Zuke-a-Ganoush

It's funny that "dippy" is a disparaging adjective. What on earth is the connection between French onion and scatterbrainedness? Just because I would stick a chip into anything soft enough to scoop up, whether or not it was actually food, doesn't make me a ditz, does it? I love dips and dipping, and in almost every photograph of myself I've ever seen, I am applying some kind of condiment to some kind of snack food, even if it's simply squeezing a stripe of yellow mustard along the length of a pretzel rod or blooping a little puddle of Frank's Red Hot onto a tortilla chip. But oh, true dipping--that's the best--whether it's artichoke leaves into melted butter or buttered baguette toasts into artichoke dip. Last New Year's eve, I actually spent the entire duration of a party in a kitchen chair that I'd pulled up to the buffet, where the artichoke dip was located. Which, as I recall, actually resulted in the ingesting of too much artichoke dip, with too much champagne to wash it down. But that's what parties are like for me. Sometimes I don't even pretend to socialize--I just hunch over the chips and crackers, shoveling dip into my mouth and spraying crumbs everywhere when I cry out, every minute or two, "This is so freaking good!" even if I'm the one who brought it.     

And I am usually the one who brought it.

But let me just make a case for dip, parenting-wise, since that's why we're all here, right? Dipping can be a great way to introduce your kids to a food they are suspicious of. Partly it's because everything tastes good on a chip (If I ever start a food company, it could be called Because Everything Tastes Good on a Chip, and it could just be jars of mouse droppings and old tempera paint and dirt). And partly it's because dips are usually seductively salty and tangy and flavorful. And partly I think it's the control factor: kids will try something on a chip because they get to determine the rate and amount of consumption; they can scoop up a nano-particle or a shovelful; they have more agency than they do when you, say, heap their plates with seedy, steaming slabs of summer squash, which makes them feel all cornered and panicky.

Plus, I am a fan of eating dip for dinner. Or packing it up for school lunch. Because that's how it is around here. And I don't mean that bacon-horseradish dip and Ruffles makes a perfectly fine meal, although, yum. But hummus and bean dips and veggie dips--why not? And this here gorgeous pair of dips, which are the perfect outlet for expressing yourself, if what you want to express is the fact that you have too many zucchini or beets on your hands. The zuke dip is, like its eggplanty cousin baba ganoush, addictively garlicky, minty, and lemony, with a smoky vegetal undercurrent from the zucchini that is not actually dominant. (Wow, am I hard-selling this one, or what? But it is seriously good.)

Zuke-a-Ganoush

Active time: 10 minutes; total time: 40 minutes

I know the baseball bats are the zucchini you're most desperate to use up, but try not to for this, since the flesh of the behemoths tends to be excessively seedy and watery. In a pinch (I do this), you could quarter a huge one lengthwise and slice out the super-seedy interior before proceeding with the recipe. That works just fine.

1 1/2 pounds small or medium zucchini, scrubbed, trimmed, quartered lengthwise (or halved if they're small) and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 tablespoon plus 1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon plus 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

1 clove garlic, smashed and peeled

Juice of one lime, plus half of its finely grated zest

A large handful of cilantro, washed and dried

2 teaspoons sugar

1/3 cup Greek yogurt

Heat the oven to 450. Toss the zuke cubes with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 teaspoon of salt, then spread them in one layer on a large, rimmed baking sheet and roast for around 30 minutes, until they are browned in spots and very soft, but not burnt (duh, but I thought I'd say it). Let them cool slightly so they don't cook the cilantro when you blend them.

In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, whir together the zukes and the garlic, then add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, the lime juice and zest, the cilantro, and the sugar, and blend, stopping the machine to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed, until it forms a coarse puree. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil, then whir in the yogurt and taste the mixture, adding more salt or lime juice as needed for maximum zing. Serve with crackers or chips.

This beet dip is stunningly beautiful and so rich and tangy and wonderful that I will eat and eat it until it is gone. Maybe this encourages the children somehow, my gorging: it becomes so obvious that I'm going to finish this or that dip that they rush in to get their fair share in a kind of chip-wielding survival-of-the-fittest scenario. 

Pork Roast with Apples and Cider-Cream Gravy

Birdy and I are reading the Little House series, and, save the mind-blowing racism--which prompts many appalled conversations about the early-American murderous imagination--it is just as delicious as ever. So captivating, in fact, that Ben creeps in to squat by the bed, toothbrush in hand, or leans in the doorway, half-clad in pajamas, to listen. Birdy, who loves coziness, loves the coziness: Laura and Mary in their feather beds, Ma knitting someone a pair of wool underpants, Pa fiddling by the fire while the thwarted bears and panthers peer hungrily through their frosted windows. She loves that Laura's most treasured possession is a corncob named Susan (What's the word for the feeling this invokes--Birdy's eyes wet with a mix of pity and laughter?). She loves that their lives are so rich with work and meaning and so devoid of Silly Bandz and Zhu Zhu Pets, despite her own ambivalent craving of Silly Bandz and Zhu Zhu Pets. And, of course, she loves to hear about the food--especially in Farmer Boy, where not a minute seems to go by that they aren't sitting down to feast on a hundred pies. There are many lumps of butter and lard melting over everything, many deep, brown tastes, many pots of fragrantly simmered whatever with bacon. Lucky for Almanzo, he can't speak unless he's spoken to, and nobody ever seems to speak to him, so his mouth stays nice and free for eating.

When I was Birdy's age, my mother and I fried apples and onions, so obsessed was I with Farmer Boy, and as I was making the pork, I suddenly remembered that. Because, honestly, apples and onions are as perfect an accompaniment to the meat as you can imagine: savory and tartly sweet, simple and rich, complicated and utterly, comfortably familiar. Really, it all has such a pioneer Sunday-supper feel to it: the roast so brown and good with its good, brown sauce. I did feel a little like Ma.

But if you take one thing from this recipe, I hope it's the method of curing the meat with salt and sugar. Yes, it involves planning ahead, but the work and mystery proceed unattended in your refrigerator, the meat achieving the fantastic savor and juiciness that you'd get from brining, but without all the messy dilutedness. Even without the apples and onions, without the rich and silky pan sauce (which, yes, you should make), the pork itself is almost surreally delicious. I carved a couple slices to photograph before we sat down to eat. And then I ate them while the chard was cooking. And then I carved another slice and ate it, all while my ignorantly patient company chatted in the living room. And everybody was so blown away when they finally tasted it that Anni, our vegetarian Anni, had to eat just a little but of the gravy on her sweet potatoes (Luckily, we had an engineer at the table who assured her from some place of professional ontological mysticism that "drippings don't count as meat.") We ate and ate, cozy and full, while the fall evening turned a deep blue beyond the windows, the theater of the world darkening for the main feature. Which will be winter.

Pork Roast with Apples and Cider-Cream Gravy

Serves 8, or 4 with lots of leftovers for awesome sandwiches

Active time: 10 minutes; Curing time: overnight; Baking time: 1 hour

The overnight cure changes everything: the pork, which might otherwise risk dryness or blandness, becomes perfectly succulent and seasoned, with the faintest taste of sage beautifully complimenting the apple-and-onion pan sauce. If you don't want to add the cream, then don't: the sauce is still delicious without it.

