Walnut-Orange Cake

It can be hard for families to let their members change. Have you noticed that? You will get an aquarium-themed calendar every year for the rest of your life because you had a neon tetra when you were ten. You will never be served orange juice again because you once threw it up in the car into a beach towel. In my family, I am still the person with a terrible sense of direction because I read a map wrong in Western Canada. 30 years ago. We may have made it eventually to Lake Louise, but I was to be stuck forever in the moment of mistaking a river for a highway. I was also The Walton Reporter for the duration of my childhood, nicknamed after a local paper and because of a brief tendency to pass noisy gas; the nickname long outlasted my switch to the Silent But Deadly style of flatulence.

Change and growth hurts everybody's feelings. "Chopped chicken liver is your favorite," my grandmother insisted with Slavic indignation to her baby, my grown dad, throughout my entire childhood. "I made it because you love it." "But walnuts hurt your mouth!" My mother said, when I described this cake over the phone. And this had, in fact, been true for much of my life. Walnuts made me feel like I'd flossed with concertina wire after glugging down a nice, quenching gulp of hydrochloric acid. I'm not sure why that was, and I'm not sure what changed. But something did. "You're a born-again walnut lover!" Michael says, when I sprinkle them over everybody's salads and pasta; he himself is only born-again walnut tolerater. But what does Michael know? He's a picky eater. Oh wait. No he's not. He was a picky eater when I met him, 20 years ago, back when he wouldn't eat any green vegetables that started with the letter A (asparagus, artichokes, arugula, avocadoes). Now he eats just about anything. But my family still treats him like a picky eater because a) he used to be, and b) he isn't crazy about--brace yourself--lox. What kind of person? Sure, now he eats whitefish salad and eel, calamari and monkfish. But what kind of person doesn't like lox? A picky eater, that's what kind.

All of this is to say that we're trying to practice a certain open-mindedness with our kids and their ways of being in the world. We are trying to let them move fluidly from one feeling to the next. "I'm really starting to understand celery," Ben announced over the weekend, after ten years of hating celery. "I get it--it's crunchy and has that refreshing taste." Good. I myself have, in the past couple of years, come around to eggplant, walnuts and, most recently, raw onions, which used to baffle me completely--as if people were studding perfectly good meals with little shards of sulfurous glass. Ben, an inveterate lettuce-shunner, awoke two years ago with a craving for salad and has been devouring it ever since. Birdy used to like scrambled eggs and now doesn't; Ben used to like poached eggs and now prefers them fried. One day we pick the bell peppers out of our salad because we can't stand to eat them; the next day we pick them out of your salad because we can't get enough. What's that Zen saying? Same river; different water.

Which is not why you should make this cake. You should make this cake because it's amazingly delicious: light and moist, tender and crunchy, orangey and just a little bit pleasantly oily. I made it because my friend Pengyew made it and it was incredible. Also because we had some less-than-stellar olive oil left over from our hair treatments a while back. "I used up the lice oil!" I boasted proudly, as everyone was eating the cake, and nobody even looked at me funny. I can't stop being crazy *now*. It would be too jarring.

Walnut-Orange Cake

Serves 8-10

Active time: 15 minutes; total time: 1 hour

This is a Bon Appetit recipe, and I have changed it only slightly by the addition of vanilla and--wait for it--salt. But seriously: a cake with no salt? What the? I love making the batter because you don't have to cream any butter or anything; you just pour in the oil. Plus, you can get your kids to do most of the work of zesting and juicing the oranges and dealing with the pan. Easy peasy.

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

1 cup all purpose flour (I use up to half spelt)

1 tablespoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup fresh orange juice

1 tablespoon finely grated orange peel (I used the juice and grated zest of 1 large navel orange)

1/2 cup olive oil (I used fairly cruddy oil, but I bet it would be even better with great oil)

1 teaspoon vanilla

Powdered sugar

Heat the oven to 350. Spray a 9-inch-diameter springform pan with nonstick olive oil spray. Place a parchment paper round in the bottom of the pan and spray the paper. (Birdy traced the bottom of the pan, then cut it out with scissors.)

Grind the walnuts in a food processor (or blender) until finely ground but not powdery. Whisk together the ground walnuts, flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.

Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs in large bowl until frothy, about 2 minutes. Gradually add the sugar, and beat until light, thick, and pale yellow, about 4 minutes. Gradually add the walnut-flour mixture, then add the orange juice, orange peel, olive oil, and vanilla, and beat just until blended. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan. Place the pan on a rimmed baking sheet (a weeny bit of oil might leak out), and bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, 50 minutes-1 hour; it will puff up and then sink, which seems to be okay. Cool the cake completely in its pan on rack. Unless you want to pull it all apart into raggedy pieces, in which case you should try to remove the pan while it's still hot. Sift powdered sugar over the cooled cake and serve. 

Buttermilk Pancakes

These are not the cakey kind of pancakes that you would describe as "light" or "fluffy." They're tangy, spongy, and damp--a little like the injera you might get at an Ethiopian restaurant to scoop your stew. Only not made from fermented teff. We looooove them. Everybody does. Try them, even if you have a mix that you like. They will take you, like, 11 seconds longer to measure and stir than a mix would, and they're stunningly delicious. Plus, if you have leftovers, you can seal them up in a Ziploc bag and pop them in the freezer, and then defrost them in your toaster oven for school-morning breakfasts. If we make pancakes on a Sunday, then we usually have enough leftover to get through Tuesday or so of the school week, which is pretty good, right?

Buttermilk Pancakes

Milk will make an okay pancake, but not a fabulously tangy one. Buy a quart of buttermilk and then plan to make cornbread with the leftovers. These pancakes are not sweet and we don't put fruit in them, but we do slather them with jam and syrup.

1 1/2 cups flour (I use, yes, half spelt)

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

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

2 cups buttermilk

3 tablespoons butter, melted

2 large eggs

Butter

Jam and syrup for serving

Whisk together the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another. If your buttermilk and eggs are cold, then the butter will kind of seize and clump, but you don't need to fret about it. Pour the wets into the dries and whisk it all until it's nice and smooth. If you like your pancakes thinnish, and we do, then the batter should be about the texture of thick paint; whisk in a little more buttermilk if it seems really thick. 

Now pour it into a squeeze bottle, if you like, or else scoop it directly onto the hot griddle. You know, the griddle that's been heating over medium heat until a flick of water bounces and steams on contact. Butter the griddle well and then begin pouring on your batter, using a third of a cup or so for each pancake, but really just kind of eyeballing it. 

