Man With a Pan (28 page)

The yolks
are
a golden orange. The shells are green. I love them. But they mean more cleaning. I scrub at their crap tattoos with hot, soapy water and still never quite get them all off. I’m so grossed out after this that I have to scrub my guano-slicked hands, too.

Then I wash and reheat the pot, add vinegar and salt, crack two eggs into a thinrimmed coffee cup, stir the water six times clockwise to create a vortex that’ll hold the egg whites together till they set, and immerse. I grab another pan to wilt greens (soaked and drained in a salad spinner) in a splash of olive oil, all the while boiling tea water and putting a coffee cup in the oven to warm for Daphne’s coffee. When the eggs come out and are set on greens-topped toast, the pot goes into the sink and gets filled with hot water and scrubbed hard. If you don’t get the egg-white residue off immediately, it becomes fused to the pot with bonds more unsunderable than those of my most heady imaginings.

Updated count of items in need of washing: forty-five.

The assumption here is that this is the one morning a week (maybe month) that Daphne gets to sleep late (8:15) and I’ve done this all solo. By the time breakfast winds down, the whole kitchen is completely trashed, and because I almost always stay up till midnight or one and get only six hours of sleep, I’m trashed, too.

The next meal will be somewhat simple, like fresh quesadillas, which provide entertainment for the kids, who can turn the dining table into a maquiladora by rolling dough balls and pressing them into disks. But there’s no controlling the great kitchen destroyer: dinner. I once made three different versions of spaghetti carbonara—gluten free, cow’s milk and egg white free (goatbonara), and a standard eggy, milky, gluteny version—requiring three different pots just for pasta, plus a skillet for bacon and a small pot for greens. I ran out of burners and counter, balanced bacon on ledges, collapsed when it all went on the table, pounded a Carta Blanca beer in a stupor, and (obviously) failed to clean up.

Recently, Mira turned three and just ate some peas without requesting honey. Both kids’ palates continue to broaden and now include soy sauce. After dinner the other night, Owen put his plate in the sink and, instead of running off, got a wet cloth and wiped up the floor under his seat. I almost cried.

I’m no authority on efficiency. But in the course of these self-inflicted trials, I’ve learned a few small things.

When you peel an apple or a carrot, don’t do it in the sink, where it’ll just amplify congestion and likely clog the drain. Peel and trim trashside.

If you’re done with a cutting board or a pan and have a couple of minutes while something’s cooking, then wash it and put it away. But don’t get overzealous. Sometimes you will immediately need it again. Think about what you need to do next. Wash only once.

If you have a pilot light or low setting that’ll keep your oven warm, put things there that won’t suffer from advance preparation. It’s impossible to crash a family dinner together and make everything hit the table hot and simultaneously in a home kitchen.

If you can boil potatoes and steam spinach in the same pot at the same time, you must do this. Place the spinach in a colander that fits into the top of the pot.

If your rice maker spits all over the counter, put it in the sink. And start the rice the second you walk in the door. And buy a better rice cooker than the one Daphne bought in college. And don’t develop a gluten allergy.

Finally, if the evening’s starch isn’t rice, the first thing you need to do when you get home at night is to boil a big pot of water—then you’re ready for pasta, or for emergencies that require sterile surgical instruments.

Ten years ago, on the beautiful fall day that provided Lower Manhattan with its flocks of police helicopters, as ash-covered executives came streaming up my block, the first thing I did was boil a pot of pasta. I made ravioli at ten thirty in the morning, grated cheese, sat down with the editor of this book, stranded on his way to Midtown, and began to grasp what was happening. Fatherhood, at times, has also been a bewildering state of emergency. Cooking was, and remains, my response.

And then it is time to clean up.

Recipe File

Fish Tacos

These can be as piquant and elaborate as you want, or you can go straight-forward and monochromatic for kids who are unnerved by bright food. With corn tortillas you have the added benefit of freedom from the tyranny of gluten.

1½ pounds flounder or other mild white fish
1 tablespoon olive oil
Corn tortillas
1 head purple cabbage, chopped (this is the key ingredient)
½ cup black beans (canned are fine)
1 tablespoon or more fresh cilantro, chopped
½ cup or more salsa (store bought, or a mix of onions, tomatoes, and peppers)
Chipotle mayo (that is, mayo mixed with the liquid in a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce—insanely good)

Season the fish with salt and pepper and sauté in a frying pan with the olive oil until cooked through, about 3 minutes per side.

Remove the fish from the heat, set it aside, and let it cool slightly.

Break it with your fingers into small pieces.

If you buy premade tortillas, heat them in a cast-iron frying pan (no oil required). If you want to make your own, just mix masa and water, roll out some golf-ball-size balls, and squash them between sheets of plastic wrap in a tortilla press—this is fun for kids, who can do it virtually unsupervised, and it tastes much better. Add salt to the masa before you roll it. Heat these tortillas a good bit longer than store bought.

Remove the tortillas from the heat and assemble the tacos using the fish pieces and the remaining ingredients.

Fagioli all’Uccelletto

This freezes and lasts for months.

1 pound dry white beans, either small cannellini or big
giganti,
depending on your preferences
1 28-ounce can of peeled plum tomatoes
1 28-ounce can of crushed plum tomatoes
Olive oil
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 bunch of fresh sage leaves (at least 3 tablespoons), destemmed

Rinse and soak the beans for at least 10 hours.

