Bad Home Cooking

Into the mouths of babes...

There's an interesting article over at Babble, a sort of Daily Beast for the new parent set. The writer asked five top chefs what they feed their kids at home. Great premise, I thought.

But the content didn't live up to the promise. Three of the top chefs interviewed have children aged 2 or under. Children under two are never picky. They will eat anything you put in front of them. It's not until they hit 3 that they suddenly and without explanation stop eating anything with herbs in it, anything with distinctive taste, or anything that is not the color white.

This is almost universal (well, in developed countries, I mean. There really is a kid in Afghanistan who would weep over your kid's untouched bowl of soup.). I say this as a mom of two myself, and as someone who spent four years in a child observation unit (otherwise known as graduate student family housing). At two they're gourmands. At three they're Vegan.

One chef interviewed had one child, a 1-year-old. Why? A one-year-old will happily try cat kibble and eat dead bugs out of the windowsill if you let them. Yes, they'll eat your organic puree too. But picky they're not.

I would have liked to see a chef with older kids, grade school and a little above. Now that's a picky, stubborn and vocal group. I might have asked the guys at GastroKid what they think, since they both cook and have a book coming out about feeding kids creatively.

The other chefs had 4-and-5 year-olds. And although they admitted they were a little picky and they couldn't explain why, neither did they offer any actual meals that worked for them. The final chef had two grown daughters, who hardly count, because they're no longer kids, and nobody can be counted upon to remember the gastronomic quirks of their progeny 23 years earlier.

Now I'd like to see a piece on what chef's really feed their kids at home. Dirty little secrets of top chefs' home life with kids. Breakfast cereal? Chicken McNuggets? gasp! Kraft Mac and Cheese? No! the horror.

Vote for your favorite and let me know.

The pantry clean-out project: What's in, what's out

Gotta hand it to Mark Bittman (and to those who religiously forward me his articles): His recent column about what should and shouldn't be in one's pantry was a godsend for me. And not only because it gave me a solution to my tomato paste quandary. (as the second person to cite tomato paste in a tube, I can only assume the universe is telling me to get off my butt and go find a store that sells it.)

His list of pantry staples in just the kind of service journalism I need to read. It's because I wouldn't otherwise know these things. Because I didn't grow up in a household where fresh cooking was ever considered, much less valued, and I have only slowly come to realize how much better a dish can taste with a little creative embellishment.

Take his example of lemons. Just say no to the ubiquitous yellow plastic lemon in your refrigerator side shelf, he says, and buy fresh lemons, six at a time, and use them over everything. "I never put lemon on something and regret it." (well, I have, but I take his point.) He suggests scrambling up some eggs in a little chicken stock, then finishing up with a lot of lemon, fresh pepper and dill. Yowza. I guarantee you slop the first time I try this...but maybe with a few practice runs I might stumble upon something marvelous.

He gives me good reason to go out and buy another wedge of fresh Parmesan, something I'd had since last year's soup swap and have since run out of...to my regret. I reach into my fridge for the stuff almost daily, and yet I never remember to buy it anew. But "...grated over anything, there is no more magical ingredient." I like the sound of that. And with that one fell swoop, perhaps even I can make something special out of something otherwise mundane. 

These are the kind of magiks my friends who know how to cook employ as a matter of course. For Julia, Audrey, Christina and Kelli, having capers and anchovies and good olives on hand is a big duh. They'd probably never have a can of corn sitting around in the summer, when they could get the fresh stuff. Truly, I must learn from them.

True, some of his suggestions lie too deeply in my fantasy-land. A quarter pound of prosciutto? In my refrigerator? In my wildest dreams (along with a mention on Oprah and a vacation villa in Tangiers). And cooking fresh beans every week? I don't have the time management skills for that rotation. Plus it sounds like a waste of perfectly good dried beans.

The advice to throw spices out after a year gives me pause as well. I love my spices, but I buy them in Little India, where I can get 8-ounces of cumin or coriander for $3 or $4, compared to $5 or more for 3-ounces at the supermarket. I use them a lot, but not so much that my 8-ounces of Garam Masala is going to be used in 12 short months. Thriftiness vs. freshness is a conundrum here. And as we know, my forays into fresh herbs are often wasted. 