When the pancakes are nice and bubbled on top and the undersides are brown, flip them and cook another minute or so to brown the bottoms lightly. Taste one: it should be nice and brown on the outside and nice and moist--but not raw--on the inside; if they're cooking too fast or too slow, adjust the heat accordingly. Rebutter the pan as needed between batches. If you like, you can keep the pancakes in a 200-degree oven until they're all cooked, or else serve them as they're ready, taking turns eating and manning the griddle. 

Adaptable Bean Dip

Black Bean Dip

This dip is really good made with white beans too—although then I usually add a little chopped rosemary and grated lemon peel, and I swap lemon juice in for the vinegar. Sometimes, when making either version, I briefly warm the garlic in the olive oil in a small pan over low heat; it mellows it a bit, which is nice. And sometimes I add a little chipotle puree or smoked paprika—but you probably already figure that out. Cilantro would be a yummy addition to the black bean dip, wouldn’t it? I should try that.

1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained well

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, more or less—depending on the saltiness of your beans (or half as much table salt)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1 small clove garlic, pressed (remove the green shoot first, if there is one)

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor until very smooth, adding a tablespoon or two of hot water if the beans seem disinclined to become creamy. Serve with tortilla chips, pita chips or whole-grain crackers, and raw veggies. 

Granola Bars

Granola Bars

Makes about 20 bars

Active time: 20 minutes; total time: 50 minutes.

This is my version of an excellent Ina Garten recipe--she's the Barefoot Contessa, and I really love her no-nonsense style of cooking and eating. Of course the flax seed is my own personal addition here (surprise!) as is the large-ish amount of salt (surprise!). Also, I believe she uses cranberries, but I love dried cherries, and continue to swear by buying them at Trader Joe's. Use whatever dried fruit you like. Once the bars are cooled and cut, I wrap them individually in wax or parchment paper. Which makes me sound even more like I need to get a life. (Note: these are less sweet without the sugar, but they don't stick together quite as confidently. You decide.)

2 cups rolled oats (not instant or quick)

1 cup sliced almonds

1 cup shredded coconut, loosely packed

1/2 cup toasted wheat germ

1/4 cup ground flax seed

3 tablespoons butter

2/3 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar (optional)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

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

1/2 cup chopped pitted dates (we just use those rolled date pieces that look like rabbit turds)

1/2 cup chopped dried apricots (I prefer California apricots to Turkish: they're tangier)

1/2 cup dried cherries

Heat the oven to 350, butter an 8- by 12-inch baking dish, and line it with parchment paper.

Mix the oats, almonds, and coconut together on a sheet pan and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, then transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl and stir in the wheat germ and flax meal.

Reduce the oven temperature to 300.

Place the butter, honey, brown sugar, vanilla, and salt in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook and stir for a minute, then pour over the oat mixture and stir in the dates, apricots, and cherries. Stir well. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Even it out and press it flat with a spatula, then wet your fingers press it more firmly and evenly into the pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until light golden brown. Cool for at least 2 hours before cutting into squares or oblongs. Store airtight.

Simplest Carrot Salad

This nearly-instant recipe is infinitely adaptable: you can substitute lemon juice or vinegar for the lime juice, sugar for the honey, and tamari for the fish sauce, you can omit the peanuts, you can use your favorite green herb (honestly, in the winter I often use celery leaves from the inside of the bunch, because that’s what we have), and you can even add a splash of olive oil if the salad tastes too pickle-y to you.

¾ pound carrots (3 large)

Juice of half a lime plus a few gratings of its peel

A handful of salted, roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon honey

½ teaspoon Kosher salt

A handful of fresh mint (or cilantro, parsley, or celery leaves) chopped

Dash of Asian fish sauce or tamari (optional)

Wash or peel the carrots, and then grate them: I do this in my food processor, but you can do it quite easily on the large holes of a box grater. Stir in the remaining ingredients, then taste it: the salad should be tangy, sweet, and salty, and if it’s not, you might want to add more lime, honey, or salt accordingly. 

Pork So Good It Could Make You Cry

My friend Jonathan just lovingly accused me of being a porkophile, and he's right--though it's a bit of the pot calling the kettle a pot, or whatever, given that this man just raised and butchered five enormous pigs. Be that as it may, pork has situated itself in some of the most wildly memorable eating experiences of my life: at this Chinese-Cuban place in New York City, for instance, where the not-overly-inspiringly-named "Fried Pork Chunks" turn out to be crispy, golden, melting cubes of pork fat--like bacon, but with only the vaguest striations of actual meat. Wow. Or Tacos Vallarta in Santa Cruz, where a carnitas taco arrives as a pair of corn tortillas mounded with so celestial a mix of succulently tender shreds and richly crunchy hunks that angels sing the Hallelujah Chorus above your head while you eat, drowning out the reality show that is likely playing loud on TV ("Ay Caramba!" Michael still likes to say, in perfect imitation of the perky voice-over on a clip of a man getting gored to death by a bull). Or this crazy no-name barbeque place that my brother took us to in Atlanta, where the vinegary ribs had been cooked so long and so well that the meat pulled off the bones in chewy, dryish sheets of excellence that were like a cross between barbeque and the jerky that Willy Wonka would make, if Willy Wonka ever dabbled in pork.

If you are still reading, that means that you are addicted to porkographic websites, and should seek help. But it also means that this recipe might be up your alley (Is it just me, wondering about that expression? "I've got something here that might be right up your alley!" Michael likes to say, lewdly.) This is my friend Pengyew's recipe, and given that he's a professional chef, his version is insane: he makes it with tiny spare ribs, and you get served an artful few on a plate with a drizzle of mustard sauce--and then you start to look around to see if there are any crazy-heads at the table you should befriend because they aren't going to finish theirs; they are to Chinese take-out ribs what a diner tuna melt is to. . . a diner tuna melt, because really that's as good as it gets. Bad analogy. They're the Chinese take-out ribs you would get in heaven, where you might stop eating Vallarta carnitas for long enough to try one.