1 tablespoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon dried sage

Black pepper

1 2- or 3-pound boneless pork loin roast (mine was tied up; yours may or may not be)

Olive oil spray

1 red onion, halved and sliced

2 apples, cored and sliced

1 cup apple cider

2/3 cup heavy cream

The day before you plan to make the pork, combine the salt, sugar, and sage in a small bowl, and rub it well all over the pork. Wrap the pork in plastic wrap, or otherwise seal it up airtight, and refrigerate it overnight. Remove it from the fridge about an hour before you plan to cook it, if you think to, so it starts off at room temperature. (If you forget, it doesn't really matter).

Heat the oven to 400 and spray either an oven-proof skillet or a stove-proof roasting pan with olive oil. Place the pork in the pan, surround it with the apples and onions, give everything a final misting of olive oil, and pop it in the oven.

After half an hour, flip the roast over and stir up the apples and onions, then roast for another half an hour. Now remove the pork from the pan to a cutting board, tent it with foil so it stays warm, and make the sauce. Over medium heat, add the cider to the pan full of dripping, apples, and onions, and boil, scraping the pan, until the cider is reduced by half and the pan is full of something that seems kind of like a thinnish, darkish applesauce. Add the cream and simmer very gently, whisking to combine everything, then taste for salt (you will likely need to add some) and pour it into a bowl with a spoon for serving. Carve the pork into think slices and serve.

Pork Chops with Maple-Cider Cabbage

This is so easy and good.

Pork Chops with Maple-Cider Cabbage

Serves 4

Active time 25 minutes; total time 50 minutes

Cabbage is famously expensive, packed with nutrients, and a classic accompaniment for pork. Look for naturally raised chops on sale, then buy more than you need and freeze them for easy meals such as this one, where they're paired with braised cabbage that has gone meltingly tender and sweet in the oven.

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided use

2 tablespoons butter, divided use

1 onion, halved and thinly sliced

1 red cabbage, quartered, cored, and thinly sliced

1 tart apple, peeled, quartered, cored, and thinly sliced

Kosher salt

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup water

4 pork chops

1/2 cup flour

Heat the oven to 300. Begin by heating 1 tablespoon each of olive oil and butter in a Dutch oven or a large, lidded ovenproof frying pan, over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté, stirring occasionally, until wilted, 5 or so minutes. Add the cabbage and apple, along with 1 teaspoon of salt, and sauté, stirring, for 1 or 2 minutes, until the cabbage and apple are wilted and shiny. Add the syrup, vinegar, and water, along with another 1/2 teaspoon salt, bring the liquid to a boil, cover the pot, and place in the oven to braise for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, on a plate, stir together the flour with 1 teaspoon of salt. Pat the pork chops dry and dredge them in flour, one at a time, shaking off the excess. Heat the remaining oil and butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat, and when the fat is hot enough to sizzle a pinch of flour, fry the pork chops until they are deep brown on the underside, around 4 minutes, then flip them and fry them another 3 or 4 minutes until they are well browned (if your skillet is not large enough, you will need to do this in batches). You're not trying to cook the pork through at this point, only to brown it.

Nestle the pork chops in the braised cabbage. If the pot looks dry, add another quarter cup of water, then return it to the oven to braise, covered, for 20 more minutes. Serve with noodles, rice, or potatoes.

Soft and Sticky Gingerbread

This is just the kind of gingerbread you crave when dinnertime has suddenly become pitch-black and cold, as it now has, and you feel like it’s midnight all the time and like you’re up in Scotland drinking whiskey from the bottle and waiting for spring. It’s big, soft, and comforting, like the down comforter of the cake world, and it fills your house with the spicy, delicious smell of holiday baking, even on a regular old school night. Plus, it will take you no more than 10 minutes to get it into the oven, promise. Or, as we say to the kids when we are quite sure about something but don’t want to get into it later, if there is, say, a surprise hurricane or earthquake, I almost promise.

The recipe is hand-written in my recipe binder, and when I was trying to figure out how properly to credit it, I naturally consulted my mother. “Is this your gingerbread?” I asked, and she said, “Oh, is it this?” and pulled out a recipe card titled “Mummy’s Gingerbread” that calls for, among other things, treacle, and the mystifying measurements ½ egg and also 1 gill milk. “I don’t think it’s that,” I said, “seeing as how my gill has been, er, missing since the middle of the nineteenth century.” Hmm. “Is it this?” And strangely, there it was—an ancient clipping from the Times, called “Edna’s Blueberry Gingerbread.” I have never in my life added blueberries (I didn’t even write that part when I copied the recipe), but I suppose you could. But then it would go from a big, comforting cake to a more challenging cake studded with hot, puckery berries, which is not what I’m going for at all. Still, if you want to try adding “1 cup blueberries, lightly floured,” be my guest.

I was going to make a note here about how this is a great way to get more iron into your diet, what with the legendary iron-containing properties of molasses, but when I looked at my molasses bottle, I noticed that, to achieve your daily requirement, you’d need to swallow 25 tablespoons of it. If you’re anemic, try eating the whole pan of gingerbread all by yourself, and let me know if you feel a burst of energy afterwards (I’m being ironic. Ha ha.). But I will tell you that Ben and I were talking over dinner about how your body actually needs small quantities of various metals, which surprised and delighted him. “Wow,” he said. “If I died and you melted me down, would there be enough copper in me to make even, like, a tiny, tiny dollhouse spoon?” Kill me.

Soft and Sticky Gingerbread

I like to grate the nutmeg fresh—not because I’m fancy or because I think it makes such a big difference flavorwise, but because it’s such a pleasant thing to do, and it’s a little job I can give the kids. If you’ve never tried this, do: it involves buying whole nutmegs and a tiny grater, and it’s a small and worthwhile investment.

½ cup sugar

½ cup room-temperature butter

2 eggs

1 cup molasses

2 cups flour (I used half spelt)

½ teaspoon salt (I use one scant teaspoon of Kosher salt)

¼ teaspoon cloves

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon ginger

1 cup boiling water

2 teaspoons baking soda

Heat the oven to 350, and butter and flour a lasagna-sized (10 by 14 inch) baking pan. 

Now, in the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until it’s light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, followed by the molasses. Take a moment to stop the mixer and scrape the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula to make sure there’s no butter hiding out down there. Meanwhile, sift together the flour, spices, and salt (and by “sift together” I mean, of course, whisk together, because I’m lazy like that), then mix them into the batter until they just disappear. 

Now measure the boiling water (I do this right in the dirty molasses cup), add the baking soda to it, call your kids over to see the amazingly foaming mixture, explain the science of it (each crystal of baking soda actually contains a tiny, burping angel), and beat it gently into the batter, which will now seem incredibly runny, which is fine. 

Pour it into your prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes, until the cake is starting to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick comes out clean or with crumbs on it, rather than ooky batter still. Serve with whipped cream, if you have company, or plain. Yum.

Fantastic Fearless Five-Minute Bread (no-knead)

This is not just the best bread you'll have ever made; it's the best bread you'll have ever eaten. Your friends will not believe you made it, and they certainly won't believe that you didn't need to knead it or fuss with it or do anything other than stir it together with a wooden spoon while you were watching angel-sized snowflakes drift past your window. In fact, it will so totally not occur to dinner guests that you yourself baked so stunning a loaf that you may need to say a little modest something, such as, "Is the bread okay? I worried that it was a little too…" Delicious? No. "… crusty." That's a nice, humble way to alert them, don't you think? It is crusty--and also tangy and fragrant and beautiful. It is a revelation, not totally unlike sex, and you will walk around with a secret, knowing smile, eager to return to the yeasty embrace of your dough.

