men cooking

Men Who Cook Get a Little Love

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A friend of mine sent me an article today that warmed my heart. Sara Leeder, a producer at CNN, wrote about exactly what I’m doing over here. "More Men Manning the Family Meal Making?" tells her story about being a working mother whose husband does the cooking.

In it, she makes an important point. “While cooking is the last thing I want to do after putting our little boy to bed, my husband seems to like it. Maybe it lets off stress, or is a release after a long day of work,” she writes. She is right.

The role of men in society is quite different now than it was even a generation ago. Women charged into the workforce in the seventies, and they haven’t looked back (consider how things have changed since the days depicted on “Mad Men”). Except in very rarified precincts of theoretical physics, no two objects can occupy the same place at the same time. If women’s participation has been going up in the workforce (both in status and in numbers) then it follows that men’s has been going down. In fact, very shortly, because of the nature of the latest recession, there will be more women with jobs than men.

For many, work is a place of enormous stress these days. There is a place, though, where men are wanted, where their efforts are rewarded, where they can be in charge, and where they can enjoy themselves. That place is the kitchen. The pay may not come in dollars (though cooking at home can save money, and a dollar saved is more than a dollar earned: when you figure taxes in, it takes about a $1.25 to bring home one buck), but men who cook are highly compensated. Their homes are flush with moments of happiness that take-out or frozen food can’t provide. Who doesn’t feel better after a good meal and a glass of wine?

A growing number of men understand this. The poll at the end of the article demonstrates it. Of the 6,000 or so responders, in more than half the relationships, the men do more cooking than the women.

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How to Get Your Kids to Eat Healthy Food

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Ever since I became a parent, I've tried to get my children to eat tasty food that is good for them. I'm hardly alone in this quest. At cocktail parties, other parents have come up to me and asked, upon hearing about this blog, how I get my kids to eat what I cook. I told one father that my eldest likes mussels and clams. "That'll change." he said. Then he asked me for advice.

I didn't have any to give him, other than the old saw about putting a new food in front of a child a dozen times before giving up. Not that that's ever worked. I didn't tell him about some of the other techniques that I had witnessed. I once saw a friend tip his screaming toddler's mouth back and force him to eat whatever it was that we had at the table at that moment. That didn't work, either. 

I've always thought that what children eat or don't eat has less to do with the flavor of a given food than it does to do with the social dimensions of their lives. Children have very few opportunities to fully exert their power. The dinner table is a rare chance for them to control what goes into their mouths, if not what goes on around them. Ever have to sit through a dinner while parents exhorted their children to eat their vegetables? It can take the air out of the whole evening.

Tonight, the mystery deepened. The children ate quesadillas and broccoli with their babysitter, a fine dinner by any standard. I whipped up a mini-Mexican feast of black beans, rice, pan-fried chicken thighs, spinach, and sliced avocado for Santa Maria and myself. I love this dinner. Most of it is cooked ahead of time (the beans freeze well; the rice I cooked this morning while eating breakfast), and can be on the table in about ten minutes.

We sat down to eat while the children played at the table beside us. Then, Nina asked for chicken. Pinta requested black beans. Suddenly, Nina, too, wanted black beans. I raised an eyebrow. The black beans are certifiably delicious. I would take them anywhere and serve them to anyone and challenge them to resist their rich and savory flavor (I make them with bacon), but Nina has spurned them on so many occasions that I've stopped offering them to her. 

Here was further evidence of the social dynamic at play. Nina and Pinta both knew that after eating their snack, they would have to go to bed. The longer they spent at the table, the longer they could stay up. They would never say as much, but I wonder if this influenced their hunger. They each had two small bowls of black beans and rice. Promises were made to serve them more of it for lunch tomorrow. I'll be curious to see how that goes. In the meantime, I was thrilled to have them eating it. It verified my belief that the beans taste good, and that's always a relief.

More practical advice on how to get kids to eat healthily is available here.

The Importance of Chicken Stock

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As I've mentioned recently, I've been facing issues that keep me from cooking as much as usual. Our living situation has become complicated and we're preoccupied by having to deal with a vexing set of circumstances related to our apartment.

Monday I was out at a holiday party and Santa Maria roasted a chicken that I had dressed the night before. It was just about all I could bring myself to do over the weekend, though there was one other thing I did manage to put away before going to bed on Sunday night.

I made a gallon and a half of chicken stock. It is a beautiful thing to turn water, old bones, a carrot, an onion, and a bit of celery into a flavorful base for countless dishes.

It takes me two days to complete it. This is not two days of active labor, of course. It is ten minutes of chopping, a day of unattended simmering (one of my favorite stories about stock comes from a guy I once met years ago who would put on a pot of stock before going to bed and then let it simmer all night while he and his girlfriend slept; I don't have the courage to do that), followed by ten minutes of straining out the bones and other bits, and then a day of refrigeration followed by ten minutes of skimming off the fat and ten minutes of packing it all up and placing in the freezer. 

I always have bones around to use for stock. Whenever I roast a chicken, I freeze the leftover carcass. They are there for me whenever I need to make stock.

Part of the pleasure of cooking for my family is knowing that I'm executing my domestic labors in a loving way. Occasionally Santa Maria and I will get into a disagreement over who is doing more work around the house. One of her more radical ideas is to institute a time clock, measuring the exact number of minutes spent by each of us taking care of domestic duties. I'm all for using this kind of measure, figuring that my three-hour Bolognese and my two-day chicken-stock will fill up hours and hours of labor on my part and put me well ahead of her. Fortunately, our relationship hasn't devolved to the point where we've broken out the time clock, but if that moment comes, I'll be ready.