Still, I'm not so behind in the pantry game. I cleaned out my own pantry just the other day, and I must say that for someone with no skill in the kitchen, I do keep a pretty-well stocked place. It's not everyone who keeps walnuts (for my yogurt) and miso paste at the ready. I've got dried mushrooms and bonito flakes and real maple syrup. I've got fish sauce, and yes, even a tin of anchovies.

Although those actually went over, in the can, when I last went to whip up a salad nicoise. OK. So there's lots of work to do. Maybe I could start by figuring out how I could get a quarter pound of prosciutto into my freezer.

The original Bad Home Cook: Peg Bracken

Do you believe in reincarnation? I sort of do. I like the idea of bad guys returning for another life led as a lobster destined to live his last trapped in a restaurant tank. A lot more satisfying than ever-lasting hell and damnation with some guy in a red suit and a pitchfork.

I can't say I feel the same way about dopplegangers: the idea that we all have a double, another us, running around somewhere on the planet on our dime. It's a fun idea, sure. But then how do you explain Peg Bracken?

Ruth Eleanor "Peg" Bracken was an American humorist (1918-2007) most famous for her "I Hate to Cook Book," which has sold 3 million copies since it was first issued in 1960. In her disdain for all things domestic, she pre-dated Betty Friedan's seminal "The Feminine Mystique" by three years, choosing to wrap her uppity-woman subversiveness in light humor.

A snippet from the recipe for "Skid Row Strogenoff," from the "I Hate to Cook Book": Start cooking those noodles, first dropping a bouillon cube into the noodle water. Brown the garlic, onion and crumbled beef in the oil. Add the flour, salt, paprika and mushrooms, stir, and let it cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.

This is my kinda gal. The original Bad Home Cook.

Baby foodie

I'm reading Ruth Reichl's fantastic book, "Comfort me with Apples." It's the second part of her memoir, after the best-selling and also page-turning "Tender at the Bone." This one details her transformation from right-on Berkeley foodie into a nationally-known restaurant critic. Reichl, in case you don't already know, is these days the editor in chief of Gourmet Magazine. She writes in an engaging and lively style. And I am riveted.

The foie gras was molten velvet in my mouth, and when I took a sip of wine the flavor became even more intense, richer and rounder than it already was. Coleman looked at me, and I felt the thrill all the way down to my fingertips. I understood, for the first time ever, why those turn of the century restaurants had private rooms with velvet couches. I would  have liked a couch.

The scrambled eggs with truffles were even better than the foie gras. Minutes earlier I would not have thought it possible. each forkful was like biting off a piece of the sun. It was like musk and light, all at once, and suddenly I burst out, "This is what I always imagined sex would taste like."

I like to read this sort of passage after I've gotten the kids down for the night and I'm tucking into my bowl of Cheerios, which are brilliantly set off by the cherry notes in my glass of two-buck-Chuck (merlot, 2007). Can you say Living Vicariously? Go on and try.

I had fois gras once. I think. Isn't it like pate?

That's the best part of this kind of book. As much as I love to wallow in another woman's affairs and career-trajectory, I most enjoy confirming my suspicion that I am an infant in the world of food.

I know the surface. The stuff I'm supposed to know. The details you can pick up in any food magazine.  I know what three Michelin stars mean for a restaurant...but I've never been to one.  I know that black truffles are something to exclaim over. But I've never tasted one. My two meals in Paris consisted of an ice cream (which I bought from a street vendor, who then screamed at me in French when I found I didn't have quite enough money and tried to indicate that I would get more from my stepfather, just inside the cafe. I was 11.) And a candy bar I bought at a vending machine during a 4-hour layover in the Gard du Nord. I don't know the first thing about what wines pair with which flavor or exactly what a sauce bearnaise entails. I only know that there's a whole world of sublime eating out there and I can't even pronounce the name of the ingredients.

It keeps me humble whenever I start to crow about how good my lentil soup turned out last night.

Truth be told, I don't know if I'll ever scramble to this level of eating, much less cooking. I am made so happy by such simple tastes. Of course, if I can make a tortilla Espanola then there's really no reason why I couldn't make a passable pissaladiere nicoise, right?

But first I have to figure out what one is. And then I'd have to learn how to dice an onion properly, no?