The recipe makes enough dough for three loaves--about a week's worth--which means that you can quite readily, if you want, mix up a batch of dough once a week and bake all the bread your family eats. Which is what I do. Which sounds so crazy, even to me, that I have been afraid to write about it. But there it is. It costs very little, and the bread is as wholesome as you make it, and it's wildly delicious, and it will give you such a home-makery, off-the-grid satisfaction. Bring on the Apocalypse! You'll just hole up with your good bread.

I encourage you to make bread baking your New Year's resolution. It's so much easier and tastier than those vast, pesky abstractions like patience or compassion or gratitude.

I first made a version of this recipe in 2006, when the New York Times ran Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread. And, like many people--including my mother, brother, and friend Peggy, to whom I forwarded the recipe--I couldn't quite believe it. Because I had kneaded my share of bread in my soytastic, hairy-armpit life, believe me. I had warmed oats and molasses and millet and baked up difficult, earnest loaves of difficult, earnest bread--rewarding in its dense and oaty way, true, but nothing you would mistake for something other than what it was. Although wow, now my brain is disgorging some unappetizing memories of a lemon tahini loaf that tasted like I'd proofed the yeast in bile. Also of some perfectly acceptable challah, which is a fun bread to make with children on account of the braiding and the sweetness. But this bread, here, is total bakery bread: crusty and yeasty and chewy--like something you'd wrap in a tea towel and bicycle out to your lavender-scented picnic if you lived in Provence, which I wish I did, not that I've ever been there. It's so good you'd make it even if it weren't easy. But that's just it: it's totally easy. Especially this recipe, mine, which is an amalgam Jim Lahey's perfect baking method with the quick-rise dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day with my own addition of vinegar for an instant sourdoughness and whole grains for goodness. You can refrigerate the dough for up to two weeks, and the older it gets, the sourer: beery and almost cheesy, in a delicious way that will drive your kitten mad with bready lust.

Yes, it might take a little getting the hang of. If you've made bread before, then the dough is damper than what you're used to. It will, in fact, seem all wrong. Just go with it. Even if things go a bit awry: the loaf might stick to your hands or the board, and you'll just want to sprinkle everything with flour and use a light touch. Keep calm and carry on--and prepare to be addicted. Happy New Year!

Fantastic Fearless Five-Minute Bread

Makes 3 loaves

Active time: 5 minutes; total time: 4 hours

This is a combination of Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe, which ran in the New York Times a few years ago, and the simple crusty bread recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day--a book that you should hunt down if making bread turns out to be your thing (the pumpernickel in that book, for example, is worth the cover price). Experiment with different flours, or find something you like and stick with it; the cost, in terms of both time and money, should discourage all fear.

3 cups warm water

1 1/2 tablespoons yeast (2 packages)

1 1/2 - 2 tablespoons kosher salt, depending on your saltiness preference (or half as much table salt)

1 tablespoon white vinegar

6 1/2 cups flour (In the bread pictured, I used 3 cups white, 3 cups whole wheat, and 1/4 cup each ground flax and wheat germ.  My usual recipe is 2 cups white, 2 cups wheat, 1 cup white wheat, 1 cup rye, and 1/4 cup each ground flax and wheat germ; this makes a quite dense and grainy and wholesome loaf. Make it with all white flour, and your kids will fall to their knees in gratitude--or mine will, if you invite them over.)

Cornmeal

Pour the water into a large bowl or plastic container--one that you won't miss, since it may be in the fridge for a few days--then sprinkle in the yeast, salt, and vinegar. Use a wooden spoon to stir in the flours, and mix until there are no dry patches. 

The dough's texture may seem all wrong: too loose, too shaggy, too sticky. This is fine. Cover it with plastic wrap or a shower cap and let it rest and rise at a warm room temperature for at least 2 hours and up to 5 hours.

At this point, bake it or refrigerate it for up to two weeks to bake later. To bake it: sprinkle some flour across the surface of the dough and use a knife to cut off a piece that's about a third of it; refrigerate the remaining dough. Turn the dough in your hands to stretch its surface, pulling it under to create a taut, rounded top and a gathered-up bottom (imagine that you're giving the dough a face lift and tucking all the baggy, extra skin underneath). You will want to do this kind of quickly, keeping your fingers moving lightly over the surface of the dough, rather than plunging them inside, where they will stick. If your hands get doughy, stop what you're doing, wash and dry them, reflour the dough, and try again.

Sprinkle a pizza peel or wooden cutting board heavily with flour then lightly with cornmeal, put the loaf on it, sprinkle the top with flour, cover it lightly with a dish towel, and let it rest for 40 minutes (if you're using refrigerated dough, increase this rest time to 1 1/2 hours).

Half an hour before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 450, and put a heavy, covered pot inside to heat. I use a Corning ceramic baking dish with a glass lid, but I used to use my enameled cast iron Dutch oven (over time, I felt like I was ruining that pot, though). Cast iron, enamel, Pyrex, or ceramic all work well, so long as it holds at least 2 quarts and has a lid. Don't burn yourself, okay?

When the dough has rested, use a serrated or very sharp knife to slash an X across its top; do this with authority, so that the knife doesn't stick and so that the slashes are a good quarter-inch deep. Now pull the pot out of the oven, remove the lid, put the loaf in X-side up, replace the lid, and pop it into the oven. Did that go okay? Not so great? The dough stuck a little to the board and your hands and dumped into the pot at a weird angle? Don't fret. It will figure itself out in the oven.

 

Bake the dough for 25 minutes, covered, then remove the cover and bake another 15 minutes. At this point, it should be beautifully browned. Cool on a rack before slicing, or you will end up with a mess of damp, shaggy crumbs. I know you're going to eat it hot anyways, but I just wanted to have said that.

Beef Satay with Peanut Sauce

What is it about food on a stick? Is it that you feel like you're eating a Tootsie Pop, or maybe a Fudgsicle? I don't know. I just know that if you put it on a stick, my family will eat it. Lint-on-a-Stick! Turd-on-a-Toothpick! Put out a yummy dipping sauce, and it will be gone. (I am suddenly reminded of The Jerk and Pizza in a Cup, the one that put the Cup o' Pizza guy out of business . . . )

Which is why, at FamilyFun, we are always trying to think of ways to get meals onto sticks. I mean, you don't want anybody to poke anybody's eye out (as a reader once reminded us, after I recommended Fruit Kabobs as an ideal classroom party snack--oops!), but kids are just more open-minded if potentially distressing food comes to them on a stick. Maybe because it's such a finite commitment: instead of vaguely defined, merging blobs of dinner on a plate, you've got a stick with a thing on it, and you can eat the thing and be done, or you can have another one. There. That's my analysis for the day.

