Mom, Stop Cooking to Impress

“We had the best dinner ever at our friend’s house,” said my twins over dinner a couple of months ago.

“Wonderful, what was it?” I asked.

“Chicken tenders and broccoli,” they said.

“Oh, really?” I said, spooning the lamb siniyeh (a Palestinian dish of rice, eggplant, pine nuts, and lamb) onto their plates. “What made it so good?”

“The broccoli had cheese sauce!”

“I see,” I said. “What other dishes do you really like?”

My three boys didn’t have to think much.

“Sushi.”

“What else?”

“Quesadillas.” As you might have guessed from my name, I am neither Japanese nor Mexican. Needless to say, these dishes are not on our regular dinner rotation.

“Anything else?”

“Grandma’s meatballs.” Of course. I began to lose my calm. “Anything that I make?”

They couldn’t remember. I couldn’t really remember. Seriously, I cook for these ungrateful kids every day. What is it that I make?

I am a professional chef. I have been catering for almost five years and bringing some of that creativity home to my family. Every night I try something new—swordfish in saffron over fettuccine, Swiss chard leaves stuffed with lamb and rice in lemon sauce, trout in cumin butter over lentil salad, and any kind of ceviche. But lately, I’ve been thinking I should be doing the opposite. I should invest my time searching and creating my family menu, a list of dishes that work best for us, dishes that I will want to make again and again.

The idea of a “fixed menu” seemed natural to our mothers and grandmothers. They cooked what their mothers taught them, and what they learned from neighbors. Today, we foodies are invested in novelty. We cook from dozens of recipe books and magazines drawing from other people’s traditions. But children don’t want novelty. They want good food they associate with warm, happy family meals. (Think of the simplicity of the last line of Where the Wild Things Are: [2] “[A]nd it was still hot.”) The food doesn’t have to be steak and mashed potatoes, unless that’s what your family is into. It just has to be distinctive and—here’s the hard part—repetitive. Kids are not food critics. They like their food like they like their favorite books: great, and repeated over and over.

A family menu: Think of a small trattoria or a bistro menu. It will be a limited list of dishes your family loves. It will be easy to go back to this list every time you need an idea for what to cook tonight. The meals on it should be satisfying and fast—not quite microwave dinner fast, but maybe even faster than the Rachel Ray 30 minutes. From my experience, many recipes, even ones that seem complicated at first look, will take no more than 10-15 minutes to prepare, once you’ve made them a few times, which is a fair comparison to taking out a frozen tray from the freezer, heating it for three minutes, taking it out, piercing it three times, heating again for two minutes, and letting rest for one more. But the most important benefit of all is creating a family food tradition, and the comforting memories that go along with it.

You want a list of about 10 to 12 main courses, a similar number of fresh and cooked vegetable dishes, about five carb side dishes, and a few soups, or any other type of dish you feel is right for your family. Arrange the dishes in categories just like you see in restaurants. In addition, choose some cakes, cookies, custards, and other desserts. Unhealthy, sometimes extravagant, but you want those, too, in your repertoire. Almost any adult you’ll ask will tell you immediately about his favorite cake from when he was a child. When my friend Margaret met her husband, he told her about this creamy, wonderful chocolate cake his mother had been making since he was a child. Everyone in his family still salivates at the thought of this cake. His mother promised she would give her the recipe soon. (They’ve been married for 15 years, and she still doesn’t have it.)

Here are the rough rules for creating the menu.

1. Think about some dishes that you make over and over again. Figure out which ones should make it to the final list. When choosing, follow these basic guidelines: Does everyone in the family like it? Is it healthy? Is it not too expensive? Can it be made quickly? Bonus points if it’s a secret recipe you got from your grandmother. Try to consult with other family members while choosing, though it might not always work with younger kids (mac-and-cheese addicts especially).

2. Go over your favorite cookbooks. List the dishes you think might work. In the next few weeks, try them and grade them based on the same criteria as above. Most of the books I use are in Hebrew, but here are some of the English books I like: Jewish Cooking in America [3] by Joan Nathan, River Café [4] cookbooks by Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, and Moro [5] cookbooks by Samantha Clark and Samuel Clark. All of these books relate to my heritage, the food I grew up with and the Mediterranean food I love.

3. Call relatives and ask neighbors for a recipe of a dish you have always liked or remember from your childhood. Ask them which dish has been passed on through the generations. You need to be sensitive here. Everyone wants to keep the secret magic that keeps their kids coming back to these meals. My grandmother, Rachel, told me only when she was gravely ill in her hospital bed, not in her kitchen, how to make her famous kibbeh soup. Ask for one recipe per grandma, and don’t aim for the collection. Also, if your beloved aunt gives you her favorite recipe, her pride, the one everyone is talking about for years, and she’s doing it with a big smile of generosity, be skeptical. Chances are there will be a big deliberate error in the recipe.

4. Include some stews, casseroles, lasagnas, or stuffed vegetables in your menu. Stews are unsexy in cooking circles, but people always miss them. Maybe it’s because you can always find a well-made grilled fish in your local restaurant, but no one can replicate that perfect beef and prune stew you had at home. Also, it’s easier to put your interpretation into those complicated dishes; you can add spices, herbs, dried fruit, personalize the recipes to make them your own.

5. Try searching in directions that are meaningful to you. If you’re Irish-American, with a Jewish husband, and you lived in France for a couple of years, I see some beef in cabbage, kuggel, and Coq au Vin in your future. My menu is based on Mediterranean recipes, with a little Indian influence thrown in. I grew up eating this food, and I love it, so that is what I want my kids to grow up with as well.

6. Now add a few special categories to your menu: Seasonal dishes, holidays and special occasions. What fancy stew is worth waiting a whole year for? What wonderful birthday cake recipe will you refuse to give up to your niece? What can you do with berries every summer? What can you do with fresh zucchini flowers or young fava beans? Add those too to your menu too. Have fun.

DoubleX is collecting family menus and individual recipes. Please send us yours, [6] and we’ll print the best ones and create a reader’s collection. Here is Vered Guttman’s family menu and a few recipes [7] to get you started.

Photograph of a meatball sandwich on homepage by Ciaran Griffin.