Medicine
Andy’s Manhattan
Some recipes will tell you to do 2 parts bourbon (or rye, which Andy likes, or Canadian whisky, which kind of smells like lighter fluid to me) to 1 part sweet vermouth, but we find that’s a little sweet. So Andy usually does something closer to 3:1. Up to you. Fill a short glass two-thirds full with ice. Add 2 dashes of angostura bitters, sweet vermouth, and whatever bourbon you like. (We like Buffalo Trace and Maker’s.) Add a maraschino cherry and crush it against the side of the glass with a spoon. Stir.
Jenny’s Gin and Tonic
Fill a large glass two-thirds full with ice. Add 1 part gin to 2 parts fresh tonic. (Nothing will ruin this drink faster than flat tonic.) Squeeze in the juice from a juicy lime wedge and then toss the wedge into your drink. Stir.
Martini
As a general rule, a martini is 4 parts gin or vodka to 1 part dry vermouth, but even that might be too much vermouth. Either way, we like ours in a short glass over ice, stirred, with an olive or two or a lemon twist, or—the best—a pickled ramp from the stash our friend Matt delivers every spring.
Dark & Stormy
Get a decent-size highball glass and pack it full of ice. Fill the glass halfway with some good dark rum. (We use fifteen-year-old El Dorado from Guyana. And there is always Gosling’s.) Then—and this part is crucial—top it off with real ginger beer. (We used to use Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew, but we’ve recently switched to Regatta, which hails from Bermuda, where they know from cocktails.) Finally, the lime. Don’t skimp on the lime! Squeeze two wedges into the glass and discard. Take your third wedge, squeeze it, run the fleshy part once around the rim of the glass, and drop it in. Stir.
November 2004
The Wednesday Wife
Around this time, I won the lottery. Not a windfall of cash but, to the working mother, something much, much better: After a two-year begging and bribing period that involved a batch of Mexican chocolate icebox cookies, my new boss, Kristin, granted me a four-day work week. I was allowed to be home on Wednesdays. Not work from home, not check in via email from home, but be home. Be around. Pick up the dry cleaning. Drop off the overdue library books. Let one-year-old Abby fall asleep on top of me, stomach to stomach, then nap right along with her. Take the girls to Music Together class and hear everyone sing, “Hellooooo to Mommy . . . so glad to see you!” Pick up Phoebe from preschool and actually meet this friend Evie she liked so much. I could even host a playdate where we’d all bake cookies and the girls could wear those little aprons that still had the sales tags on them. If I wanted to—oh happy day!—I could assemble a black bean salad while the sun was still shining and allow the flavors to mingle before dinner.
Seven years later, now that I am home all the time—working from home but still physically home—none of these activities seem remotely as exciting to me as they did back then. But when I was commuting to work for forty to fifty hours every week, the idea of approaching the day in an active way (as opposed to the putting-out-fires way) was my idea of heaven. Before I struck my four-day deal, I viewed the endless tasks—dry cleaning, bill paying, doctor visits, gift buying for the relentless birthday party circuit—as foreign combatants determined to destabilize my fragile two-working-parent family. But after I was granted my Wednesdays, I embraced my domestic duties in a way that would’ve made Carol Brady proud. (And Alice too, since she was the one who actually did all the work.) I’d look forward to organizing the toy closet. I’d savor three-hole punching school handouts for my Master Binder. And usually I’d start the morning by asking Andy what I could do that day to make his life a little easier. Andy called this relaxed, helpful impostor his “Wednesday Wife.” I loved that so much. But probably only because I knew she’d be gone by Thursday.
Playdate Cookies
My friend Wendy gave me the recipe for these cookies in an email titled “World’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookie.” I added M&Ms to transform them into these Playdate Cookies. I find giving little kids the task of placing the M&Ms into the cookie dough scoops is all they need to do to feel included (along with the assignment to lick the bowl, of course). Feel free to replace the M&Ms with a mix of chocolate and peanut butter chips, or stir in some chocolate shavings to the batter. Makes 24 cookies Total time: 30 minutes
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar, tightly packed
3 tablespoons white sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup good-quality chocolate chips (such as Ghirardelli)
2 1.69-ounce bags M&Ms
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. (It was somewhat life-changing when I found out whisking was just as effective as sifting, so that’s what I usually do.) In a separate bowl and using a wooden spoon or electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugars. Add the egg and mix until well combined. Add the vanilla and stir. Using a handheld mixer, add the dry mixture to the wet mixture gradually until all the dry mixture has been worked into the batter. Fold in the chocolate chips. Using your hands or two spoons, scoop small rounds of dough onto the cookie sheet about 2 inches apart from each other. Pour the M&Ms into two small bowls (it’s important for each helper to have his or her own bowl) and ask the kids to stick the candies into the dough rounds until they are all gone. (Sometimes I use my fingers to make the balls round, then I flatten them slightly—it makes for prettier cookies.) Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until golden. Cool on a rack.