My kids will delightedly eat a meatball off of a toothpick, a sandwich deconstructed into skewered squares of ham, cheese, and bread, or a Greek salad kabob of feta and cuke cubes, cherry tomatoes, and olives (okay, I just made that last one up--but doesn't it sound great?)--but really, satay is their very favorite. Chicken or beef, homemade or out, it's always good. So when my beautiful friends Moira and Debra finished putting together this new FamilyFun Dinnertime! special issue, they asked me to pick a recipe to run here, and I knew right away what it would be. Pretzel Chicken was close (with honey mustard dipping sauce--yum), and so was this gorgeous Thai Chicken, Mango, and Pineapple Salad (with a citrusy dressing--yum). But the kids and I all picked satay, even Birdy, who likes what she calls "sweet stick meat" despite her general aversion to animal flesh.

Plus, it's just about a perfect recipe. It's sweet and limey and salty and just spicy enough to tingle your lips. And it was quick to assemble. I have memories of this one party years and years ago, when we made chicken satay for a hundred people and, given my feelings about raw chicken, you can imagine how I felt about getting a blister from threading it onto skewers for three hours. Shudder. No. This took just a little while to put together, and I actually pulled a stool (and a glass of beer) up to the counter so I could sit while I was skewering. Totally pleasant. And then they cooked in 4 minutes. I loved the photo so much that I copied it and served the satay with rice (of course, I swapped in brown rice because I'm like that) and a cucumber salad that I made from sliced cukes, seasoned rice vinegar, and chopped mint. We ate outside and could not have been happier.

Dinnertime! It's not just that the women who created it are like angels crossed with Woody Allen, in all of the best possible ways. Or that they're my actual real-life friends. But you should think about getting it because it's got 98 simple and delicious recipes (tested and retested--believe me, as a person who works there, when I tell you that there is no shortage of testing) and inspiring photographs to give you a good sense of them. Plus, who better than FamilyFun to understand that your kid wants to eat it off of a stick, shape it like a gastropod, or turn it into a refrigerator magnet? Exactly.

Beef Satay

Serves 4

Active time: 1/2 hour; total time: 1 hour

I followed this recipe exactly, and would not change one single thing. The meat (I used flank steak) was indeed easy to slice after its 45 minutes in the freezer. I think this would be really good with chicken, and even with tofu--though with tofu, I'd marinate it longer, maybe even overnight.

1 pound skirt or flank steak, trimmed

3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce

2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper

16 (9-inch) bamboo skewers, soaked in water for 30 minutes

If using skirt steak, cut the meat crosswise into 4 pieces, each about 4 inches long. Slice each piece across the grain into 4 strips 1 inch wide. Lightly pound the strips to flatten them. If using flank steak, halve the meat lengthwise, then thinly slice it across the grain into 30 to 40 1/4-inch strips. (Tip: Partially freezing the meat for 45 minutes makes it easier to slice).

Whisk the lime juice, soy sauce, fish sauce, dark brown sugar, garlic, curry powder, and crushed red pepper in a medium bowl. Add the steak and toss gently. Cover and set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Prepare your grill or heat a grill pan to medium-high. Lightly oil the grates or pan.

Thread 1 piece of skirt steak, or 2 to 3 pieces of flank steak, onto the skewers, stretching each piece taut to maximize contact with the grill.

Grill the skewers until the steak is seared and just cooked through, about 2 minutes per side. Serve with the Peanut Sauce. SAFETY NOTE: If you plan to eat right off the skewer, be sure to use bamboo (not metal) to avoid burns. [Catherine here: also, if you plan to run around with the steak, don't use skewers AT ALL.]

Peanut Sauce

Makes 1 2/3 cups

I followed this recipe exactly as well, and I might think about cutting it in half next time, as it made tons. Although it is excellent on rice, so the leftovers are welcome. Note: you're going to pour the water in and think "Crap," because it's going to seem so watery. And then, like magic, it's going to thicken up. Fun!

1 tablespoon canola oil

1/4 cup minced shallots

2 garlic cloves, minced

3/4 teaspoon Thai red curry paste (we used Thai Kitchen brand)

1/3 cup creamy peanut butter

2 tablespoons hoisin sauce

2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

2/3 cup water

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Heat the oil in a small saucepan. Add the shallots, garlic, and Thai red curry paste and sauté over medium-low heat until the shallots and garlic are just tender and fragrant, about 3 minutes.

Stir in the peanut butter, hoisin sauce, dark brown sugar, and water. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 1 minute. Stir in the lime juice and let the sauce cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature. 

Dinner Beans

Ugly picture; good meal.

This is real workhorse of a recipe: a cheap, virtually instant supper that is yummy, nutritious, and, if short of thrilling, at least well tolerated by everyone. Plus (I promise I won’t yak on and on again about my sordid vegetarian past), I have always felt profoundly nourished by an honest plate of beans and rice, even back in the day when canned beans was a luxury in which we almost never indulged, and I had to spend my whole life sorting, soaking, and boiling vast quantities of dried legumes until I felt like I was the unwitting star of an anthropological documentary about the passing of gas.

But tonight: just pop open a can. We happened to have leftover brown rice last night (I always make double quantities of rice, and I can proselytize, unbidden, about the value of investing a rice cooker), but maybe you have that newfangled frozen precooked (wait—does precooked actually mean raw?) brown rice you can buy from Trader Joe’s, or maybe you just want to make the beans and scoop them up with warmed tortillas or wrap them up with cheese into plump little burritos. Whatever you do, keep it simple.

But, here’s what I can’t recommend highly enough: that you add a smoked seasoning to these beans. I am suggesting smoked paprika here, which is also called “Spanish Pimenton." . It’s not spicy, but it adds an addictive smokiness to any dish you stir it into, and it makes everything taste like it’s been barbequed or like it has bacon in it—which are two qualities that are deeply appreciated by my children, who would happily bite into a ceramic bookend provided you smoked it first. If your children can tolerate spiciness, then another wonderful choice is chipotle peppers, which are smoked jalapenos. You can buy them in powdered spice form, but I much prefer juicy, tangy “chipotles in adobo” which you will find in 7-ounce tins in the Mexican foods aisle for two or three dollars (brands to look for include Embasa, San Marcos, Herdes, and La Costena). You want to puree the entire can in the blender, and then store it in your fridge in an impeccably clean glass jar where it will keep indefinitely. A little puree goes a long way, so add it gradually, tasting as you go. And then praise your children for eating such spicy, spicy food! Good spice eating, spice eater! Wow, that’s sure spicy and you’re able to eat it, I can’t believe that! My children love to be praised for this particular achievement, as if tolerating spice is a sign of their moral superiority and psychological fortitude.

Of course, if you need to make these beans this minute and have no smoked anything in the house, you can add cumin and/or regular paprika and they will still be very good.

I need to make a note here about the fact that I often add greens to these beans, usually kale that we keep parboiled and chopped in the freezer. It’s true that the dark color of black beans somewhat conceal this particular addition, and I do not go out of my way to advertise it. But I don’t want to seem like a hypocrite on account of the fact that I once, in a certain article, poked a tiny bit of good-natured fun at the in-vogue practice of sneaking veggies into kids: I am not advocating that you stir pureed favas into your crème brulee—only that if an obvious vegetable opportunity comes knocking, I’d be a fool to scowl through the keyhole at it. On that note: you’ll see cucumber salad in the photos on the right here. This is the bonus recipe: a shrink-wrapped cuke, cut in half, the seeds scooped out (it’s the seeds that cuke haters hate, on account of their simulation of rotten melon—try removing them), sliced thin and dressed simply with seasoned rice vinegar (the kind that already has salt and sugar in it). That’s it. I add fresh dill or mint if I have it, but here it’s just the cukes and vinegar, and it is strangely more delicious than the sum of its meager parts.

