..
Psychologist Rose Mini said children liked to cook because they enjoyed having a go at activities they saw adults partake in.
“This helps boost their confidence,” she said, adding this was beneficial for their intrapersonal
development.
Cooking also helps develop children’s intelligence and coordination, as they learn how to follow recipes and use their hands while manipulating food.
Cooperating with their siblings or friends while cooking also develops their interpersonal skills. All this, she said, makes cooking a great activity to help children develop in a holistic way.
Najya, who has been living in Bandung for the last two years, said she became interested in cooking by watching her mother cook. Cooking, she said, brings her happiness.
For Najya, the more complex the food preparation, the better. One of her favorite recipes at the moment is sayur asem, a tamarind-based vegetable soup.
Too much flour?: Koki cilik presenter Ardhia Pramesti Regita Larasati on the set with music band Kuburan.“There so many spices in sayur asem,” she said.
But before reaching Najya’s level, Farah said children who were just starting to cook should be given simple recipes.
“Keep it simple. Don’t choose recipes that take a lot of time and require a lot of chopping,” she said.
Farah’s first attempt at cooking when she was a child was to bake cookies, which allowed her to play with flour, sugar and eggs.
Farah explained it was good to introduce cooking to children at a young age as long as parents or guardians made sure it was safe. Parents or guardians need to ensure their children are tall enough to reach the stove before allowing them to use it themselves.
“If you work near fire and if the child’s not tall enough, hot things can spill. So keep in mind your children’s height,” she said.
A four-year-old can be taught to stir egg yolks or play with flour, she went on.
“But until they can really master cooking, they should always be supervised, because safety comes first,” she said. ( thejakartapost.com )
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