How to Eat (81 page)

When other children are coming to eat, I sometimes marinate chicken drumsticks. It would be foolish to be too rigid about the marinade. I might mix 1 teaspoon grainy mustard, 1 tablespoon honey, 2 crushed garlic cloves, and some minced onion in a glass of white wine or apple juice made slightly more acerbic with a squirt of lemon juice. You could use the marinade for the char siu (
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—and indeed, do the char siu itself). And I once made a marinade that, although it made me wince as I did it, consisted of creamed coconut dissolved in pineapple juice, a dollop of peanut butter, 1 teaspoon soy, and some brown sugar. The children loved it. If I want to do just 4 drumsticks in a hurry, that’s to say, for the next day’s lunch—and with stuff I’ve got routinely in the fridge or cupboard, the marinade is as follows: ½ cup apple juice, ½ cup plain yogurt, 1 tablespoon honey, the same of soy sauce, and 1 garlic clove, minced. But, normally, I tend to leave the drumsticks marinating in the fridge for some time—24 hours, say.

Arrange the drumsticks on a rack in a roasting pan and bake at 400°F for 35–40 minutes and then at 325°F for another 20–25 minutes or until cooked through. Easily made, easily eaten.

You can freeze a few drumsticks at a time in their marinade (I use freezer bags rather than containers) and later remove them portion by portion.

MUSHROOM RISOTTO

Really, risotto does not entail terrific drudgery; I don’t know why people think it does. It means you’ve got to stand by the stove stirring for about 20 minutes, but I find it rather calming. You can pull up a chair and get one of your children to take over. That’s how they’ll learn to cook; it’s certainly how I did. (Remember, though, to watch them carefully, in case of accidents, but try not to nag.)

And, also, because you won’t be worrying as much about how the risotto will turn out, whether it will be too gummy or too mushy or whatever, no doubt it’ll be perfect.

I use dried mushrooms from the cupboard to save shopping, but you can add, or substitute, fresh ones. As for the stock, I like to use Italian porcini-flavor boullion cubes supplemented with strained mushroom-soaking water.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more, if using fresh mushrooms (see below)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion or 1 large shallot, minced

½ ounce dried porcini, soaked for 20 minutes in warm water to soften, liquid strained and reserved, and/or 4 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced thinly

1 cup arborio rice

¼ cup white wine or vermouth or Marsala (optional)

about 3 cups stock made with porcini bouillon cubes or chicken or vegetable stock

2–3 tablespoons grated Parmesan, plus more, for serving

2–3 tablespoons chopped parsley

In a heavy-bottomed, wide saucepan heat 1 tablespoon of the butter and the oil and cook the onion in the mixture for a few minutes. Chop the soaked porcini, if using; add and stir for another minute. Stir in the rice and toss and turn well in the pan so that every grain is covered and gleaming with the cooking fats. Throw in the wine if you’re using it—and if you’re not, this is not the place to substitute apple juice—and let it bubble away until some is evaporated, the rest absorbed.

Put the mushroom-soaking liquid, if using porcinis, in a large measuring cup and add the hot stock to make 3 cups; otherwise, use 3 cups of stock. Return to the saucepan and keep it simmering slowly. Stir a ladleful of the hot stock into the rice and keep stirring until the liquid’s absorbed. Carry on in this vein for about 20 minutes. If using fresh mushrooms, add them, sautéed first in little butter, at this stage. You may not need all the stock, you may need more than the specified amount and have to add hot water at the end; bear that in mind.

When the rice is creamy and tender with just a bit of bite within, take it off the heat and beat in the remaining butter and the Parmesan. When I make risotto for grownups, I sprinkle over the parsley myself, but for children I put it on a saucer near them on the table and let them do it. It seems to make them like it. And put more Parmesan and the grater there as well.

SALMON FISHCAKES

You can make variations of this recipe, either substituting canned tuna or crab meat or adding peas or corn or chopped scallions, but it stands as a useful blueprint. I find it easier to make the fishcakes in advance, store them in the freezer, and then cook from frozen. (See below for the method.) Bought matzo meal is better than bought bread crumbs.