Dinner Beans

preparation time: 10 minutes; total time: 25 minutes

If you’re in a rush, skip the greens, drain the beans, and reduce the simmering time to 5 minutes. I’m sure those ten minutes are really going to help.

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, and finely chopped

1 tablespoon tomato paste

½ teaspoon smoked paprika (or chipotle puree)

1 25-ounce can black beans (or 2 14-ounce cans) undrained

1 cup prepared greens: kale, spinach, collards, already chopped and partially cooked (microwaving them is a good option, as is skipping them altogether)

1 teaspoon cider vinegar (or lime juice)

Salt

Warm the oil and garlic together in a medium pan over medium-low heat, until the garlic is sizzling and fragrant but still nice and pale. Add the tomato paste (remember how you already have some in the freezer?) and paprika or chipotle puree, and fry for a few seconds, then dump in the beans with their liquid and add the greens. Cook the beans uncovered, stirring frequently, for 10-15 minutes, until everything looks united, and the liquid has mostly cooked off. Now season them with the vinegar and taste for salt: this will depend on your beans. I tend to add about a teaspoon of kosher salt (which is the equivalent of ½ teaspoon regular), but you may need less: the beans should be saucy and highly seasoned, since you’ll be mixing them with bland rice or bland tortillas.

Serve with grated cheese and sour cream (and extra chipotle puree or hot sauce for thems that like it).

Corn Chowder

As far as children are concerned, corn is less a vegetable than a kind of honorary pasta: its only real flavor is a kind of bland, Frito-y sweetness, and it also benefits from summery associations with picnic tables, long, late twilights, and dripping butter. Which is why, on a winter Sunday evening like this, when it’s cold and dark and Birdy has one of those cases of pink-eye that wakes her with a crusted-over blindness and a dread of the drops, well—it’s time for a little corn.

Okay, I didn’t actually think about it that hard. It was more that I opened the freezer, and there was corn. Despite our moderate commitment to eating seasonally and locally, I make an exception for frozen corn and also frozen peas, both of which are just so reliably good, I find. Plus, I almost never shop for meals: I am the kind of person who can usually be found, come 5:00, scrounging through the lentils and rice and pasta and canned beans and tomatoes and root vegetables and various bags of frozen things. The children are unerringly polite. “Wow,” they say. “Orzo with butternut squash and pesto. I would never have thought of that.” Okay, that’s Ben. Birdy just gobbles the pasta while discretely pushing squash cubes off to the side into a miniature compost pile.

But corn chowder? That’s a sure winner: creamy, smoky, sweet, and as innocent as the children themselves. “Wow, this is the best soup you’ve ever made!” Ben said—which is, I think, the same thing he said last time I made it. (Lurking in that utterance is a kind of unexpressed relief about the absence of kale and turnips, but the less said about that the better.) This is the quintessential one-pot meal, and I was able to finish it even while I comforted Birdy, who lay on the kitchen couch, squeezing tears out of her poor rabbity prizefighter eyes. And I served it with a loaf of fresh bread and with the memory of the many wholesome, delicious salads we’ve eaten in the past.

Corn Chowder

Do you feel like I’m shilling for the pork council? I know. I feel the same way. But this soup can be deliciously meatless—just sauté the onions in a knob of butter and proceed with the recipe. Back in our vegetarian days, I actually used to add smokiness with Bacos which are actually, disturbingly, meatless—but given that they seem to be made from food coloring that’s been compressed with MSG and artificial flavoring, that was a real letter-of-the-law kind of solution, and I don’t recommend it. You could try grating a little smoked cheddar on it instead.

5 or 6 slices of bacon, sliced into small pieces

1 onion chopped fine

2 stalks of celery, diced, with some of the finely-chopped leaves

4 cups peeled, diced potatoes (I use 4 fist-sized Yukon Golds, but 2 big russets would give you a similar yield)

1 quart (1 box) chicken broth

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 crumble of dried thyme (aka a “pinch”)

4 cups corn kernels (or a 1-pound bag frozen, which is 3 1/3 cups)

1 cup half and half

Salt and pepper

In a soup pot (I actually used a medium-sized pot, and the soup just barely fit), begin cooking the bacon over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until it starts to give up a lot of its fat. Now add the onion and celery and cook, stirring frequently, until the onion is translucent and browning and the bacon looks quite cooked, about 10 minutes or so (alternately, you can forget all about the celery my mistake, and then cook it later in a separate pan with a bit of butter before stirring it into the soup, because who doesn’t have time to kill while making dinner?).

Add the potatoes and the canned broth to the pot, along with the crumble of thyme and the salt, then raise the heat to high and bring it to a boil before turning the heat way down and covering the pot to simmer gently until the potatoes are done. (Did you get all that?) This will take about 15 minutes.

Now add the corn (you don’t need to thaw it first) and half and half, turn the heat up to boil it and then down again to simmer it (like you just did), and cook the soup for about 5 minutes longer, until the corn is tender. At this point I like to puree about half the soup, and I do this with a stick blender—you could do it in a real blender (be very careful though, okay?), or you could even just use a wooden spoon to mash some of the potatoes against the side of the pot. Now taste for salt: it will likely need more, which you should add with a grind or two of pepper before serving.

Classic Pot Roast

Wow, that's ugly! But so, so good.

I understand that the words “pot roast” may inspire about as much excitement for you as the words “stool softener.” I get it, I do. Believe me. I was a vegetarian for sixteen years—in fact, Michael and I met when we were both living in the kind of hardcore vegetarian co-op where you had to have a house meeting every night about rennetless cheese. I get it. But then something happened to me, and no—it wasn’t bacon, although yes, bacon also happened to me. But what happened was that I got pregnant with Ben, at which point I leaned out my car window and bit into a passing cow. After sixteen years, the first meat I ate was no microscopic bit of lard in a can of pork and beans—it was a roast beef sandwich, at Berkeley’s Café Intermezzo, which may be, ironically, the most famous salad restaurant in the world. Sure I immediately regurgitated it onto the sidewalk of Telegraph Avenue—but that would have happened with the chickpeas and romaine lettuce.

Anyways, where was I? Oh. Pot roast. I won’t go into the politics (go read Michael Pollan if you like, or Barbara Kingsolver, or a PETA pamphlet), but it’s true that we eat meat about once a week, most of it grassfed, local, and organic. Plus, I keep my eyes open at Whole Foods, because even though they like to charge me ten dollars for a thimbleful of spelt, they occasionally have fantastic meat sales: like $2.50 a pound (last week), for chuck roast.

This recipe, which is an adaptation of Ruth Reichl’s Mother’s Brisket, originally published in Gourmet magazine, works great with other cuts of meat besides brisket, such as a nice chuck roast (top chuck or bottom? leather or lace? I don’t know). I fed nine people with a three-pound roast, the key being to slice it nice and thin so that everyone feels like they’re getting tons. I realize it didn’t photograph so well, what with it looking first like a person’s severed torso and later like a platter of Dinty Moore. But, oh, the smell that filled the house! Like comfort itself, vaporized. And my children love long-cooked meat, the kind that falls apart on your fork—as opposed to steak, which they also love, but which Birdy masticates doggedly before spitting out a strange lump of white muscle fibers like it’s a wad of chewing gum.