But I don't make this recipe Pengyew's way, partly because I don't have the patience to glaze all those little ribs, and partly because I am cheap, so I make it with country ribs, which are an inexpensive and misleadingly named cut of meat. They're actually nothing like ribs; they're fatty, bony slabs of pork that are inclined to cook down into rich, succulent shreds, which is a quality I really value in a cut a pork. And this recipe is almost weirdly straightforward: you don't even brown the meat, you just dump it all into a pot and simmer the heck out of it, then you pull out all the weird pieces of bone (it's fine if your country ribs are boneless), then you cook it some more until the liquid has reduced to a glaze, and the pork is a mix of chunks and shreds that are now frying in their own fat. Yowza.

Serve it over rice, or use it as a taco or quesadilla filling; your kids will love it because it's perfectly sweet and salty, with an intoxicating hint of that Chinese ginger-scallion seasoning. And once you've made it, you should try making it other ways. My friend Nicole (the other half of the pig couple), just made it, swapping in orange and lime juice, sliced onions and garlic, and a jar of green salsa for the other seasoning ingredients (you still need the water). When we served the tacos made out of it, a hush fell over the table, which is an unusual phenomenon with kids. "The pork is really good," Ben said. The same Ben who gets skinnier by the second despite the fact that he eats like a polite teenaged horse. "Is anyone going to eat that?" he asked, with his mouth full, gesturing at the last taco with the hand that wasn't already holding a taco, and Nicole said, "Go for it, Ben."

Chinese-Style Carnitas

Serves 8

Active time: 15 minutes; total time 3 1/2 hours

Time is the only hard part of this recipe: it simply takes a while to cook. However, we have pressure cooked it, which can turn that first hour and half into something more like a half hour; you still need to simmer it afterwards to reduce the liquid in the pot. Likewise, you could likely accomplish the initial simmer in a Crockpot, but you'd want to reduce the cooking liquid afterwards.

4 pounds country-style pork ribs (with or without bones)

1/2 cup soy sauce or tamari

1/2 cup sherry or rice wine

1/3 cup sugar

6 1-inch pieces of ginger, peeled and smashed with the side of a heavy knife

6 scallions, white and green parts both, cut into 1-inch lengths

6 cups water

Combine all the ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil, covered, over high heat. Turn the heat down to a simmer and cook, covered, for 1 1/2 hours. Uncover and cook for another 1 1/2 hours, or until the meat is fully tender and falling off the bones, and there is barely any liquid left in the pot. Cool briefly, then pull the meat off the bones with tongs or two forks, discarding any fat or ginger hunks or other unappetizing lumps of anything you might come up. Return the meat to the cooking liquid in the pot, bring it back to a simmer, and simmer, stirring occasionally at first and then frequently as the liquid evaporates (you have to be super-careful that it doesn't burn at this point), until the meat is glazed and frying in its own fat; if you want the meat juicier and saucier, then skip this last step. Drain off any residual fat and serve.

Cherry-Apricot Crumble

"Oh it's just so delicious, it's bursting with fruity yumminess and caramelized brown sugar topping that's just so tasty with the fruity juices mixing with the buttery, crumbly topping. . . mmm." I have asked Michael if he can think of any good crumble stories, and this is what he says. "Honey, that's not really a story," I say, and he says, "Oh. A story. Right. How it's even better than pie?" And they lived happily ever after!

The thing is, crumble is even better than pie. And I say this as a person who really loves pie. But also as a person who sometimes gets called "The Crumble Queen," so there you go. This particular crumble is my very favorite, and this is the exact right time to make it as I'm seeing tons of cherries and apricots everywhere. But when cherry and apricots are gone, you can make it with peaches and blueberries, though you'll want to increase the flour and sugar a bit to compensate for the juiciness and tartness. Oh, but try to make this version if you can: the fruit is so insanely gorgeous--at all turns a mix of bright orange and deep red--and it goes so beautifully with that meltingly crisp, brown-sugary crumb topping. It's based on a recipe from the original Greens cookbook, and I've been making it for, gulp, 15 years now, and it is the very best crumble I ever make, which is saying a lot, given my infatuation with rhubarb. Okay, maybe it is tied with rhubarb.

Of course--and here's the story, but I promise it's short--I cannot make anything with apricots and not fall into fits of nostalgia over Santa Cruz, and the house we lived in with our friend Sam, which has an heirloom apricot tree in the front yard. Come July, apricots started thudding to the ground like hail, these small and comically freckled apricots that looked sort of unripe and homely, only then you'd split them open with your thumbs and they'd be bursting with juice and as flavor, like all the apricots in the world had been distilled into a single piece of deceptively unattractive fruit. If you live somewhere that grows Blenheim apricots? (i.e. California), I recommend gorging on them in great excess until the season ends, even if it requires sneaking into a neighbor's yard. They probably have so many they won't even notice.

And another thing I recommend? Inviting a pregnant woman to live in your home. I simply can't imagine anything more delightful than preparing food for a person who falls into basketball-bellied fits of rapture every time a spoon enters her mouth. I swear Anni stopped eating only to blot at her eyes with a napkin, tears of crumbly happiness leaking onto her face. But then again, Michael himself was literally groaning. "This is the best thing you make," Ben said, and I said, "Really?" and he said, "Probably not, but that's how I'm feeling right now." And I have only one question: Is he my kid or what?

Cherry-Apricot Crumble

Serves 4-8, depending

Active time: 25 minutes; total time: 70 minutes

Filling:

2 pounds of apricots

1 pound of cherries

1/4 cup (scant) flour

1/3 cup sugar

Topping:

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick (1/2 cup) cold salted butter, cut into small pieces

Heat the oven to 400. Halve the apricots, pit them, then halve them again into quarters (or, if they're not super-ripe, slice them up a bit more). Pit the cherries. Combine the fruit with 1/4 cup flour and 1/3 cup sugar in a bowl, then tip it into a baking dish. (Don't fret if there's some dry flour and sugar kicking around--it will all dissolve as it cooks.)

Make the topping: Combine the flour, brown sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl, then add the butter and work it in with your fingers: first toss to coat it with the flour mixture, then take off your rings and use your fingertips to rub the butter into the dry ingredients. This is a messy but not unpleasant job: you'll be lifting handfuls of the mixture up out of the bowl, then gently letting it fall through your fingertips as you rub it lightly together. Eventually, you'll have a bowl full of clumpy lumpy crumble topping. (Today when I did this, it was so hot in the kitchen that the butter got really soft, but this didn't seem to cause a problem, except that it all stuck to my fingers.)

Crumble the, er, crumble over the, uh, crumble, then bake it in the oven for 40-45 minutes until it is browned and bubbling. Serve hot, warm, room temperature, or cold with ice cream or whipped cream.