Pork Dumplings
On any normal weeknight a “project” dinner like this, with its individual dumpling stuffing and sealing, would be unthinkable. Which is exactly why Wednesday Wife seized upon it. The recipe takes a little over 1 hour start to finish. As always, if you are enlisting your toddler, you should assume prep time will increase by about 350 percent. Total time: 1 hour 10 minutes
1 tablespoon vegetable oil, plus more for frying
Dash of sesame oil
3 scallions (white and light green parts), chopped
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
¾ to 1 pound ground pork
2 teaspoons Chinese Five Spice
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 8-ounce can water chestnuts, drained and minced
¼ cup minced fresh cilantro
1 12-ounce pack of wonton wrappers
Add the oils to a large skillet over medium heat and cook the scallions and ginger for about 1 minute.
Add the pork, using a spoon to break it up, and increase the heat to medium-high.
Once most of the pink in the pork is gone, add the Chinese Five Spice, soy sauce, water chestnuts, and cilantro. Let the pork cook for another 2 minutes and remove from heat.
Transfer the filling to a bowl. If you are feeling ambitious, pulse the cooled mixture in the bowl of a large food processor. (This is not necessary, but it lends a nice consistency to the filling and prevents it from being too crumbly and messy when you bite into the dumplings.)
Set up your dumpling-assembling station: a bowl of water, the pork filling, and your wontons.
Dip your fingers in the water and dot or “paint” around the edges of a wonton. (This is an excellent task for the kids.) Spoon a small amount of the pork filling into the center and fold one corner over the opposite corner to make a triangle shape. Pinch all sides together and set aside.
Once all the dumplings are assembled, add a tablespoon of vegetable oil to a large skillet set over medium-high heat. Fry in batches, adding more oil as needed, until dumplings are crispy and golden, about 2 minutes on each side.
Serve the dumplings with dipping sauce and snow peas. Dipping sauce note: Instead of making my own (soy sauce, scallions, fresh lime juice and/or rice wine vinegar), I usually use Soyaki
sauce.
Fried Flounder with Black Bean and Avocado Salad
Every time we make this dinner it seems like Andy asks, “Why don’t we eat this every night?” The key, as always, is to start with the freshest fish you can find. Flounder is a major player in our family kitchen since it’s mild enough for the kids and cooks so quickly. You can assemble the salad 10 minutes before you eat dinner and it will taste good, but if you do it a few hours ahead of time and let all the flavors mingle, it will taste better. Total time: 40 minutes (25 minutes for the fish; 15 minutes for the bean salad)
For the Black Bean and Avocado Salad
2 14-ounce cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup halved grape tomatoes
4 to 5 scallions (white and light green parts), minced
½ small jalapeño pepper, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
Juice from 1 large lime (about 2 tablespoons)
¼ cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Few dashes of hot sauce
Handful of chopped cilantro
1 avocado, cut into cubes
In a medium bowl, combine all ingredients. If you are making this way ahead of time, hold off on cutting and adding the avocado until you are ready to serve, as it will brown if its exposed flesh sits around too long.
For the Flounder
½ cup all-purpose flour (salted and peppered)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1½ cups panko bread crumbs, salted and peppered with ¼ teaspoon cayenne mixed in
Olive oil
1¼ pounds flounder fillets, cut with kitchen scissors or a sharp knife into sandwich-size pieces, which make them easier to flip
Tartar sauce, for serving
Lemon wedges, for serving
Set up your dredging stations: one rimmed plate for the flour, one rimmed plate for the eggs, and one rimmed plate for the panko.
Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
Dredge your fish fillets: first in the flour, then in the egg, then in the panko. Add two fillets at a time to the skillet and fry 2 to 3 minutes on each side, until cooked through. Remove from the skillet, tent with foil to keep warm, and fry the remaining fillets, adding more oil as necessary.
Serve with a dollop of tartar sauce, lemon wedges, and the black bean and avocado salad.
January 2005
Devika’s Roti
In one way, it was too bad we were so adamant about being home to make dinner for the kids because we could’ve had it so easy—Devika, our babysitter, loved to cook. Often she’d show up at our house on Monday mornings and regale us with stories about the meals she and her husband made for her family and friends over the weekend—feasts that seemed to involve about forty-six more people than we were accustomed to cooking for and that would last until early the next day. You could tell it was hard for her to hang back and not make dinner for the girls, and so occasionally our mandate to save the cooking for us went unheeded. She couldn’t help herself. We’d come home to find a big dish of macaroni pie (aka homemade mac and cheese) baking away in the oven, or a platter of Chicken Pizza (aka chicken parm) on the counter, ready to be served to two excited children and two tired, grateful parents.