We ate the pot roast with friends and their kids—along with Yorkshire pudding (another recipe for another week?), and salad, and we slurped the last of the gravy with spoons and were perfectly happy.

Classic Pot Roast

Yes, this cooks for hours and hours—but you’re only spending about 30 minutes holding its hand, so please don’t be put off. Make it on a Sunday and eat it all week. You won’t be sorry.

a 3-6 pound beef roast (brisket or chuck)

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 or 3 large yellow onions, sliced

2 or 3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Freshly ground pepper

1 cup red wine (or white wine, if that’s all you have)

2 cups chicken broth

2 tablespoons tomato paste

Heat the oven to 375°F.

In a Dutch oven or another heavy, lidded, ovenproof pot (maybe you could also do this in a roasting pan and then cover it with foil?), heat a tablespoon of the oil for 10 minutes in the oven. Don’t trim the meat; just pat it dry with paper towels and season it with salt and pepper, then roast it in the pan, uncovered, for half an hour.

Meanwhile, heat the rest of the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and cook the onions, stirring, until they’re turning soft and gold, then reduce the heat and cook, stirring every now and then, for another 20 minutes, at which point they should be nice and deeply golden. Add the garlic, paprika, salt, and pepper, and stir for a minute or so, then add the broth, wine, and tomato paste, and bring to a boil.

Now take the half-hour-roasted meat out of the oven and pour the panful of onions and brothy wine over it, then return it to the oven and cook it, with its lid just barely ajar, for 4-5 hours, depending on how big and tough it was to begin with. Check it now and then to make sure the liquid hasn’t all cooked off—you’ll need to add a cup of water every half hour, or hour, or so (if you positively need to abandon it in the oven, then start with 3 cups of water stirred in with the other liquid, but it’s better the other way). Also, flip it half way through baking if you think to.

After a long time, the meat will be a nice dark brown and will feel very yielding and compliant when you stab it with a fork. The gravy will be dark and delicious.

Now you have choices. Simply let it rest a while, then slice it (though it will fall apart) and serve it with its juicy onions. Or do the following: let it rest in the pot until it’s just barely warm, then wrap it in foil and put it in the fridge while you prepare the gravy. Scrape the onions and pan juices into a measuring cup, skim any visible fat, add water to make 3 cups, then puree it all in a blender or food processor. Taste it: if it’s not perfectly salty, tangy, sweet, and delicious, add salt or very wee amounts of sugar or balsamic vinegar until it is just right; try the salt first. Now trim any obvious fat from the chilled meat, then slice it against the grain (it should be cool enough to fall apart less now), and arrange the slices in a large, shallow baking dish. Pour the gravy over it, and heat it in a 350 oven for half an hour. (This is a compromise: the original recipe has you chill the meat and gravy, separately, overnight. Only the Jews would develop a recipe that actually requires you to reheat something the next day.)

Serve the pot roast with noodles, boiled or mashed potatoes, or crusty bread. Heaven.

Roasted Cauliflower Salad

Saturday afternoon, in the middle of a happy, energetic Halloween day, Birdy said, suddenly, "Mama, will you take my temperature?" Let me just say--and this is not hindsight talking--I did not have a good feeling about it. You know how it is. Only when you sit your child down do you see the peculiarly fluorescent rosiness of her cheeks, the damp stringiness of her hair, the dry and peeling lips; a hand to the forehead offers immediate clamminess and then a deeper warmth, the feverish immunological teapot under the padded cozy of skin and bones. The thermometer offered digital confirmation. And so a tearful Birdy was stuck pretend trick-or-treating from our own giant cookie tin of candy while her brother and their friends--Frank Sinatra, Athena, Dread Pirate, and Cheetah Superhero--toured the neighborhood merrily.

Poor little thing. We read Sick Day and When Vera Was Sick. We drank many fluids. We watched Snow White and traded feminist commentary. ("This is so stereoptypical," she said, when the prince showed up to rescue his dead/sleeping girlfriend. "It is," I said. "Totally." But I was distracted by the utter perversity of the dwarves keeping her in a glass coffin. Maybe they could have just taxidermied her and arranged mechanically for her to continue to do all their housework.)

Where was I? Cauliflower salad? No. Not just yet. Old Blue Eyes came home late and flopped onto the bed with me, dumped his candy out between us. We ate Whoppers and miniature Butterfingers and talked about Y2K (he loves to hear the stories about his dad and me watching the local news on New Year's Eve, 2-month-old him asleep on the couch between us as the catastrophic tales unfolded of this or that person needing to reset their clock radio). We ate gummy body parts and talked about evolution ("Is it adaptive for people to like sugar so much?" Ben mused aloud, and I imagined a caveman ogling my sugar-fed bottom with thoughts of furthering the species. "I think so," I said.). We ate 3 Musketeers Bars and stopped talking because a terrible, manic lethargy was settling over us. It reminded me of college--especially when Ben said, "Oh, man, stop me--please." So we brushed our teeth and put the candy away.

The next morning, Birdy was still feverish, but well enough to sort and trade, since Ben had trick-or-treated as her proxy. So there was more eating of candy, more talking about candy, more groaning entreaties around candy. And this is where the cauliflower salad comes in. I needed to eat vegetables; I needed the kids to eat vegetables. I felt like the profound vegetableness of caulflower and broccoli would scrub some of the sugary yuck from our insides. And I was right. In fact, Ben hovered around the bowl as I was folding the golden roasted veggies into the vividly flavorful dressing, and he plucked pieces out and crooned, "Oooh, that's so good," in that way people do, about vegetables, when they've eaten way too much candy.

It is a perfect salad: salty and tangy, sweet from the caramelized vegetables, bright with lemon and parsley, pungent with capers and anchovies. You can substitute fish sauce for the anchovies if you like. Or leave them out altogether, if you must; the salad will be fully unfunky that way, which is how some prefer it. A fish-hating friend came over and I tried to talk her into trying it--she likes Caesar salad, after all, with the faint fishiness of its dressing. Maybe next time. But let me know how it goes, either way. Okay, but now I have to go cram more Tylenol into my swinish child. Poor thing.

Roasted Cauliflower Salad

Serves 4-6

Roasting brings out the incredible sweetness of the cauliflower. Feel free to swap in some broccoli, as I did here, though if you use all broccoli, you'll miss the velvety, luxurious tenderness of the cauliflower. Something crunchy is a nice addition: buttered bread crumbs or toasted pine nuts. But it's also lovely without.

2 1/2 pounds cauliflower, or a mix of cauliflower and broccoli, to yield 2 pounds of trimmed stems and florets

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon plus 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

Juice and grated zest of half a lemon

2 teaspoons capers

1 anchovy or 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce

1 clove garlic, peeled and pressed through a garlic press

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 450. Trim the vegetables, slicing off any tough ends, peeling the stems a bit, and slicing the stems and heads into bite-sized pieces and florets. On a large, rimmed baking sheet, drizzle the veggies with the olive oil, sprinkle with one teaspoon of salt, and toss to coat. Roast for 15 minutes, then shake the pan and/or flip over the vegetables with a spatula, and roast another 5 or so minutes, until the vegetables are browning in spots and tender.