Roast Chicken with Ginger Vinaigrette

I don't actually tell you everything. There are some divergent food paths I must travel alone--recipes or obsessions that really seem too strange and idiosyncratic to be useful to you--and so I don't mention them. Or I wait and see if they ultimately translate themselves into a recipe that might be simple and appealing enough to post, and often they do. David Chang's Momofuku cookbook, which I have checked out of the library, is like that right now. I look and look at it; I read it cover to cover and back to front; it is stuck all over with post-its marking the recipes I want to try; and it has given me a new appreciation of the expression "food porn": there is a photograph, spanning two pages just like a centerfold, of a bowl of grits with a poached egg and a heap each of grilled shrimp and fried bacon, that I can't stop looking at. The way the book now falls naturally open to that page makes me feel like a teenage boy with a mattress full of magazines.

But the fact that I have a gallon-jar of kimchi fermenting stinkily in my refrigerator seems not overly relevant here--not that lots of you wouldn't want to make it, don't get me wrong. Or that I made a dish of rice sticks with pork that was the second spiciest thing I ever ate in my life, and that had Michael and me and a couple of friends screaming and sweating and crying and coughing and devouring every last bite (our friends, apparently, had a painful repeat of the spiciness out the back end--yikes!). It was, insanely, one of the best dishes I have ever made or eaten, and at some point someone said, "Are you going to post this on your column?" And I said, choking and sweating, "Um, I don't think." Although, to his tremendous credit, Ben ate a portion from a saucer that would properly serve a doll at a tea party, and he loved it and only drank five glasses of water afterwards. I think, by the way, about spicy food, that the path to acceptance and then passion starts narrow and unassuming: a taste here, a taste there, heaps of praise for adventurousness. I know I say that about everything, but I do think kids need many opportunities to try foods they're not going to like, with no threat of needing to finish anything, and with the promise of admiration for their courage rather than dismay over their polite disgust (and they should definitely learn to be disgusted politely: "This is a little strong for me" rather than "Oh my God, I'm barfing.")

 

Anyway, one of my sticky-noted recipes is for chicken that they steam first and then deep fry plain--salted but otherwise unadorned by seasoning or coating--and then shower with a garlicky, gingery vinaigrette. As you know by now, this is so my kind of thing: seasoning food robustly after cooking can really solve the problem of not having planned ahead with a long brine or marinade, and I think the flavors are often even clearer that way--the flavor of the chicken, the flavor of the vinaigrette. But I'm not going to deep fry anything at home. I go out to eat for two main reasons: ethnic food that I don't know how to make (sushi, Chinese radish pancake, pho) and deep-fried bar or shack food that I don't want to make (French fries, sweet potato fries, onion rings, calamari, fried clams, battered jalapeno slices). I love fried chicken, but I am never going to bring a gallon of oil to a rolling bowl and then spend the next week treating my acne and scrubbing an oily film off of every surface in my kitchen (but if you are, God love you, and please invite me over). 

So I adapted the recipe for a roasted chicken, and it is absolutely spectacular. The chicken is crispy-skinned and succulent, and the dressing is sharp and salty and sweet and enormously flavorful from the heaps of ginger and garlic. I can't tell you what David Chang says about it, because he uses the f-word even more than me. But if you want to drool and lust after and read some bad-boy recipe notes, you should take a look.

Roast Chicken with Ginger Vinaigrette

Serves 4-6

Active time: 20 minutes;
total time: 2 hours


In the Momofuku cookbook, this dressing is called "Octo Vinaigrette" because they also serve it with grilled octopus, which I'm sure is divine. But it is super-easy to make, uses no overly challenging ingredients, and is simply delicious. I use only half of the ginger and garlic, and I thought it was perfect for the relatively mild-mannered chicken, but feel free to increase it--just take your time, as David Chang notes, to cut the ginger and garlic into a very, very fine and even mince so you don't end up with any big, pungent pieces. The dressing would be great with any grilled meat. We dressed our spinach salad with a combination of chicken pan juices and a bit of the vinaigrette, and it was delicious.




For the chicken:

1 4- or 5-pound chicken

2 tablespoons butter, softened

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

3 scallions, cleaned and trimmed (optional)

Heat the oven to 450. Rinse the chicken, pat it dry with paper towels, then rub it all over with the butter. Salt it inside and out, then stick it in a roasting pan on top of the scallions and roast until it's done: around 1 1/2 hours. I wiggle a leg, and if it seems nice and loose in its socket, I feel confident that the bird is cooked. Other methods include pricking the thigh and looking for clear juice (Clear as opposed to opaque? Or clear as opposed to tinted? I'm never totally sure.) If you have one of those pregnancy bellybutton thingies on your chicken, then just wait for it to pop out.

Remove the chicken to a cutting board to rest for ten or so minutes before carving, then carve it and serve it with the ginger vinaigrette, below. I like to heap a platter with chicken and dress it all, then pass the vinaigrette for extra oomph; if someone at your table won't like the dressing, just keep some of their chicken to the side, but then they're going to hear everyone oohing and aahing and they're going to try it, I assure you.

For the vinaigrette:

1 tablespoon each very finely chopped ginger and garlic

1 teaspoon finely chopped pickled jalapenos (at Momofuku they use a quarter teaspoon homemade pickled Birdseye chiles, which I didn't happen to have)

1/4 cup each rice vinegar and soy sauce

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/4 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

Freshly grounded black pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a lidded jar and shake to blend.

(This makes a great dressing for chicken wings!) 

Cold Noodle Bowl

I really do love to cook, but sometimes I just hate it so much. Like now. I don't feel like making dinner, and if it weren't for the kids, I'd eat a bowl of granola and a handful of cherries every night after drinking many beers. Instead, we have granola for dinner only sometimes, and sometimes we have popcorn and smoothies, and also I troll a lot for dinner invitations (Oh really? Gosh, we are free! Perfect.) and fantasize about having, as Ben says, "limitless money" so that we could eat out every night. And believe me: we would too.

