Season 2, Episode 9:
INTRODUCING KIDS TO FOODS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

Conner: (00:11)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (00:17)
Food is so much a part of identity that I think it's really hard to understand a different culture, a different race, a different group of people if you're not experiencing things in the way that they experience them.

Stephanie Conner: (00:33)
That's Chef Clifton Lyles, and he has a passion for food, and culture, and helping kids explore the world through flavor. Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and today we're going to talk about introducing kids to foods from various cultures around the world.

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Stephanie Conner: (01:41)
Clifton Lyles is the executive chef and vice president of product development for Revolution Foods, a company that strives to provide kids with healthy, great-tasting school meals. Chef Cliff also sees food as an opportunity for kids to learn about cultures and explore new flavors.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (02:01)
Since we're located across the country, we really try to make sure that everyone feels represented in the food selections that they have. We're on the East Coast, and we have Latin Caribbean flavor profiles as opposed to the West Coast where we may have Central and South American Latin flavor profiles, along with Asian and all the other ones around the world.

Stephanie Conner: (02:22)
Chef Cliff,, who has four daughters, is passionate about developing healthy dishes that kids love. To do that, he goes into the schools he serves and really listens to the kids, which I love. I also admire his passion for experiencing foods from a variety of cultures. And this is what I really wanted to learn more about. First, why does he think culture and food are so important?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (02:48)
I've been fortunate enough to live in three other countries with my job as a chef. I've been able to travel and consult in about 30 different countries. For me, I totally value and appreciate the experience of having food from different cultures. And I think it's very important to not just adults, but children as a whole.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (03:09)
And the reason I believe that is because food is so much a part of identity that I think it's really hard to understand a different culture, a different race, a different group of people if you're not experiencing things in the way that they experience them.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (03:27)
As a person who loves and is passionate about food, I think what's really exciting about kids understanding and tasting food from different cultures, is it becomes such a more in-depth education, and exposure to those people, that place in the world, those ingredients that exist there.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (03:45)
For example, if you're in Thailand, you've got all these great flavorful aromatic ingredients that you use in your cooking, because that's what's available there. That's what they use. That's what their weather allows them to have, the climate in that region.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (04:01)
I think it allows you to be able to have a conversation with children where you create education, you create a real-world experience, and you create this dining experience that allows them to understand things in a much greater way.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (04:14)
And I think a lot of parents tend to shy away from that, because I've got a picky eater or whatever, they may not like it. There's just so much value in education and learning perspective that we get from eating from other cultures.

Stephanie Conner: (04:29)
How do you recommend we kind of start that exploration?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (04:32)
I think it's really about hearing them, but hearing them in a perspective that's not as a parent or an adult. All of us have a passion, things that excite us, things that motivate us, things that will allow us to do things we wouldn't normally do. And what I would recommend to parents is finding what that catalyst is.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (04:56)
Maybe food isn't the most exciting thing to them, but maybe learning is, maybe travel is super exciting to them, maybe games are super exciting to them. And so find that catalyst that you can use in order to make the introduction of foods from different cultures, because you can tie it to something that they're already super keen about.

Stephanie Conner: (05:22)
I wonder if we could talk through an example. If they're interested in a particular sport or game, how can we apply that?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (05:30)
I can give you a real-life example. I've got a nephew who has Asperger's. And so the way that he processes information and the way he engages with the world is slightly different. But one of the things that he truly loves is movies. He will sit and watch "Moana" a billion times, because it just speaks to him, he just loves the movie. Every time he gets downtime and he just wants to be comforted, he wants to put in this movie.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (05:57)
And so we actually used that movie as a way to introduce Hawaiian food. He didn't like them all, but at least we can have a point of reference to this experience in this movie, the characters in this movie where that place was in the map, the climate that was there. And so it became this education and him being able to live out experiences within this movie that he sees, that he was super excited about, that he would normally just push away because he wasn't familiar with it.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (06:26)
But as we went to the map and we're like, "Okay, this is Hawaii, these are the different foods that they eat." We show them all these different pictures of the kalua pig to the poi, to some of the other dishes that they have there. And then we said, "You know what? We're going to have a Moana night." We themed it, and then we just had this spread of different things. He wasn't forced to have anything, he was super excited to try things. There were a lot of things he didn't care for, but we did find a few of those that he loved, and now we can add those to his diet.

