Lil' Chefs School

I need to tell you about my Lil’ Chefs School that I teach monthly from my home.  This class is so much fun to teach, and the kids have a great time too.  We’ve cooked so many different foods together from smoothies & breakfast pizzas to empanadas & jam tarts.  Last week we made Baked Parmesan Fish Sticks with a make-your-own-pasta-salad bar, and for a sweet ending we had Nutella Pops (chocolatecoveredkatie.com) for dessert.  The kids really enjoyed the fish sticks and Nutella Pops, but they had a blast making their own pasta salad!  I’ll share fun pics from our class along with the recipes for both the fish sticks and pops.  J

Baked Parmesan Fish Sticks:

Vegetable oil cooking spray

2 C buttermilk

1 lb mild fish (halibut, striped bass, cod, swai, tilapia…), cut into strips

1 1/4 C finely grated Parmesan

3/4 C toasted bread crumbs

1 t salt

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Spray a baking sheet liberally with vegetable oil cooking spray. Set aside.

Put the buttermilk into a large bowl. Add the fish strips and let stand for 15 minutes.

In a medium bowl, stir together Parmesan, bread crumbs and salt. Remove the fish from the buttermilk, allowing the excess to drip back into the bowl, and dredge in the bread crumb mixture to coat completely.  (For the class, I put a small amount of bread crumb mixture into individual plastic bags so they could shake up their own fish sticks...they loved this!) Arrange the coated fish in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Bake about 8 minutes on each side until golden and crispy.

Nutella Pops:

3 frozen bananas

1 T cocoa powder

½ c Nutella

1/2 t pure vanilla extract

pinch salt

Using a food processor, puree all ingredients until smooth. (thawing the bananas a bit helps for easier blending).  At this point, you can eat it as ice cream or scoop into tiny paper cuts with a popsicle stick and freeze.