The best kind of night was when we’d walk in the door and see a few of our dinner plates on the counter covered with overturned pasta bowls. (She didn’t like to waste foil.) We knew this meant we were going to be eating curry and roti. Hot, spicy curries—chicken, vegetable, duck—were Devika’s signatures. She is from Guyana but of Indian descent, and ever since the day she taught Phoebe how to scoop up curry with homemade roti, Phoebe has demanded heat whenever and wherever possible—red pepper flakes on her pizza, hot sauce on her taco, the jalapeño cheese puffs, not the plain ones. When she got older, at playdates she’d break out chips and salsa for a snack and her friends would invariably come running to me, eyes wide open, mouth on fire, begging for a tall glass of ice water. Abby wasn’t quite as daring. She’d eat Devika’s curry, but she preferred the roti, the freshly made flatbread that Devika would toss in the air like she worked in a pizza parlor, then fry up in a cast-iron skillet. On extra-special nights, the roti would be stuffed with cooked yellow lentils—or dahl—which is the way Abby and I loved them. So much so that Abby would make me save a piece so she could have it for lunch the next day—with peanut butter spread across it.
Devika’s Roti
The best thing about this traditional bread is that you don’t have to worry about yeast or long rising times. You can find yellow dahl (dried split yellow peas) at better supermarkets or any Indian or Middle Eastern market. Total time: 1 hour
½ cup yellow dahl
1 cup water or vegetable broth
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 garlic clove
2 cups all-purpose flour
21/4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for frying
¾ cup warm water
Put the dahl in a medium saucepan, add water, bring to a boil, and cook for 15 minutes, until the peas are soft but still holding their shape.
Drain the dahl and set aside to cool. Once cooled, put the dahl in the work bowl of a food processor with the cumin and garlic (those mini food processors come in handy here) and pulse about ten times. You don’t want to puree it; you want the dahl to still have some texture. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; add oil, then slowly add the water, and using your hands, begin to knead the dough until it’s smooth and pillowy, much like pizza dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and set aside for about 10 minutes.
On a lightly floured surface, use a knife or pastry cutter to divide the dough into 8 or 9 pieces. Form into little balls, and flatten each into a disk.
Take the dahl and fold about 1 tablespoon into each disk, pinching the ends together and rolling back into a ball. Let each ball sit for about 2 minutes.
Using a rolling pin, roll out each ball until thin and about 4 to 5 inches in diameter. (This dough is pretty forgiving and can stand up to lots of pulling and rolling.)
Brush the surface of a large cast-iron or nonstick skillet with oil and heat over medium-high heat. Fry each disk for 5 to 10 seconds on each side. As each roti finishes cooking, fold each one in half twice and place on a plate covered with foil to keep them warm.
Serve warm with “starter curry” or eat plain with a good-quality peanut butter if you have a kid who won’t touch it otherwise.
Devika’s Chicken Pizza
Total time: 30 minutes (with store-bought sauce)
8 pan-fried Breaded Chicken Cutlets
½ cup store-bought pizza sauce (Don Pepino’s is my favorite) or homemade pizza sauce
1 8-ounce ball fresh mozzarella, sliced
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Chopped fresh basil, for garnish
Place the fried chicken cutlets in a baking dish as soon as they are finished. Top each cutlet with a thin layer of pizza sauce (to me, there’s nothing worse than gloppy tomato sauce under melted cheese, so don’t overdo it), a slice or two of mozzarella, and a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Broil for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and golden. Garnish with the basil and serve.
April 2005
You Only Get One of Those
Before Abby was born, Andy, Phoebe, and I attended a wedding on the beach in South Carolina. The day could not have been nicer—blue sky, no humidity, about seventy-five—the bride could not have looked cooler (she wore red satin shoes!), and Phoebe could not have behaved any better. She was about nine months old at the time and she sat on my lap during the entire forty-five-minute ceremony and, I could have sworn, squinted as though in deep reflection during the Khalil Gibran reading. After the bride and groom had done their kissing and everyone stood up to follow them to the reception, a friendly older guy who had been seated in f
ront of us did a little cutchy-cutchy-cooing with Phoebe, complimenting her on her stellar behavior. “Such a sweet little girl! Such big cheeks! Such a wonderful disposition!” My heart swelled as usual, until he turned to me and said, “You only get one of these, you know.”
These kinds of knowing comments were really starting to bug me—the kinds where people think their own experience with parenting is going to be exactly like everyone else’s. I wasn’t even pregnant with Abby yet, but I was offended. Just because this guy had one perfect child and one who was thirty, still living at home, drinking hard lemonade and watching Twin Peaks marathons all day and night, didn’t mean he had to put all that on me. Right?
“And I’m a pediatrician,” he added, ha ha ha ha ha, “so I know!” He laughed and put his arm around his wife, who of course also found the whole thing terribly amusing, and they went on their way.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of this scene when I was pregnant with Abby. Constantly. When she’d bounce and twirl around in my belly like a sparrow trapped in a small attic. (Had Phoebe been this nuts?) Or a year later, when Abby was four months old, and she decided two days before I was going to return to work that she was no longer going to drink from a bottle—only breast. (Had Phoebe ever refused?) Or a year after that, when she went on a solid-food strike for five weeks. (I’ll never forget Andy calling me at work to announce, in triumph, that she had eaten a piece of pear. Only to spit it up later.) For that harrowing stretch, she basically survived on PediaSure while we carted her from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what the problem was.
Dinner: A Love Story Page 12