Meanwhile, stir together the lemon juice and zest, the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt, the capers, anchovy, and garlic. Use a fork to mash up the anchovy as you combine the mixture, then dip a piece of cauliflower in to taste: it should be salty and lemony. Fold the veggies into the dressing, add the parsley and a grinding of black pepper, then taste and adjust the seasonings again. Serve warm or at room temperature or, less ideally, cold.

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

The first time my mother baked a zucchini bread--this was way back in the Pleistocene era of striped bell bottoms, smocked tunics, and Andy Gibb's "Love Is Thicker Than Water"--we all thought it was wildly exotic. It was even crazier than banana bread, which was already pretty crazy. "I can hardly even taste the zucchini!" we said, and shook our heads in amazement. "It just tastes like cake! Like good cake!"

I feel that way about these cupcakes. They taste just like chocolate cupcakes! Like good chocolate cupcakes! They're super-chocolatey and almost obscenely moist--like the cake mix with the pudding in it, in a good way. It's a great way to use up a glut of squash--and the green flecked against the rich, reddish brown of the cake frankly delights me. "We're not trying to get away with anything here," they seem to be saying, these flecks, and I agree.

Sometimes I wonder if we don't give kids enough credit for their own desire to be healthy eaters, you know what I mean? Ben always leafs through the family magazines that arrive in the mail, and he hates nothing more than the ads promising, "Your kids will like it because they won't know it's actually good for them--they'll just think it's a deep-fried cotton candy sno-cone!" Believe me, my children would be first in line for a deep-fried cotton candy sno-cone. They love candy and junk food: they love to eat it and talk about it and save it forever, and they will likely end up on that reality show "Hoarders" with their stashes of ancient, carefully curated trick-or-treat relics. But they're also proud and happy about eating healthy foods when healthy foods are what they're eating: Birdy's a little bit in love with herself, when she stands in front of the cherry tomato vines, cramming handfuls of Sungolds into her happy mouth; Ben is excited to be a person who might order a salad in a café. Can't these little ones, glucose-addled as they may be, appreciate good nutrition without demeaning their great and powerful attachment to sugar and grease? I think so.

But then again, I am not inclined to puree a tablespoon of butternut squash into their every glass of chocolate milk or hide white beans in their hamburgers like some kind of demented, nutritious Easter egg hunt. Vegetables tend to be somewhat undisguised around here--not always, but usually. Of course, if they would not deign to put a frank apricot or spinach leaf into their toothless scurvy-ridden mouths, I might feel different about this--and you are probably thinking that right now, if you're spooning zucchini sno-cones into your own children's toothless, scurvy-ridden mouths. We all do what we have to. I'm just saying, maybe your kids will actually be glad to know there's zucchini in their festive, chocolatey back-to-school cupcakes. Or maybe they won't.

Because, truth be told, when I was asking the kids about the cupcakes, Ben ranted and raved about their supreme deliciousness, but Birdy hesitated before announcing that she actually thought they needed a bit of frosting. "Especially because of the zucchini," she added. "What do you mean, 'because of the zucchini'?" "I don't know," she sighed. "I could see it, and I just didn't really like knowing it was in there. I think frosting would have distracted me." Well! But later, when we were devouring the cake with friends, I teased her for having a second piece, and she shrugged, this contradiction with her chocolate-ringed mouth, and said, "It's actually really good. I actually really love it." So there you go.

Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes

Active time: 20 minutes; total time 50 minutes

Makes 2 dozen cupcakes, or 12 cupcakes and 1 8-inch cake

I developed this recipe by crossing a Heidi Swanson cupcake recipe and a Bon Appetit one for cake. Feel free to omit the spices, although I love the flavor combination--just don't cut back on the vanilla or the salt, which the cake really needs in its successful fight against blandness.

2 cups brown sugar


1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted and cooled slightly

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs


2 teaspoons vanilla


1/2 cup buttermilk


2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini
 (around 2 medium zukes)

1 cup chocolate chips 
(I used milk chocolate)

2 cups flour
 (I use half spelt)

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

2 teaspoons baking soda


1/4
teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted at 350 for 5 minutes (optional, of course)

Powdered sugar for topping (also optional)

Heat the oven to 350, and line 2 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners. Or line only one muffin tin, and grease and flour an 8-inch cake pan.

In one bowl, mix together the sugar, butter and oil. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each. Stir in the vanilla, buttermilk, zucchini, and chocolate chips.

In another bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients, except the walnuts. Pour the wets into the dries, and mix well until combined, adding the walnuts at some point, around halfway through the mixing. You don't want to over-mix the batter, but you don't want to leave hidden pockets of flour either.

Now scoop the batter into the cupcake liners, filling each one about 3/4 of the way, then scrape the rest of it into the prepared cake pan, if you're making a cake too. Pop the pans in the center of the oven and set a timer for 25 minutes. When it rings, check the cupcakes: your want them just set, with no jiggliness on top, true, but also without an excess of bakedness--they'll continue to bake a bit as they cool, and you really want these moist; a toothpick should come out with some damp crumbs clinging to it. If they need another minute or two, give it to them. Check the cake at 30 minutes--mine took 33 minutes for perfect, moist doneness.

Cool on a rack and, if you like, sift powdered sugar over them before serving. 

Chile Tortilla Eggbake

Michael's brother Keith used to live in Denver, and we used to visit him and eat a lot: mostly at the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant, where the food was outrageous and the cook treated Keith like a beloved and very small child--but also at the homes of his wonderful friends, where we managed to get ourselves regularly invited. (We were even guests at a wedding once, given that it happened to happen while we were visiting one time. Michael and Sylvia, we love you guys!) This dish is from one of those occasions--some or other brunch--and, if I recall correctly, we left with both this recipe and one for a boozy cheesecake (thank you, Mary Connoly).

There are simply not enough words for "simple" and "perfect" to describe this do-ahead one-dish meal--the very best thing to bake and serve the crowd that is crowding hungrily around your kitchen looking for breakfast on, say, a holiday morning. Because you assemble it the night before, all you have to do the next day is pop it in the oven. When it emerges, the whole thing will be appealingly brown and bubbly and oozy, and tortillas will have gotten thick and soft in a way that makes the whole thing kind of like quiche only, somehow, better. I have, as I know you know, cooked very many different meals for very many different people, and this is the single recipe that has been most often requested of me--and not in that vague, unfollowed-up-on oh my God, how did you make that? delirium of the moment--but in the way where there's a follow-up email the next day reminding you that you promised to send that recipe for the amazing egg thing.

It is also, and I know I say this all the time, endlessly adaptable: you can simply omit the chiles, or swap in something else: we have made it with sautéed mushrooms and onions (although, in a food-aversion Venn diagram, the circle of chile-haters may overlap almost entirely with the circle of mushroom-haters), with spinach (sauté it, and then wring it out so it doesn't make the casserole watery), or sausage, which should be cooked first and drained; anything you could put in a quiche, you could put in this. But, it's not the most wholesome kid on the block, and it's not the pound of cheese that gets me--if your arteries are not jammed with fatty rush-hour traffic, then cheese is a perfectly wholesome thing to eat--it's the white-flour tortillas. But it just doesn't come out that good with whole-wheat ones. So I think of it as a holiday treat. My friend Maddie just made something similar for a party, only she made it with bread and called it a strata, which I like for its geologic sobriety--like it was unearthed in some or other layer of an archaeological dig, in all its cheesy glory. Hallelujah.

