Earlier this week, Santa Maria took a business trip to
Philadelphia, and we went with her. A highlight of the trip was a visit to the
Franklin Fountain, a sweet-toothed locavore’s paradise known for its handmade
ice cream, well worth a visit no matter what time of the year.
Since getting back, we’ve been very busy, and I haven’t had
much time to cook. One of the things that keeps us going is the social
hamster-wheel—a friend’s dinner party here, an other’s child’s birthday party
there. A nice thing about this schedule is that it saves me the trouble of
cooking—most of my friends are very skilled in the kitchen.
Then there is the gravitational pull of culture and fine
art. This afternoon we went to the New Museum to see the Urs Fischer
installation. My favorite piece (and Nina’s): the floating croissant and
butterfly sculpture. Pinta’s favorite: the levitating cake, athletic bag, and
subway-seat sculpture. Santa Maria's: the tongue that shoots out of a wall. Then, we went to a party thrown by the Mario Batali Foundation,
which raises money to help children in need. Dan Zanes played a set and
delicious cupcakes were enjoyed by all, but the next thing I knew, it was Sunday night and I was
facing dinner for four.
Cooking for the family never really leaves my mind, so it
wasn’t as if I didn’t have something ready. Before leaving for our trip south,
I had dashed to the store and purchased a pack of chicken thighs. They are the
center piece of one of my standard weeknight meals. I sauté them in a cast iron
pan with salt and pepper until they are crisp and brown, and serve them with
rice, spicy steamed spinach, and my black beans, which I defrost and top with a bit of
grated cheddar.
I had this meal ready in about a half-hour. What I wasn’t
ready for was the reaction: Lord knows when, but Nina has decided that she
hates my black beans. Hates them. In what I assume is a foreshadowing of her
teenage years, she said, “they’re boring. So boring.”
My black beans are many things, but they are not boring. Still, Nina could not be persuaded
otherwise. She just wanted the chicken and the rice. I told her she had to have
one more thing, either the black beans, or the spinach. I figured she’d opt for
the black beans, but she out witted me (another foreshadow of the teenage years?),
and said she’d have the spinach—provided she could douse it in soy sauce, which
she discovered the other day when I served fried rice for the first time.
I was upset that she didn’t want my black beans, which to be
clear she’s had countless times before and enjoyed, so it was momentarily hard
for me to see the genius in her approach. Chicken, rice, spinach, and soy
sauce? What’s wrong with that? It’s nearly a perfectly balanced meal. Maybe she was giving me her first recipe.
It didn't quite work out that way She wanted each of the
items in a separate dish, not mixed together like some kind of junior Asian
stir fry. And in the end, she combined the rice with grated cheddar cheese, a
dish fit for a four-year old, but not one I can recommend to others (despite
her helpful critique of the dish, which “had to much rice in it”).
Still, this was the start of her bona fide culinary
exploration. I praised her for taking the things I’d prepared and combining
them in new ways. One of the main goals I have as a parent is to get my kids to
think for themselves. It looks like I’m well on my way.
Fishing line, croissant, and butterfly
Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist; Galerie Eva
Presenhuber, Zürich; Gavin Brown's
enterprise, New York; and Sadie Coles
HQ, London.