Stephanie Conner: (07:01)
You've had this benefit of traveling, and studying food, and studying cultures. For the rest of us, do you have any recommendations on ways that we can make sure that the food that we're presenting is authentic, that we're properly honoring the culture, and the food, and what we're putting on the table? Is that even important?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (07:20)
I do believe it is. For me, experiencing food from different cultures, I think like most people you've started with an American version of that product. I moved to the Middle East. Before I moved, I had had a culinary trip that I had taken there with a group of chefs to Dubai. And part of what we were learning was traditional cuisines.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (07:41)
We made tabbouleh from scratch, we had coffee and tea services from around the region, and the education that I got around the wives in the house really kind of blew my mind. I'll give you an example: Traditional Middle Eastern food has a lot of spice to it. There's a lot of spices in the region and they use it very differently than my European-style training. In classical European training, spices and things like that are used to enhance and complement lightly the flavors that you're creating.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (08:18)
Well, in Middle Eastern cuisine, the amount of spice that you would use is five, sometimes 10 times as much. And in my mind, as a chef, I'm like, "Wow, it's just way too much, that's not going to work." But it does, they use it in such a way, and they contrast it in such a way that it neutralizes itself. And it is the feature. They have so much spice in the area, unlike the European style, where it was so precious, and so sparse, where it was just lightly used as a complement.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (08:52)
There, you could just go out, and pick it and harvest it yourself. It was an abundance, and so their food likes that abundance in which they had, but they know it, and they've lived with it so long. They've mastered the application of making the dish about that, and using it in dishes where it is the feature, not the backup.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (09:15)
It's just really interesting to understand that, yes, I can have a kebab. If you're in New York or the East Coast, you can go to almost any bodega and get any type of kebab on the street, and it's great, it's what we're used to in America. But if you go and you have that in the Middle East, the flavors are so deep, so rich, so pronounced, and prominent, that it's a completely different experience. Then I think understanding the authenticity of why that is that way is truly key in being able to enjoy and experience the food in a way that not only you would enjoy, but in a way that is truly intended.

Stephanie Conner: (09:52)
I loved this example. It also reminded me of just how big the world is. So I was curious about Chef Cliff's recommendations for how we can begin to expand our understanding of cultural experiences.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (10:08)
For me, I think travel is always the best, but it's not always the easiest, or cost effective. The other thing that I like to do is just reading. My wife and we are both very keen on reading either about travel or cultures and things like that. And I think that has been a great way in order to kind of understand cultures in a way that you usually don't get to do in, say, traditional television.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (10:29)
For the authenticity of the food, I think it's really going to be off-the-beaten-path places to really start trying to experience. I remember my first time living in San Francisco was in culinary school and someone said, "Oh, there's this amazing Korean place on Geary." Okay, that doesn't mean anything to me. I grew up in the Midwest, I'm from Indianapolis. I went to college in Chicago. I have no point of reference for what this person is talking about, but they're Korean. So they knew what they were talking about. And I'm like, "Okay, I'm following you."

Chef Clifton Lyles: (11:03)
I went with them and had the most amazing food experience to that point in my life I'd ever had. In Korean restaurants, you've got all these little pickles, and all these little condiments, and there was these meats that you would cook off. And then you had this lazy Susan of cilantro, and romaine leaves, and kimchi, and pickles, and all these other things. And it became this really cool experience, because I would taste all the individual things individually.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (11:28)
But then every time I made a different concoction with the meat that I had and the condiments, it was different every single time. I was being creative, and some of the combinations were great, and some of them not so great. But really engaging with people from those cultures, I think is a great way to start bridging the gap. Because generally they're going to know where the food is the most authentic, the most genuine thing.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (11:53)
We cannot go to, say, the PF Chang's of the world, where it's kind of been commercialized, and really go to a place where a person will tell you, "Oh, my God, this is better than my mom's cooking. Or this is how my grandma used to make X." Those are clues of like, "Yes, I definitely want to go check that place out."

Stephanie Conner: (12:11)
Chef Cliff and I grew up with the same clean-plate-club mentality in our homes, but when it comes to his own parenting style, he is not about forcing his kids to eat everything,

Chef Clifton Lyles: (12:24)
I allow them to say no, but what I don't allow them to do is to not try. Try it once, if you don't like it, I'm never going to ask you to do it again, but at least try it once. That's just always been the rule with me and my girls. I'm going to have this amazing thing, and I'm seeing that and they're enjoying it, and they're kind of looking over and they're getting curious, and I'm like, "Oh, try this."