Chile Tortilla Eggbake

Serves 8

Active time: 10 minutes; total time, 10 minutes + overnight + 45 minutes

I'm sure this would be even better if you roasted your own chiles, etc. But hey--it's an easy, delicious casserole, so feel free not to make more work for yourself. A crisp salad makes a perfect accompaniment, or a fruit salad. Or my go-to side dish these days, which is putting out a bowl of clementines. Seriously, that's what we have with dinner. (My laziness encroaches.) About the numbers: as long as your breastfeeding mamas are balanced out by kids who don't like this, you will be fine. Otherwise, it will serve fewer (or more, if nobody in your house is breastfeeding, but you still have a hater or two). Or, as Ben put it, "It will serve an infinite number of people who don't like it." But I challenge you to round up very many people who don't like it. 

6 flour tortillas, soft-taco size (fewer if the tortillas are larger; I wish I could say that whole-wheat work, but they really kind of don't)

3-4 small cans of chopped green chiles (I use 3) drained and rinsed in a sieve

1 pound grated cheese (I use half jack and half cheddar, but all of either would be fine. And we have made it with less cheese than this, I admit, but it wasn't quite as good. Still, if you need to cheat on that full pound, you can.)

5 eggs, beaten

2 cups milk (2% or whole, but not skim)

1 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

Grease a 9- by 13-inch baking dish.

Cover the bottom of the dish with tortillas (at first I wrote, "Cover your bottom with tortillas," which made me laugh all over again just retyping it here), overlapping as little as possible. You will use 2 tortillas per layer: I tear them in half, and by the time I get all the flat sides pressed up against the edges of the baking dish (mine is rectangular), it's pretty much all set. Now sprinkle the tortillas with 1/2 of the chiles and 1/3 of the cheese, then add another layer of tortillas and top it with the rest of the chiles and another 1/3 of the cheese. Add the final layer of tortillas, sprinkle it with the remaining cheese, and then whisk together the eggs, milk, and salt in a bowl, and pour this over the whole casserole.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, heat the oven to 350 and get the casserole out of the fridge. Now, the recipe card I have says "Let come to room temperature," which, oops, I never remember to do. I'm sure this would make for evener baking, but, if you should forget this crucial step, rest assured you're not alone. Bake for 30 minutes, if you remembered to let it warm up a little first--and more like 45, if you put it in cold. When done it will be gloriously browned around the edges, and it will jiggle not at all or just the tiniest bit in the center when you, um, jiggle it.

Let it sit 5 or so minutes before cutting it. If you cut into it, and it's very obviously not cooked through (e.g. raw egg), then pop it back into the oven for 10 more minutes, no biggie. (I only mention this because it happened to us once.) But what is normal is for there to be a little bit of clearish liquid that separates out as you slice it: this is from the chiles and is fine.

Fish with Brown-Butter Sauce

I really don't recall a time when I opened up Gourmet magazine to find, alongside its glorious twilit pictures of spring chickens and watermelon granita, scathing observations about maddening photo shoots and tearful models. Really, it was all way too seamless for meta-commentary: the photographer had simply stumbled upon a dinner party that happened to be taking place in a lantern-strung beach cabana, the twelve or so sleekly tanned and barefoot guests nibbling moodily on their boquerones, sipping moodily from their black-currant old fashioneds. At my house, it's more or less the same. Only the photographer has stumbled upon a family dinner table where a lovely little girl weeps moodily into a plate of fish after tripping over the tripod and triggering a string of curses from the photographer. "Jesus Christ, be careful, please! That camera cost, like, a million dollars."

Alas.

"I'm sorry I spoke sharply, sweetie." I knelt in front of Birdy while she shuddered and pulled her mouth into a wet crescent of grief and misery poured out of her nose in twinned rivulets. "It can be stressful because I'm trying to get our dinner on the table, but I'm also trying to take pictures before everything gets cold or eaten up."  The mouth remained a wet crescent. "What about the fish?" I asked cheerfully. "Do you love it?" Birdy glared at me. "I don't know if I like it or not because I'm still crying," she said sternly. A moment later she announced, through her sniffles, "Now I do know and I don't like it." We laughed, which pissed her off. "At least I got a good picture of Strawberry!" I said, which prompted her, peevishly, to yoink the stuffed monkey from her shirt and hide it.

Oy.

Ben loved the fish, at least. You can see why I tried it, right? After the wild success with the asparagus (which I've made again to more raves), brown butter seemed like it might be the key to unlock the deliciousness of just about any dubious food. And fish, well. I serve it so rarely. Birdy doesn't like it; it's expensive; I always picture nets dragging along the bottom of the ocean floor and scooping up every last living example of every last species of marine life; I always picture mercury flowing up into my children's brains like lava in a lamp. But that's silly, because fish is still incredibly good for you, and you can do what I did: show up at the fish counter with your little EPA printout and make the fish guys wish they'd called in sick. Also, if you're hungry, you'll start to think, "Ooh, clams!" and imagine sopping up the butter and garlic sauce at the bottom of the bowl with a big hunk of crusty bread. "Are the clams good?" you'll ask, and the poor fish guy will sigh and say, "Do you want me to fillet this haddock or not?" You do. Make it with the outrageously delicious brown butter sauce and it will be outrageously good and you will say, to your fish-dissing daughter, "I appreciate your candor." And she will say, "What?"

Oh right, that was me. "It means I'm glad you were honest--but I'm sort of joking." "Oh. Can I just have a melted string cheese?" This means an unwrapped Polly-O microwaved for 30 seconds on a plate until it goes all molten and bubbling. In our house, "Can I just have a melted string cheese?" is code for, "This dinner totally sucked." [link to old salmon column] But that's okay. I will keep trying.

Fish with Brown-Butter Sauce

Serves 4 if 1 person doesn't really like it (or 5 if 2 people don't like it)

Total time: 15 minutes

1/2 cup flour

1 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

Freshly ground black pepper

1 pound white fish fillets (e.g. haddock, sole, flounder, cod)

3 tablespoons butter (divided use)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Juice of half a lemon

1 tablespoon capers

Chopped parsley

Put an ovenproof platter in a 200-degree oven to heat.

In a wide frying pan over medium-high heat, heat 1 tablespoon of the butter and the olive oil. Meanwhile, season the flour with the salt and pepper, then dredge the fish fillets and shake off the excess.

Fry the fish until golden brown beneath--a minute or two--then flip, and fry until cooked through (this will take from one to five minutes, depending on the thickness of your fish). Remove the fish to the warmed platter. It may very well fall apart, and you will have to live with this messy fact.

Add the remaining butter to the pan, and use a spatula to scrape up all the lovely golden bits that may have stuck to the bottom. Stir and swirl, scraping the bottom, for a minute or two, until the butter is deeply golden and fragrant (turn off the heat immediately if it seems like anything is burning ever). Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice and capers and salt to taste.

Pour the sauce over the fish, garnish with parsley (or celery leaves, if you forgot to get parsley), and serve.