Budding Chefs inspires children by providing fun, interactive, hands-on cooking experiences

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Chicken Gnocchi Soup at JaJora Olive Oil Co.

What a great group of girls!  We had a fun time making soup in the beautiful JaJora Olive Oil store, with the warm Tuscan colors and the sunlight streaming through the windows. How appropriate to be making a copycat Olive Garden recipe.

The girls split into two groups.  Each group had a copy of the recipe with different ingredients highlighted.  They had to find the ingredients and the tools needed to prepare them...the vegetable peeler to peel carrots, a crinkle cutter to cut the carrots, a chopper to chop onions and spinach, measuring spoons and cups to measure milk, chicken stock and spices.  We talked about what it means to heat our oil until it's rippled and cook our onions until they're translucent.  They thought the induction cooktop was pretty cool...literally.  Cool to the touch.  And what is gnocchi, anyway?  Many of them had already had it.  But not in soup.

We had NO leftovers!  I did make sure I got one bite, with a gnocchi in it.  (Do you call it "a gnocchi"??)  Delicious!  And I was told that Maura made it for her family tonight.  I'm sure it won't be long before the others do, too.