2/3 cup canned drained salmon

¾ cup cold mashed potatoes (about 1 floury potato)

1 tablespoon grated Parmesan

good pinch paprika

chopped zest of ¼ lemon (optional)

1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons dried bread crumbs or matzo meal

vegetable oil, for frying

In a bowl combine the salmon, potatoes, Parmesan, paprika, lemon zest, if using, and half the beaten egg mixture. Using your hands, form the mixture into balls about the size of walnuts and then flatten them slightly to make fat little discs. Dredge them in the flour, then dip them in the remaining egg and then in the bread crumbs or matzo meal. Let rest for 15 minutes in the fridge on a plate or tray lined with plastic film. Put about ¼ inch of the oil into a frying pan, add the cakes, and fry for a minute or so each side until golden. Remove to paper towels to drain. Serve. Enough for 4 children.

If you’re making the fishcakes in advance and then freezing them, this is how you work it. Line a couple of small baking sheets with plastic film and arrange the dredged fishcakes on them. Cover with another sheet of film and put in the freezer for at least 1 hour. You want them hard. If you want to keep them in the freezer for a long time, just bag them up once they’re set and completely hard.

When you want to cook them, preheat the oven to 250°F and line 2 baking sheets with a double thickness of paper towels. Pour some vegetable oil into a frying pan and heat.

Take the fishcakes out of the freezer, release them from their plastic wrapping, and dredge them first in more flour, dip them in the egg mixture, and cover them in the matzo meal or bread crumbs. Fry them for 2 minutes on each side or until golden, and then put on paper-towel-lined sheets and into the oven. After 20–30 minutes, the fishcakes will be warmed through and ready to eat, but you can leave them there for 2 hours or so without worrying.

You can fry them from frozen like this without worrying; because they’re so little they’ll reheat in the middle before the surfaces burn. And I sometimes dredge them in flour before freezing and fry like that—no egg, no matzo meal. The benefit of frying and then oven-cooking is that you can do it in advance (which often is the only way one can cook for children).

GREENCAKES

We also make something we call greencakes, which are like fishcakes only the part of the fish is played by a variety of vegetables, chiefly broccoli and peas (though including nongreen vegetables such as carrots). Cook and mash the vegetables roughly before making them into little balls and proceeding as above.

SOUP

BEAN AND PASTA SOUP

Children tend to like homemade soup, which has an advantage, beyond the obvious one, over canned, as it can be thicker and is therefore easier for them to spoon from bowl to mouth. When I’m feeling laid-back about mess and spillage, I make pea soup (see
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), which can be cooked impromptu. A good bean and pasta soup has to be planned ahead, but it doesn’t take great military organization to put beans in to soak before you go to bed and to boil them for 45 minutes the next morning before you go to work.

In the evening, fry up the usual onion-carrot-celery mixture, with some chopped bacon or pancetta if wished; add the drained beans, some stock, a can of tomatoes, and a potato, peeled and diced finely. Cook for about 45 minutes. Add some ditalini or other soup pasta for the last 12 minutes. Sprinkle with Parmesan and eat.

As all children seem to like both pasta and beans, cook this when other children are coming over. You can do it all in advance, bar the pasta, so it can be on the table in 20 minutes.

DESSERTS

You may have noticed that there are no recipes for desserts here. It’s because we don’t go in for them. There’s always fruit, though, and some ice cream. And, of course, I seem to spend my life stocking up with multipacks of mini-yogurts and fruit-flavored ice pops.

AN EXCEPTION: CHILDREN’S CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

I do sometimes make dessert when friends and their children come round for lunch and what I’m providing for the adults is too bitter, too rich, too alcoholic, or otherwise unappealing for the children, or I just want to make something that will bludgeon them sweetly into sugar-absorbed silence. And actually, I like this much more than those dark, coffee-sharp, elegant adult versions; so, I find, does just about everyone else. You may want to make up double quantities.

