Mom, Stop Cooking to Impress

Photograph of a family having dinner by David De Lossy/Photodisc/Getty Creative Images.

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“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: “[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.