 

But that still leaves many summertime dinners needing to get made. Grilling is good: easy, outdoors, minimal clean-up. And big salads are good. And this kind of meal, which is similar to the Make-Your-Own (Quinoa) Sundaes, is perfect. It's one of my favorite ways to eat: a bowl of food that you assemble yourself, and that is perfectly balanced: sweet, chewy, crunchy, green, soft, salty, fresh, tangy. Somehow it's both light and filling, gorgeously summery, and everybody loves it. But what I want to make clear is that it can be way less labor-intensive than this version. I had CSA produce I was trying to manage (lots of bok choy, a quart of sugar snap peas), so I was basing the dish around that, but you could make it much easier by using raw veggies: cukes, radishes, a handful of greens. And instead of the fried tofu, you could use prepared baked or smoked tofu or leftover grilled meat or a shredded rotisserie chicken. You could use bottled dressing and already-roasted nuts. See? Much easier. Though if there were two things I'd recommend making, it would be the dressing, which is excellent, and the soba noodles themselves, which boil up into this deep grayish-purplish-brown tangle, and which are deeply grainy and flavorful. Of course, that said, feel free to substitute any other kind of pasta: it will still be good. And you could, of course, toss it altogether in to a big bowl of pasta salad, which would be especially handy if you were pot-lucking or picnicking. But the make-your-own factor is so appealing to kids, who crave control over their own meals and eating, that it's worth trying this way at least once.

But you should still invite me over for dinner because I still want to come.

Cold Noodle Bowl

Serves 4-5

Total time: 1 hour

The Dressing

This dressing is bright with ginger, dusky with scallions, and just a little sweet. It's kind of perfect. But if you want to swap in a store-bought dressing, I would especially recommend Annie's Shiitake & Sesame, since its Asian flavors will perfectly complement the rest of the meal.

2/3 cup peanut or vegetable oil, divided use

3 fat scallions, white and healthy green, sliced (around 1/2 cup)

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger

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

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon sesame oil or roasted peanut oil

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

Heat a tablespoon of the oil in a small pan over medium-low heat and sauté the scallions until wilted and fragrant, around 3 or 4 minutes. In a food processor or with a hand blender, whir together the scallions with the remaining ingredients until the dressing is thick and emulsified. Taste for salt, sugar, acid, and overall balance, and re-season as necessary.

The Noodles

Soba are Japanese buckwheat noodles, and they are lovely here: sturdy, nutty-tasting, wholesome. Plus, they come wrapped so prettily that you'll feel like someone gave you a present. Look for them in the Asian foods aisle of your supermarket or at Whole Foods or (duh) at an Asian market--but if you can't find them or don't want to, feel free to swap in whatever noodles you like. Soba are pretty salty, so I don't salt the water when I cook them; if you're using other noodles, though, you should.

Cook 1 10-ounce package soba noodles in boiling, unsalted water until just tender, 3 or 4 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water, drain well, and toss with half the dressing.

The Tofu

The seasoning here echoes the salad dressing in a nice way, but please--feel free to swap in a prepared tofu product: the baked or smoked kind that you can just slice up and serve.

2 tablespoons vegetable or peanut oil

1 14-16-ounce package of extra-firm tofu

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Heat the oil in a wide nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, cut the tofu into 12 slices. Fry the tofu, around 5 minutes per side, until it's browning and crispy-looking. Splash in the soy sauce and vinegar, and continue cooking, shaking the pan and flipping the tofu, until the liquid is evaporated and the tofu is glazed. Remove to a cutting board and cut into strips.

The Almonds

Use the unwashed scallion pan. Feel free to swap in roasted peanuts for ease or a change of pace.

2 teaspoons peanut or vegetable oil

1/2 cup slivered almonds

Heat the oil in a very small pan over medium heat and fry the almonds until golden, around 2-3 minutes. Remove to a small bowl so they don't burn in the hot pan.

The Sugar Snap Peas

Steam until just tender, around 3 minutes. Rinse under cold water.

The Bok Choy

Heat a tablespoon of peanut or vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat, then add a large bunch of clean, wet boy choy (cut off the bottoms of the stems to separate the clumps into leaves) and a large pinch of salt and sauté, stirring, until the stems are just tender, around 6 or 7 minutes. If it's getting overly browned before it's tender, add a splash or two of water. Taste for salt.

Double-Delicious Grilled Chicken

This is an absolute favorite summer meal, and it's a recipe, but it's also a philosophy. Not in the Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling sense, but in the oh-wow-yum sense: you marinate the chicken before cooking, like usual, but also after cooking. In a different marinade, of course, so as to not get salmonella. And oh, wow, yum--the chicken is so, so succulently excellent: tangy, herby, and mouth-watering.  We tend to use it to top a salad or noodle bowl, but it is also good on its own.

The pre-cooking marinade makes the chicken delightfully tender and seasoned, but then the post-cooking marinade introduces all the fantastic and fragile flavor component--the herbs and citrus zest and garlic--that would have burned off on the grill. 

Also, since you slice up the grilled chicken, you maximize the flavor-absorbing surface are. You will be a hero to your family and dinner guests. Seriously.

 

Double-Delicious Grilled Chicken

Serves 8

Active time: 20 minutes; total time, including marinating: 1 1/2 hours

So yes, there's lots of salt, as you'd expect, and lots of zest for a full, rounded citrus flavor. There are many different ways to make this, of course: sometimes I use lemons instead of limes, and switch the herbs to lemon thyme and parsley or else basil. Yum. Sometimes I add a bit of chopped shallot or scallion to the first marinade or a bit of chipotle puree to the second. And sometimes, if there are people around in whom the flecks of green are going to inspire fear and trembling, I leave some of the grilled chicken out of the second marinade. It is still delicious, just not so zingy. As you would imagine, this chicken makes an excellent addition to salads.

Note: Feel free to skip the first marinade altogether, and simply salt the chicken well as early in the day as is possible. If that's right before you grill it, so be it, since it's really that second dressing that's doing the work here. Then just rub the chicken with oil before popping it on the grill.

For chicken and first marinade:

8 small skinless, boneless chicken breasts, trimmed of fat and (shudder) gristle 

The juice of 1/2 large, juicy lime (scant 1/4 cup--if your limes are small, you'll need more of them)

1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Stir together the lime juice, soy sauce, olive oil, and salt, then pour it over the chicken in a large dish, tossing the chicken to make sure it's all covered with the marinade. Cover the dish and leave the chicken in the fridge to marinate for an hour or so (too much longer than that and the acid in the lime juice can make it mushy). Preheat your grill or broiler, and grill or broil the chicken (drained from the marinade, which you then discard) turning it once, until it's cooked through, around 3 or 4 minutes per side. Let the chicken rest for a minute, then slice it against the grain and toss it with the second marinade in a wide serving dish. Serve warm or at room temperature.

