The latest installment of "Cooking with Dexter," Pete Wells's column in the New York Times Magazine about the culinary and dietary habits of his son and family, details his effort to get home from the office and eat with his wife and children. It's a dangerous enterprise. Arrive too late, and one runs the risk of the unfed kids "bursting into flames."
I know what he means. When Nina and Pinta are hungry, there's no telling how they will behave. If the criminally accused can escape punishment because of temporary insanity, then children, by all biological laws, should have the opportunity to plead a low-blood sugar defense.
According to Wells, eating with the kids doesn't take so much a heroic effort as it does a simple pot of boiling water (and leaving work an hour early). He's an advocate of boiling his vegetables and rice and nearly everything else that he wants to eat. He also relies on the stars aligning enough to insure that there are groceries in the house. "There were sausage and a stalk of brussels sprouts in the refrigerator and, for once, an onion and a garlic clove in the cupboard when I needed them," he writes.
I have a different approach to weeknight meals. First of all, it's not luck that insures there are staples like onions and garlic in the house. It is shopping and planning. According to the nineteen-sixties English television cooking personality Fanny Cradock, Escoffier said that menu planning is the hardest part of a chef's job. I often detest the amount of creative mental energy that's required to draw up a weekly shopping list, but I love beyond words knowing that I won't have to look for ingredients when I'm trying to cook a dish on a weeknight.
My second strategy for weeknight dinners involves doing the prep work ahead of time. I'll chop the vegetables or dress the chicken for roasting before I head to work. That way, when I come home I can just start cooking and the time from stove to table is reduced like a fine French sauce.
My third strategy is a bit trickier to execute. It involves getting Santa Maria to actually do the cooking. Often times this is an easy thing to do, such as when all she has to do is put the chicken in the oven to roast, or defrost the Bolognese and make some pasta. If things are more complicated, it's less likely that she'll have the time or inclination to get involved.
On Monday, I was excited by the prospect of eating with the children. I had monk fish in the refrigerator following my Saturday trip to the Green Market (Strategy One: planning and shopping), and I wanted to make a fantastic old Mark Bittman recipe that I've enjoyed on a number of occasions over the years: "Poached Monkfish with Lemon Sauce," from his "Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking." Leeks are a central ingredient in the recipe; I diced two before breakfast that morning (Strategy Two: getting a jump on prep work). I was running late, so I called Santa Maria and had her start the recipe (Strategy Three).
Everything was in order, but for all my planning, there were two potential problems. The first was unseen. That Monday afternoon, I started to feel a bit ill, slightly nauseated, as if I was fighting a bit of food poisoning (maybe I shouldn't have had that sushi for lunch). By the time I got home, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to eat anything at all.
The other potential problem, I was aware of from the start. I was taking a risk with the kids. This was the first time I would be making the monk fish for them. I didn't know if they would like it at all. Logically, it should have worked. They like flounder. Monkfish is similar enough. The like lemon. They like butter (another key ingredient). I dutifully picked out all the leeks from their bowls to try and tip the odds in my favor, but it was not to be. Never bet against the house, I learned.
The kids hated the dish.The refused to try it. I can't say it was only because of the dish, though. It might have been because I was a few minutes late. They were howling when I got home. Things could only go downhill from there, and they did. I enjoyed the fish, though. It tasted so good that I forgot that I was sick. The kids ended up eating a bit of dried out and leftover pork. They loved it. Go figure.
(Note: Monkfish is considered a problematic fish to consume when it comes to the health of its stock--though those in the Northeast are thought to be okay—and the consequences of methods used to catch it. You can learn more here.)
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 leeks, washed, trimmed, and diced
- 1/3 cup white wine
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme (or fresh, if available)
- 1 lb monk fish, membrane removed and cut into medallions
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Melt the butter in a casserole pan.
Sauté the leeks until they are softened, at about ten minutes.
Add the wine, stock, and thyme, and bring to a boil.
Add the monkfish and reduce the heat. Simmer for about four or five minutes, until the fish is just about cooked.
Remove the fish with a slotted spoon, set aside, and keep warm.
Reduce the sauce to desired thickness. Add more butter if you want a richer sauce.
Add the lemon juice.
Serve the fish and sauce in a bowl with fresh bread.
So true. Sometimes I tell my children they have a choice: take a bite of food or go to their room. Because I know until they eat, there is no chance of them pulling it together :)!
Posted by: Unplanned Cooking | December 11, 2009 at 06:44 PM