Drain and rinse them.

Put the beans into a stockpot, and add the tomatoes, breaking the whole ones up with a spoon.

Bring the pot to a boil and then turn the flame down really low, cover the pot, and leave it simmering.

In a frying pan, sauté the garlic in the olive oil for 1 minute.

Add half of the sage to the pan and sauté for another minute.

Put the garlic and sage into the simmering stockpot with the beans and the tomatoes.

Simmer for about 2 hours, or until the beans are as soft as desired, which, depending on the size of the beans, could be twice as long. There is really no formula here—just keep checking. When they’re done, they’re done.

When the beans are cooked, remove the cover, increase the heat, and reduce.

Fry the remaining sage in a frying pan (careful—don’t burn it!) and toss this in.

Serve the whole thing in bowls with the rest of the sage, freshly fried, on top.

Note: If possible, make sure the tomatoes are San Marzano tomatoes,
from
San Marzano, Italy. Many tomatoes are branded “San Marzano” but only the real ones have a small blue DOP seal on the label from the Italian government—look for that.

Pistachio Pesto

My children love this. And it is weird that they do.

4 ounces quinoa pasta
2 handfuls of fresh pistachios, shelled, about ¾ cup
5 or 6 good glugs of
novello
olive oil (about 3 tablespoons)
Many gratings of
bottarga di muggine

Put a pot of water on to boil and salt heavily.

Start cooking the pasta according to the package directions.

Throw the pistachios into a Cuisinart with the oil and grind until the nuts are reduced to chunks about the size of eraser residue, smallish but not minuscule.

When the pasta is ready, drain it and place in a bowl.

Mix the oil and nut paste in with the pasta.

Serve with a grating of the
bottarga
on top instead of cheese.

Note:
Novello
olive oil is the freshest, most vibrant oil imaginable; it is just pressed and rushed to market.
Bottarga di muggine
(gray mullet roe) is a Sardinian specialty, salt pressed and air dried. Both are typically available at Italian or gourmet stores and on the Web. Regular pasta can be substituted for the quinoa pasta, but the quinoa is lighter, and better with a rich dish like this one.

On the Shelf

The Hobbit,
J. R. R. Tolkien. I love
The Hobbit
because it opens with a bunch of dwarves basically raiding a hobbit’s pantry so thoroughly that it provides a whole culinary lexicon. For a seven-year-old, this was heady stuff, and it made me hungry.

The Return of the Naked Chef,
Jamie Oliver. I’m not much of a recipe person, but Oliver makes everything simple and good. I’ve never made anything bad from this book!

MARIO BATALI

If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Cardoons

Mario Batali and his business partner Joe Bastianich own fifteen restaurants across the country, including their flagship New York City restaurant, Babbo. He is the author of eight cookbooks and the host of television shows. He started the Mario Batali Foundation in May 2008 to feed, protect, educate, and empower children. Along with his wife and their two sons, he splits his time between New York City and northern Michigan.

If you ask my son Leo what his favorite thing to eat is, his flat-out response is, “Duck testicles.” He’s eleven, and in fact, I think he’s only eaten them maybe four times. But he was fascinated by the idea that we were eating duck testicles. Benno, my thirteen-year-old, says his favorite thing is pasta, but Leo says duck testicles. He may say it for the shock value and the provocation, but he knows how he likes them: in a dish called
cibreo,
which is made with all of what they call “the gifts of a chicken.” It has the cockscomb, the wattle, unborn eggs, gizzards, kidneys, and, of course, the testicles.

I have dinner with my family every night, no matter what I’m doing at work, unless I’m not in town. Maybe I won’t eat because I’m going out somewhere later on, but I sit down with my wife and sons, and I’ll have a little bit of salad or something. We always sit down and talk every night. And that is a crucial component. It’s not necessarily the food that’s the most important thing: it’s the family time, the undirected family time with no computer, no TV, no text messages, no phone. Nothing is allowed during dinner.

When I was growing up—I must have been about eleven—my mom went back to work and my ten-year-old brother, eight-year-old sister, and I started helping out around the kitchen. We each cooked dinner once a week for five people. We could do anything we wanted, but we had to do it. It could have been as easy as buying frozen Banquet fried chicken, or a TV dinner, and just heating it up. We got involved, making soup and interesting kinds of stews. It was our little job. We had dinner every night at six o’clock. There was no concept that we might not have dinner together. No matter how busy you were, you had to sit down. That was it.

When our kids were born, my wife and I didn’t really cook much. We took them to the restaurants. A common myth among young parents is that their babies are very breakable in the first two years. In fact, it’s the opposite. That’s when you have freedom. It’s almost the end of it. So take them with you. In three years it’s going to be a different thing. We took them to the restaurants all the time, because we wanted everyone to see them. We wanted the kids to feel comfortable in the restaurant environment.

When they reached five or six, we started to do a little more cooking. There were big issues. My kids would eat anything green, but nothing with flecks of green, like parsley or chives or scallions, or anything that I find delicious. I found that the easiest way to get kids to try something new is to have the child assist in the production. Because once they’re invested and have actually made it—even something that they don’t, or might not normally, eat—if you get them to make it with you, by the time you’re done, they feel like they have to eat it. Not because you’re telling them to do so, but because they’re interested. They’ve been playing all along. They’re not grossed out by it suddenly.