For the second marinade, whisk together:

The zest and juice of 1 large, juicy lime plus the zest from the 1/2 you already juiced (zest the limes before juicing them)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon kosher salt

A large handful of cilantro, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, peeled and pressed through a garlic press

Freshly ground pepper

Baked Pancake

When you take it out of the oven, a chorus of angels sings Hallelujah in your ear.

Maybe you know this as a Dutch Baby or a German Pancake or as Yorkshire pudding or a ginormous popover. In our house we call it Baked Pancake, and we make it all the time. It is Ben’s favorite weekend breakfast, especially since he doesn’t mind waiting for it, while his starving starving STARVING sister is growling and grouchy, fainting from hunger and demanding yogurt and cottage cheese and granola with fruit, because who can wait 15 minutes for the pancake to be out of the oven? That’s okay: Ben can eat the entire pancake by himself, and he like to.

This is another of the many, many recipes from my own childhood. My mother actually has the original and very ratty clipping from the 1966 New York Times, where this was called David Eyres Pancake after a Honolulu somebody whom Craig Claiborne something-or-othered with. The original recipe calls for a full stick of butter, although (apparently) this was identified as a mistake and amended in a later article. A full stick of butter would make this something more like a Dutch Clogged Coronary Artery—as it is, we’ve reduced the butter from 4 to 3 tablespoons for the sake of, er, a desire to be less fat.

I would also like to add that who most often makes this in my family is Michael. What’s with the dads making the weekend breakfasts? Okay, forget that dead-end question. I am glad Michael makes it. Gratitude is leaking out of me, rising like steam from my every pore. Because it could be that Michael would be the kind of person who would only feed the birds—who would manage four bird feeders, including a suet feeder and a finch feeder, which he would fill assiduously with seeds and fat and whatever all else the birds like to eat because, yes, his children and dinner and blah blah, but the birds! The birds must be fed! The poor, hungry little birds! But he’s not like that. Because he feeds his bird children AND he makes this baked pancake for his human ones. Praised be.

Baked Pancake

active time: 10 minutes; total time, including preheating the oven: 35 minutes

The only trick here is that the pan be very, very hot before you melt the butter and pour the batter in: that’s what will make the pancake puff (but if you burn the butter, wipe it out with a paper towel, and start over). The temperature of the ingredients, on the other hand, is a point of contention. Many people suggest that the ingredients should be cold, but we actually find that if they’re a bit warmer than right-out-of-the-fridge, then the whole pancake puffs and rises, which we like a lot; cold ingredients produce a pancake that is high on the sides and dead flat in the middle, which we like a little less. And every now and then, for no reason you can fathom, the pancake will rise so completely not at all that you will feel like you’re in the breakfast version of a Viagra commercial. It’s not you.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

½ cup milk (2% and whole both work well)

½ cup flour

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

3 tablespoons butter, cut into a few pieces

Heat the oven to 425, then put the pan in to heat while you prepare the batter. A 10- or 12-inch oven-proof skillet is ideal, but you could use a comparably-sized baking dish (Pyrex, say)—you know, somewhere between 25π and 36π inches in area, give or take a couple of pi.

Now use a whisk to beat the eggs in a medium-sized bowl (if it has a spout, to quote my former German housemate Ute, “the better it is”), then beat in the milk, then the flour and salt. The original recipe cautions against over-beating and recommends that you leave the batter a little lumpy, but we tend to beat it until it’s just smooth.

By now your pan should be very hot. Add the butter to it by tossing it into the cracked oven door (this is Michael’s trick) and letting it sit in there a couple of seconds, then remove the pan from the oven and swirl it so that the butter is melted and sizzling wildly. You need to do all this quite quickly because you don’t want the oven to lose its heat, you don’t want the pan to cool off, and you don’t want the butter to burn. It’s not hard, and I don’t mean to worry you. I’m just saying. Now pour the batter into the buttery pan and return it the oven. Set your timer for 15 minutes. We bake it for 20, but I think it’s worth peeking at it at 15 because your oven might be different from ours: you want it to be puffed and golden and quite brown in places.

The yummiest way to eat this is to sprinkle it with lemon juice and sieved powdered sugar, a la the original recipe. However, we usually eat it in big hand-held wedges, utterly plain or spread with jam.

Perfect Oatmeal Cookies

You know when your kids have been sick, except then it's day three of being home from school and they're up and about, munching crackers and introducing the Pretty Ponies to the Playmobil Vikings, so you kind of forget they're sick, only then you hear a terrible keening wail and when you run upstairs to investigate the calamity (A compound fracture? A puncture wound? Decapitation?) you find a small girl lying on the carpet weeping: "I don't want to clean the play room." "Did someone tell you you had to clean the playroom?" you might ask her, and, after another round of choking sobs, she will say only, "Noooooo-ho-ho-ho." And then the dim Mama-bulb will illuminate, and you will place your open palm on her hot forehead and feed her Tylenol and ask, cheerfully, "Would you like to come down and make cookies with me?"

So it was with the Bird--and let me just say, the cookies were a good idea. Even if she made occasional announcements like, "Maybe they'll taste my sneeze in the cookies!" and "Will the oven burn up the coughing germs do you think?" that I tried not to hear. These cookies are wildly delicious, and even though we've been making them for just over a year, they are one of my absolute all-time favorites. This is not your usual cakey, raisiny, cinnamony kind of oatmeal cookie; instead they're buttery-edged and crisp but also teeth-stickingly chewy. Plus, they're a strange and beautiful color--a kind of ruddy burnished gold that is very appealing. We all love them; everybody always loves them. Also--and I realize this makes me sound almost unconscionably lazy--you melt the butter before stirring it in, and this freedom from creaming makes me very happy.

I got these cookies from Cindy Hopper's lovely craft blog Skip to My Lou, and while she is not herself Australian, the recipe is. It's for something called ANZAC biscuits, and it stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the idea being that the cookies were sturdy enough to travel intact to far-away loved ones who were fighting in the war. I have to say, however, that I think this may be the recipe equivalent of the game telephone, since these cookies, while perfect, are somewhat fragile and don't seem like they would travel especially intactly. Nonetheless, their Australianness is preserved with the ingredient "Lyle's Golden Syrup." As the daughter of an English woman, I myself grew up with Lyle's Golden Syrup--a honey-colored, sugar-based stickiness-in-a-tin--and, until recently, it was the kind of thing you had to beg traveling relatives to bring home for you from abroad. Now, however, you can buy it in a plastic bottle in all kinds of American stores, and we get ours in the Whole Foods nearby. Cindy uses light corn syrup instead and, given her good taste, I trust that this is a perfectly acceptable substitution.