Making chicken stock has more traditional culinary benefits, of course. It enriches everything.  The trouble with our living situation is really taxing my well-being. With all the stress in my life at the moment, I'm really glad to have the opportunity to make and freeze the stock. It makes me calm just thinking about it.

Basic Chicken Stock

  • 1 or 2 chicken carcasses
  • 1 onion, roughly chopped
  • 1 carrot, roughly chopped
  • 1 stalk celery, roughly chopped

In a large soup pot, briefly sauté the onion, carrot, and celery.

Toss in the chicken bones.

Cover the bones with water.

Bring to a boil.

Reduce to a slow simmer.

Simmer for as long as you can manage, the longer the better.

Strain out the bones with a colander.

Strain the stock through cheese cloth to remove any bits of bones.

Put the pot of stock in the refrigerator for at least a day.

Remove the pot from the refrigerator. The fat will have congealed on top. Skim it off with a spoon and discard.

Freeze the stock in quart containers.

A Rough Mushroom Pasta Recipe

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I like mushrooms, and I always have. When I was growing up we got to have whatever we wanted to eat for our birthday dinners. When I turned eight, I angered my siblings by asking for spaghetti with mushroom sauce (and pineapple upside-down cake for dessert). My brothers and sisters couldn't figure out why I hadn't asked for steak or lamb or something fancier.

After last week's mushroom debacle, Santa Maria went to the coop and bought a bag of crimini. I later went out and bought a bag of dried porcini. We now are well stocked when it comes to mushrooms.

Tonight, Santa Maria had a meeting to attend and a party invitation to enjoy. I was alone with the girls for dinner. Nina has become infatuated with tri-color bow-tie pasta. She likes the way they look (saying they are the only pasta one can wear in their hair), and she's experiencing her first dose of nostalgia around them. She's four-and-a-half, which, apparently, is old enough to have had a friend who once ate the pasta and who has since moved to Chicago. She misses her friend and remembers the pasta.

I was serving flounder for dinner. I gave the kids a choice of cauliflower or asparagus as a vegetable, and they both chose cauliflower. I had been planning to make fried rice, but was happy to substitute the bow-tie pasta.

So the kid's menu was set, but what was I going to eat with my fish and vegetable? I wasn't about to make fried rice for one. And I wasn't interested in bow-tie pasta with olive oil, which is the way the girls like their "plain" pasta.

I knew there was a serving of leftover spaghetti in the refrigerator, and I thought of those cremini mushrooms. When I was single, I used to make a half-lame dinner of mushrooms, garlic, and pasta. It was tasty enough for myself, but it's not the kind of thing to serve someone else and I hadn't made it since Santa Maria entered my life.

She wasn't joining me for dinner on this evening, though, so I took a page from my bachelor days. I'd put the mushrooms with the pasta. But I've grown since becoming a husband and father, and I wanted something more than just mushrooms, garlic, and pasta.

Yesterday afternoon, Santa Maria searched through our jumble of yellowing newpaper cut outs and fading hand-written recipes to get us out of our (relatively tasty) rut.  She came across a 2005 recipe from the New York Times for pasta with zucchini, ricotta, and basil. I intend to make this dish later in the week and I've already purchased the necessary ingredients. The recipe calls for mixing a bit of the cheese with the pasta water to make a sauce. I figured if it worked for zucchini, it would work for mushrooms. And a bit of basil might give my original dish its needed boost.

What I didn't figure on was the children running around and distracting me. Without Santa Maria to corral them, they were free to run roughshod over the living room. I think that during the time it took me to boil the water for their pasta, they managed to take every toy in the house out of its proper place.

Nina then wanted to watch television, and when I told her that she couldn't do so until she put away the toys she was no longer using, she started to cry. I was late in getting them dinner, and I wasn't surprised that she was over-sensitive.

I was rushing to get their food to the table, and I didn't have time to re-read the original recipe, so I didn't know that the ricotta should be combined separately with the pasta water before tossing it with the vegetables and the pasta. I tried to do it all in the same pan.

The girls were crowding into the kitchen. I wanted to get them to taste the ricotta. I thought it would cut their hunger. The mushrooms were browned, and the garlic was at risk of burning. I needed to cool the pan right away. I told them to back up or else they might get burned. I splashed the pan with pasta water, which cooled it just fine. But when I put the cheese in it, I didn't get a a sauce. The cheese broke up into clumps instead of becoming creamy. I tossed in some basil and enjoyed it just the same. The whole point of the dish was the mushrooms, after all.

I haven't quite figured out the best way to make this dish, but I'm going to post a recipe for the way I did it tonight in case anyone is as fond of mushrooms as I am. I would advise combining the ricotta and the pasta water per The New York Times recipe, rather than the way I did it, though. 

After I refine this recipe, I'll post another version of it.

A rough recipe for Pasta with Mushrooms, Ricotta, and Basil (inspired by Mark Bittman)
  • 1 big bunch crimini mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
  • 1 or 2 cloves garlic, diced
  • fresh basil, to taste
  • ricotta cheese, to taste
  • spaghetti, or pasta of choice

Boil a pot of water and cook the pasta per its instructions and drain, reserving some of the pasta water.

Heat a cast-iron frying pan until hot, and add a bit of olive oil.

Sauté the mushrooms in the pan until brown.

Toss in the garlic.

Sauté a minute or two more.

Douse the pan with a bit of the pasta water.

Stir in the ricotta cheese and basil.

Add the cooked pasta and serve.