Little Critics: What Canadian Chefs Cook for Kids (and Kids Will Actually Eat)

Kid-approved! A cookbook of more than 100 fail-safe recipes that Canada’s chefs use to win over their toughest critics: KIDS.

Feeding kids can often feel like climbing a mountain, and sometimes like an endless series of rejections and failures. With picky eating preferences changing at every turn, meals that were a mainstay one week are inexplicably pushed aside when they hit the table the next. Because kids don’t care about what they’re serving at the new It Restaurant, the food fads of the year or how long you spend in the kitchen--either they like what they’re eating ... or they’ll let you know about it! But surely chefs, with all of their accolades, awards and years of experience don’t go through this too ... do they? What food writer Joanna Fox discovered might surprise you. It turns out we’re all in the same boat, even Canada’s top culinary professionals from coast to coast.

Inside Little Critics, you’ll find out how our top chefs please even the most suspicious, judgmental or fastidious of early eaters, with recipes including Jeremy Charles’s go-to stew, Suzanne Barr’s Cauliflower Cheese Bake, Susur Lee’s favourite childhood chicken, Danny Smiles’s Italian family dinner, Dyan Solomon’s Green Hulk Risotto, Vikram Vij’s Butter Chicken Schnitzel, Ryusuke Nakagawa’s Cheesy Chicken Katsu, Billy Alexander’s Frybread Stuffed Pizza, Chuck Hughes’s Pappardelle Pesto and Michael Smith’s showstopper pancakes, Tara O’Brady’s hearty Oatmeal Waffles, and Anna Olson’s Gourmet Goo Skillet Brownies.

Little Critics is chock-full of ideas for every kind of meal, with easy-to-follow recipes for breakfast and brunch; vegetarian, fish and meat mains; soups, snacks and sides; and desserts and drinks too. With food this good, even the adults will be asking for more.

Joanna Fox has written about food, restaurants, wine, travel, art and culture for newspapers and magazines, including TheGlobe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette, enRoute, Chatelaine, Canadian Living, Style at Home and Bon Appétit. She is currently an editor at ELLE Canada and was previously an editor at Ricardo, working on the company’s magazine and cookbooks. She is the co-author of Chuck’s Day Off by Chuck Hughes, the editor of Olive + Gourmando: The Cookbook by Dyan Solomon and collaborates on cookbook projects with chefs from coast to coast. Joanna lives in Montreal with her partner and their own little critic, their son.