Also, while I'm at being all English and everything, I should tell you my mum's theory about sickness: "A little of what you fancy does you good." Which explains why a cookie, while not exactly laden with vitamin C or zinc or antioxidants or codeine, can actually make a person feel much, much better.

This is Birdy in 2009. Sigh.

Perfect Oatmeal Cookies

Makes 3 dozen.

active time: 20 minutes; total time: 1 hour

Adapted from Cindy Hopper's ANZAC Biscuits recipe, and reprinted with her gracious permission. Please do note the low oven temperature.

Ingredients

1 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup sweetened, flaked coconut

1 cup flour (now, in 2014, I use half spelt, because that's how I roll these days)

1 cup sugar

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

1 stick butter (I use salted)

1 tablespoon Lyle's Golden Syrup (or light corn syrup)

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons boiling water

Heat the oven to 300 and prepare a large cookie sheet: I cover mine with parchment paper for even browning and easy clean-up, but you could grease it instead. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, coconut, flour, sugar and salt. Meanwhile melt the butter and syrup together in a small pot over low heat. Stir the baking soda into the boiling water, then stir this into the butter and syrup and pour all of it over the dry ingredients. Stir well, then drop cookie-sized amounts (we use a heaping melon baller, which is about 2 teaspoons I think) onto the baking sheets, leaving plenty of space for them to spread.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, switching the pan around if you need to for even baking, until the cookies are golden all over and quite brown on the edges (keep an eye on them--they can burn quickly); the cookies will look puffy when you remove them from the oven, and then they will sink and go a bit lacy. Leave them on the cookie sheet for 3 or 4 minutes before removing them with a spatula to cool on a rack; if you go at them too early, they will fall all to pieces. Repeat: it will take 3 batches to get all the cookies baked. Yum.

Perfect Quinoa Bowls

You need crunchy, tender, salty, rich, tangy, creamy, and protein. But how you achieve that is up to you!

{Note: this post has a very 2009 sound to it. Which is when I wrote it. At this point, I know, everyone and their brother is making quinoa in their sleep. So please forgive the retro-ness.}

I understand that I'm about to lose a lot of you here, and that I risk compromising my integrity as a peddler of kid-friendly meals and becoming the kind of cultish health fascist who would suddenly foist upon you QUINOA! THE SUPERFOOD OF THE ANDES! I know. Let me start by telling you that it's pronounced keen-wa, just so that you don't end up in Whole Foods insisting to the eye-rolling hippy supermodel of a floor manager that what you need is a bag of kwin-oh-a. Keen-wa. And let me say further that this grain (okay, it's technically a seed) is not only wildly wholesome, it is also incredibly yummy: tender and crunchy at the same time, with a mild, grainy flavor that takes well to things like butter, cheese, and citrus. Picture couscous, only picture it emerging from a phone booth as the Caped Crusader of Complete Protein--with the powers of fiber and iron!--instead of a wimpy processed pasta product. If you are unsure about it, try just following the quinoa directions below, and add the lemon zest and juice, but then instead of olive oil stir in a big blob of good butter and serve it just like that. It is very hard not to like. (I write that, though, and then picture the crazy things my children have managed not to like over the years: potatoes, say, or lettuce. So, maybe quinoa won't actually be that hard not to like.)

 

If you think your family's game, try this meal. Even though it is neither especially quick nor especially simple to make. Quinoa--and I know this is not helping it's case--requires a bit of gentling, as you need first to rinse off its bitterness (nice!) and then boil it and then, so it will be fluffy instead of gluey (mmm!), steam it briefly: none of this is hard, but it requires you not to be trying to get dinner on the table out of a single pot in five minutes. Likewise, the way this meal works best is to offer many components that your family can add to their bowls of quinoa to customize them: beans for velvety wholesomeness, a vegetable for its vegetableness, cheese for salty richness, seeds or nuts for luxurious crunch, and something herby for zing. I'm giving directions here for a quick black bean salad, broiled zukes, crumbled feta, toasted pumpkin seeds, and a cilantro pesto--but use what you've got. Chick peas, pickled beets, grated cheddar, toasted walnuts, and a blob of purchased pesto, say. (But do use a seed or a nut, because the crunch is really key here.)

I've said it before, I know, but a meal that everyone gets to assemble as they please? It is just the most brilliant marketing device. You feel like you're eating every healthy thing of your own total and complete free will.

Or simply serve quinoa with the beans and nuts, and a salad on the side. It doesn't need to be so complicated. But what is wonderful, if you do it this way, is that you'll have a crazy-delicious citrus-scented bowl of food that will, quite literally, energize you. Also, it's fun to sit at the table and rank the components. My kids both ranked the feta first and the zucchini last, though Birdy did like the fact that "The zucchini is burnt and so it kind of tastes like a burnt marshmallow, which I like." I don't know how I feel about that. Michael liked the sauce best and skipped the feta entirely. And me? I love how all the flavors echo and complement each other--the lime and lemon zest, the olive oil and salt--but I like the quinoa itself best of all: all those little lemon-scented grains popping wholesomely under my teeth. I just do.

Perfect Quinoa Bowls

Serves 6

Total time: 45 minutes

This meal was inspired by Heidi Swanson's book Super Natural Cooking--a book so inspiring as to be, in fact, a little daunting. But the quinoa cooking method comes from Gourmet Magazine's recipe for "Lemon-Scented Couscous." If you like the concept of the grain-bowl meal but just can't bring yourself to deal with quinoa, then make it with something familiar first: rice, say, or couscous, or even pasta. In fact, stirred together with a bit more oil and lemon juice, this makes a killer pasta salad. You'll note the usual themes here--salt, olive oil, citrus, fresh herbs--but feel free to vary the components as you like, using nuts instead of seeds (if they're raw, toast them at 350 for 5 minutes) or different cooked or raw vegetables, different cheese, different kinds of beans. 

I have, more than once, caught the dish towel on fire. Just saying.