4 ounces Valhrona Lacte or other really good milk chocolate with 40 percent cocoa solids

1 tablespoon golden syrup

2 eggs, separated

In the top of a double boiler over hot water, put the chocolate, broken into pieces, with 1½ tablespoons water and the golden syrup. When you have a smooth, melted brown puddle in the pan, remove from the heat. Whisk the egg whites until you have a stiff snow; it’ll make it easier if you wipe round the bowl with the cut surface of a halved lemon before you start. Leave them for the moment and beat the egg yolks, one by one, into the still-warm chocolate mixture. Then take a dollop of egg whites and briskly, brutally even, stir them into the egg-yolky chocolate. This just makes it easier to fold in the remaining egg whites, which you should now do firmly but gently with a metal spoon.

Decant into a bowl and leave in the fridge for a good 6 hours before eating. I generally make this the previous day, or at least the night before. This makes enough for 4 small children, but I can’t promise they won’t want to eat more.

Generally, I always bear in mind the advice of Penelope Leach—Britain’s child-care expert—never to use sweets as reward or solace. Chocolate is food and must be treated as such, normalized, given as part of lunch or supper. You don’t want to make the main course at lunch seem like a vile duty that the child has got to wade through, nor do you want to signal that sweet food is the only comforting, treat-like food, the balm for life’s ills, unless you actually want to make your child unbalanced around food later. All eating should be a natural pleasure, not just dessert-eating. Still, this is easier said than done, and my method of child-rearing often seems to be one long pattern of bribe-threat-bribe-threat.

I believe in asking children what they want to eat and in not making them sit at the table for hours, if that’s what it takes, until they clear their plates. Children have likes and dislikes just as grownups do, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t be respected. And yet, and yet. It’s useful to learn to eat everything, especially when away from home; it doesn’t help children to turn them into picky little brats. You’ve got to find a middle path. If you teach your children that if they make a fuss they will be indulged, they will just make more of a fuss more of the time. You have to put up with an amount of screaming and to remember that if a child goes without food for one meal, even two, he or she won’t starve.

So, even though you should not tell children that if they eat up those horrible vegetables they will be allowed some lovely dessert, neither should you give them any dessert if they won’t eat any of their main course. (All this, of course, is so much easier said than done.) I wouldn’t want to make a child clear his or her plate for the sake of it, but I’m always enchanted when it’s done voluntarily. Remember that a power struggle about food is one that your child will always win and that turning the lunch table into a battleground is asking for grief. When I was young, I was so often made, to the point of torture, to eat up every cold, congealing thing on my plate, that I now can’t help but finish up everything in sight, on my plate or other people’s. This might be a polite party trick, but it doesn’t make for a serene life or stable weight.

COOKING WITH CHILDREN

The more that children are encouraged to help with the cooking, the less likely they are to become picky eaters. I don’t say there’s a magic formula to ensure they’re never faddy or fussy or hampered by bizarre prejudice, but you will improve your chances of having children who enjoy food if they are part of the enjoyable process of making it. Most children like eating what they cook and are proud of doing it.

My own early memories are of wobbling on a wooden chair pushed up against the stove, stirring my mother’s white sauce. I often cook one-handed, with my daughter on a chair stirring or inspecting and my still-just-baby son on my left hip, licking a wooden spoon or doing a bit of stirring with it himself. My daughter, age three, would come into the kitchen and say, “Lovely! Garlic!” when she smelled the cooking, or detected by the smell that a chicken had been put in the oven or some pea pods were being simmered into a stock. That’s not genius, but a feeling for and interest in food—much more important.

Doing ordinary, everyday, real cooking with children is more to the point than making any amount of chocolate Rice Krispie Treats. If you want to cook with your children, let them help cook lunch. There’s something so companionable about actually cooking with your child rather than just letting him or her play with food as a toy. But of course there are times when it’s nice to cook something specially, not for lunch or because you’re cooking it anyway. Try to let your children do as much as possible. The results don’t have to be perfect; the point of the exercise is the process.