Chef Clifton Lyles: (12:44)
And so once we find things that I'm starting to better understand their likes and dislikes, and how far they're willing to go within trying something different, I then try to bring that experience home, and try and recreate what we've experienced. Just turn it into a fun night at home where we're like, "Oh, you remember when we went to that restaurant and we had that thing? Let's try and make that tonight."

Chef Clifton Lyles: (13:08)
They would get super excited, we'd do the research, we'd find a recipe, we'd go to the store and get the ingredients, and then we'd come home. The thing that I would recommend is make them a part of the experience, make them a part of deciding how to do this, and when to do this.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (13:23)
Sometimes it's hard for parents to tell kids, "Oh, let's cook." And they become somewhat hesitant, or they just aren't as engaged. But I think if you can bring them along in the entire process, your outcomes and your results of their interests, their engagement, just their participation is going to be tenfold. That's kind of been the trick with me and my girls.

Stephanie Conner: (13:43)
Do you have any other suggestions for parents who might have some of those more hesitant eaters?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (13:49)
One of the things that I found to be effective with kids that are very picky eaters is just to allow them the first time of making something, just be okay with them making it, engaging with the experience in it from a cooking standpoint. Getting that relationship that you're building, spending that time together, making it less about the outcome of consuming the item as it is the experience of getting them in the kitchen, cooking with them, spending some quality time with them.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (14:15)
Kids' palates change over time, and so I think something that happens with parents traditionally is that, "Oh, my son or my daughter doesn't like this thing, so I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to make it." And what I would say is, continue to make it, give them the opportunity as their palates evolve, as their maturity evolves, as their ability to want to experiment evolves.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (14:37)
That it's there, I think when we start taking things away and we never bring them back because at 5 years old, they didn't like something. It kind of makes it so that they never will. I think one of the things that I would say that I would love for every parent to really kind of have in their mind is as they're introducing their kids to cooking, and cooking from around the world, and different cuisines, is to really get their kids to the point where they can do small things in the kitchen by themselves, and that the parent is comfortable with that.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (15:07)
I think kids as they grow, and they get more experience and they get more, the more we engage and work within the kitchen are going to want to be independent and autonomous to some degree. We want to prepare them for that small simple easy thing. We're not saying they're going to be doing a four-course dinner, but maybe some kids will, they just have that aptitude and the desire.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (15:27)
But I think the goal for every parent is to teach their kids enough that they can make them breakfast in bed one day. Teaching them how to do scrambled eggs, toast, just some simple things like that, where the kid has the confidence to be able to move around in the kitchen. And their parent has the confidence to understand and know that they're going to be safe in that aspect.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (15:45)
It becomes a nice reward for the parents as well. It's your birthday, or it's Mother's Day, or Father's Day, or Valentine's Day, or whatever the occasion is. And your child just decides, I really want to do something nice for you. The next thing you know, you're waking up, and they're bringing you scrambled eggs and toast or something. That's a great experience.

Stephanie Conner: (16:06)
And now it's time for Kitchen Questions, where I ask my guests a few quick questions to understand him and his kitchen a little better.

Children: (16:17)
It's time for Kitchen Questions. I have a question. What would happen if you put a little bit of the wrong ingredient inside a cookie? How often do you burn things on accident? Do you like cake? What is the difference between baking and roasting? What is your favorite recipe?

Stephanie Conner: (16:45)
What is one ingredient you always have on hand in your kitchen?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (16:49)
Saffron.

Stephanie Conner: (16:50)
You are the first person to say that.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (16:52)
I love saffron and just ... It's a weird thing, I love the smell, I love what it does to food.

Stephanie Conner: (16:58)
What is your go-to weeknight meal?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (17:02)
My go-to weeknight meal. It ends up being like a stir-fry, to be completely honest. It's one of those where the prep ahead of time is pretty labor intensive for some, but since I've been cooking for so long, my knife skills are pretty quick, so I think I can put it together pretty well. I'll put the rice on, by the time the rice is done, everything else is done.

Stephanie Conner: (17:20)
What is your go-to when you're trying to impress? Or back in the days when we were entertaining?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (17:28)
You know what? It's funny, because I have this really corny... It's not a pick-up line, but it's just a response that it's like a typical cocky chef response. And it's like, when people would ask me, what do you like to eat? My response has always been, what do you like to eat? For me, cooking is taking care of the other person. My go-to is generally going to be whatever your favorite thing is if I'm dating or trying to impress someone.

Stephanie Conner: (17:50)
What is the biggest mistake you've ever made in the kitchen?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (17:53)
Oh, wow. I would say early part of my career, the biggest mistake I ever made was thinking that I could make food what I wanted it to be, as opposed to just allowing it to be what it was. I think sometimes chefs try to get overly creative, or try and add this to that and do this to that. And just trying to do too much, I think is the biggest problem I have.