For the quinoa:

1 1/2 cups quinoa

Kosher salt

The finely grated zest of 1 lemon, and 1 tablespoon of its juice

1 tablespoon olive oil

Wash the quinoa in 3 changes of cold water in a bowl, draining it in a sieve after each rinsing (this is a great job for a child). Now cook the quinoa in a medium pot of boiling salted water (it should be salted enough to taste salty), uncovered, until almost tender, about 12-14 minutes; the grains should have spiraled open somewhat. Drain it in a sieve, then set that sieve over the same pot above 1 inch of simmering water (the water should be lower than the bottom of sieve). Cover the quinoa with a folded kitchen towel, then cover the sieve as best you can with a lid and steam it until tender, fluffy, and dry, about 10 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and remove the lid. Let it stand, still covered with the towel, for 5 minutes, then move it to a bowl, fluff it with a fork, and stir in the oil, zest, and juice. Taste it for salt, but bear in mind that both the seeds and the feta are going to up the saltiness quotient in the end.

For the beans:

1 15-ounce can of black beans (or any other beans or chickpeas you like), rinsed and drained

1 tablespoon olive oil

The juice and finely grated zest of 1/2 a lime

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

Stir all the ingredients together, taste, and adjust the seasoning as you like.

For the seeds:

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds

1/4 teaspoon chili powder or flakes (optional)

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

A few scrapings of lime zest

Heat the oil in a tiny pan over medium heat. When it's hot enough to sizzle a seed, add all the seeds and fry, stirring, until popping and golden-brown, about three minutes. Turn off the heat but keep stirring for another minute so that they cool down without burning, then add the chili, salt, and lime zest.

For the herb sauce:

A large handful of cilantro (or parsley or basil), washed and dried

The juice and finely grated zest of the other 1/2 a lime (minus the bit you used for the seeds)

1 clove garlic, peeled and put through a garlic press

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup oil (I actually used canola here, for mildness)

In a food processor with the metal blade, whir together the cilantro, lime juice and zest, garlic and salt, stopping the motor occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. With the motor running, drizzle the oil through the feed tube and process until emulsified. (Honestly, you could so skip this step: use already-made pesto, or simply chop some herbs nice and fine and put them in a bowl.)

For the cheese:

1 cup crumbled feta (or crumbled fresh goat cheese or another crumbled or shredded cheese of your choosing)

 

For the veggies:

3 or 4 small zucchini

Kosher salt

Olive oil

Dice the zukes into half-inch pieces, then toss them with oil (about a tablespoon) and salt (about a half teaspoon) on a foil-covered baking sheet. Broil close to the heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until the zukes are tender and browning and taste like burnt marshmallows. (Alternately: quarter the zukes lengthwise, brush them with oil and sprinkle them with salt, then grill them, covered, until they're tender, then chop them up.)

Borscht

Do you remember the Empathic Metamorphs from Star Trek Next Generation? No? They’re the perfect-date aliens who subtly change their personalities until they become exactly who you want them to be: big-bosomed hockey-loving gymnasts, most likely, or else maybe limber football enthusiasts with large breasts. (In the show they were more like intensely philosophical oboe players, but I think that’s kind of unrealistic.) Anyways, I’m not saying I’m exactly an alien? I’m just saying that when Vasili and his crew were recently painting four rooms of our house, I found myself speaking to them in a slight Russian accent. Partly it’s my awkwardness about having anyone in the house who is actually being paid to be here—a situation that has only ever occurred before when the hot-water heater burst open on Christmas day or on the one night a year we hire a babysitter. It makes me feel like I’m throwing a dinner party that’s going really badly—or like I’ve hired someone for sex. I just cannot relax and let it be what it is. And so, when this four-person Russian painting crew—ranging in age from 10 to 100—were at our house for two days, I fretted around, offering mugs of tea and plates of cookies and wedges of quiche and glasses of vodka. Also, I smiled a lot, especially when Vasili asked me questions I couldn’t understand. “Igsheel zimbly vhyt, zees?” (That’s “Should I paint this Simply White with an eggshell finish?” And the answer is “Yes.”)

“Like me, like me, like me!” I didn’t say. But I did say, “Nice color, yes?” Also I said, “You vant to khev bowl of boorscht, mebbe?” And all I can say in my own defense is that I come by it honestly: my Russian grandmother, the one who called me Katushinka, spoke with that exact same accent, and everyone in my family can imitate it perfectly.

Anyways, about the borscht: it’s sweet and vibrantly pink, and so your kids might just surprise you and like it. Plus, when you stir a bloop of sour cream into it, it turns almost fluorescently pink. And in their very popular article “The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating,” The New York Times listed beets as number 1! Thanks to all their lovely folates and antioxidants and whatnot. I admit they recommend eating them raw for maximum nutrition—but they’re still plenty healthy cooked. And who doesn’t love cabbage? Well, lots of people actually don’t like cabbage. But I do!

My parting advice? It’s not about beets. It’s Benjamin Moore “creamy beige.” Like a buttery pale apricot. Vut kulhr!

Borscht

2 fist-sized beets, peeled and diced (about 2 cups)

2 fist-sized potatoes (we like Yukon gold for this), peeled and diced (about 2 cups)

4 cups chicken or veggie broth (1 32-ounce box) or use the same amount of water but add 1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped

½ teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)

1 large carrot, peeled and diced (about ½ cup)

1 large celery stalk, peeled and diced (about ½ cup)

½ of a green cabbage, finely shredded (3-4 cups)

1 cup canned crushed tomatoes or tomato puree

2 tablespoons each honey and cider vinegar

Kosher salt

Sour cream and (optional) fresh dill for serving

Begin by bringing the beets, potatoes, and broth (or salted water) to a boil in a medium pot over medium heat. Cover the pot, turn the heat down, and simmer while you prepare the rest of the ingredients—around 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the butter in a wide soup pot over medium-low heat and cook the onion until translucent, around five minutes. Skip the caraway if your children don’t like their soup to evoke rye bread, otherwise add it with the onions. Add the rest of the vegetables with a teaspoon of kosher salt and sauté for 5 or so minutes until the cabbage is well wilted, then pour in the beets and potatoes with their cooking liquid, the tomatoes, the honey and cider vinegar, and 1 or 2 cups of water—just enough to submerge all the ingredients in liquid. Bring the pot to a boil, turn the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until all the vegetables are very tender.

Puree about half the soup with a stick blender (or do this verrrry carefully in a regular blender, and then stir it back in—or skip pureeing it altogether), then taste for salt, sweet, and tart: add more salt, honey, or vinegar in tiny increments as needed to make the soup lively-tasting and good. Especially salt. Serve each bowl topped with a spoonful of sour cream, a snip of dill, and lots of confident enthusiasm.