Our 3 oldest children are adults (and live back in the US - with all of our grandkids, while we're in South Africa with the two youngest).
My wife and daughter were out Thursday night, and our youngest has been getting interested in cooking so we spent the night cooking, baking, and having a great time together.
First we had to prep dessert. We were making cheesecake and wanted it to be able to cool before dinner time: We can't get graham crackers for crust, so here he's smashing DeVries Ginger Cookies for our cheesecake crust. This is one of the best substitutions ever. Ridiculously good. Only mishap was I guessed on the butter and had too much in the crust. Tried to pre-bake the crust a bit to solidify it, which worked, but the excess butter turned the crust into more of a cookie. Still, crazy good, and I'll do it again for sure.
A typical baked cheesecake recipe, with a blueberry & cinnamon marbling we made from fresh blueberries. Fresh as in 'fresh from the store and not frozen.' He's learning the marbling technique.
We attempted to make some homemade pasta - which I do regularly, and was the thing he really wanted to learn - but for some reason the dough was just ridiculously hard this time around. Who knows. No problem, we made a quick transition to boxed spaghetti.
We had some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, lemons, and some nice chiles, so we decided on the spot for 'chile lemon chicken cream pasta' and went at it. Sautéed the chicken with diced chiles and onion and set aside. Built the sauce up with red and yellow bell peppers (yellow diced, red sliced big for color), lemon juice, fresh garlic, and right at the end a whack of cream to bring it all together. Garnished with sautéed lemon slices and basil. It turned out much better than it should have, definitely greater than the sum of the parts.
For a side, tried a stab at a potato I've been seeing pop up on YouTube shorts. Boiled, then sliced almost all the way through (using chop sticks to keep the knife from reaching the bottom). Then roast while periodically basting with garlic butter (with some 'Italian Herb' mix tossed in as well) until crispy. These were delightful. Will definitely make again.
Cheesecake out of the oven:
And a slice:
We had a great time cooking together, and the we had enough leftovers for the next day.