Stephanie Conner: (18:14)
What is your favorite dessert to make?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (18:16)
Oooh, creme brulee.

Stephanie Conner: (18:16)
That is one of my favorite desserts.

Chef Clifton Lyles: (18:20)
So sinful and delicious.

Stephanie Conner: (18:23)
Where is your favorite place to go for a recipe or food inspiration?

Chef Clifton Lyles: (18:29)
In all honesty, it sounds really weird, but I like going to those hole-in-the-wall places for, "Recipes." And just for inspiration, I love going to the farmer's market, the produce, or the fish market, and seeing the item and just imagining what it could be.

Stephanie Conner: (18:48)
My next guest is Dr. Natalie Muth. You might remember her from the first episode of this season. She is a pediatrician and dietitian, and the author of the American Academy of Pediatrics book, "Family Fit Plan: A 30-Day Wellness Transformation."

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Stephanie Conner: (19:29)
Dr. Muth talks about the six S's that are potential nutrition challenges for families. And these are snacks, sweets, sugary drinks, screen time, sleep disruptors, and slick sales and marketing. I'll link to a blog post about these at kiddosinthekitchen.com. But right now, I'll let Dr. Muth explain how it helps to have a plan for sweets.

Dr. Natalie Muth: (19:57)
With sweets, if you have a plan, have a plan for desserts. Maybe desserts happen twice a week, or whatever works for your family. But if you have a system that you follow, then the kids can learn it, and they can adjust to it. This we use in my house because we were always talking about dessert all the time. The kids were always wanting to have dessert. What day was going to be dessert day?

Dr. Natalie Muth: (20:20)
We're just like, you know, let's practice what we preach here, we need to have routines and structure. My house desserts are Tuesdays and Fridays. Kids know okay, it's a Tuesday, it's dessert day. Friday is a dessert day, they don't ask for it the other days. But sometimes you have to be flexible, things come up, parties, whatever.

Dr. Natalie Muth: (20:37)
And we talk about that and we can adjust; but by having the structure and the routine, it helps to take away a lot of the negotiations, and the battles, and the constant asking about desserts. And with desserts, we often also we'll be talking about savoring. This is the idea of just really eating slowly, taking your time, trying to really experience the taste, and the texture, and the smell, and the feel of the foods that we're eating.

Dr. Natalie Muth: (21:09)
And by slowing down and being mindful about it, you actually are just as satisfied with a smaller portion. So it's a great way to incorporate desserts in a healthy way that feels good too. And you don't have to worry about overeating or taking in more calories than the body needs.

Stephanie Conner: (21:27)
Thank you again to my guests today, Chef Clifton Lyles of Revolution Foods and Dr. Natalie Muth. I'll link to their social media and websites in the show notes at kiddosinthekitchen.com. For many of us, food has meaning beyond sustenance. There's a family story baked into the recipes we pass down, and within many of our dinner traditions lies a rich cultural heritage.

Stephanie Conner: (22:04)
Food can be a celebration of culture, and it can help us understand the world we live in just a little bit more. And when we're learning to cook, understanding how other cultures flavor food, how they prepare foods, even the utensils they use, all of this can give us a window into the world as well as a greater repertoire to draw from when we cook.

Stephanie Conner: (22:36)
Traveling, whether that's to other parts of the world, or even other parts of our own communities is a great way to broaden our culinary knowledge. We also can explore new cookbooks, or ask our friends about their cultures as we share food experiences.

Stephanie Conner: (22:55)
And introducing our kids to these new experiences is important. It helps them in their journeys in the kitchen, and it helps them in keeping an open mind, perhaps about even more than food. As we close the second season of Kiddos in the Kitchen, I want to encourage you to join me in this summer challenge. Take your kiddos on a world tour of food over summer break, try a new recipe from a different culture, and talk about the flavors and what makes them special.

Stephanie Conner: (23:39)
As Chef Cliff points out, food is also a reflection of geography, and climate, and history. Let's strive to understand more about those subjects as well. It's a well-rounded lesson that includes making memories in the kitchen, and eating a delicious meal at the end. Now that's a summer school I can get behind. Thanks for listening to season 2 and have a great summer. Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen, I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (24:28)
If you like my mom's podcast as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie Conner: (24:46)
That's right, Conner, you can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com. Where Kiddos Cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I'll be back next season with more fresh episodes. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.