A while back I posted an amusing video entitled, “Would You Give Your 2-Year-Old a Chef’s Knife?” The creator of that video, J.M. Hirsch, actually did give his toddler a chef’s knife, compelling evidence of the importance he places on teaching children about food from an early age. (And of the disregard he has for his child’s fingers. Just kidding! As you’ll read below, there’s never been a single knife-related mishap.)
Hirsch is Food Editor for the Associated Press as well as the author of High Flavor Low Labor, a cookbook promising flavorful but simple weeknight meals. As someone who cooks a family dinner at least five nights a week, I couldn’t get my hands on the book fast enough. My son and I made a delicious miso-wasabi glazed salmon and I could see that Hirsch’s cooking philosophy is very much in tune with my own – lots of bold ethnic flavors in otherwise pretty simple dishes. I also love his emphasis on the importance of family dinners and involving kids in the cooking process.
J.M. Hirsch was kind enough to let me interview him for today’s Lunch Tray:
TLT: Tell us a little about the philosophy behind High Flavor Low Labor. What do you mean by “blunt force cooking?”
JMH: When it comes to cooking, as much as I love it I don’t have a whole lot of time for it. I also don’t have much talent for it (I’m an editor, not a chef). So I let high-flavor ingredients do the heavy lifting for me. My theory is that if food tastes great before it goes into the pot, I don’t need to work as hard or as long for it to taste great when it comes out. So I rely on ingredients with big, bold flavors, things like balsamic vinegar, feta cheese, soy sauce.
A good example of this is my garlic-lime steak with avocado salsa. You make a mouth puckeringly good marinade out of olive oil, lime juice and zest, vinegar, garlic and pepper. Half of it becomes a marinade for the steak, the other half is tossed with chopped avocado to make a salsa. The result is a deliciously savory steak topped with a salsa that is at once peppery, tangy and creamy. The whole thing is done in under 30 minutes. But the flavors are so deep and so satisfying, it tastes like you put a whole lot more effort into it.
And I call it blunt force cooking because I just can’t do nuanced cooking. I use flavors that bash me over the head.
TLT: Do you manage to have weeknight meals with your family most nights? If so, what do you see as the benefits of weeknight dining as a family?
JMH: We eat together every night. Making this happen has required making some changes. Prior to having a child, we ate at 8
p.m. or even later. That doesn’t fly with a 6-year-old. So now we eat between 6-6:30 p.m. It also means I have needed to get creative in my cooking. As my son gets older, he gets involved in more activities outside the home. And for reasons I can only assume are meant to torture parents, these activities always seem to be scheduled at the exact time I need to be making dinner. I talk a lot about this in my blog — how to cook dinner when you’re not home. I wish I could say the slow cooker is my secret weapon, but I just can’t seem to make it work for me. So I’ve learned to love slow-roasted meats and other meals I can pop in the oven while running around with my son.
Which is to say, family meals for a busy family are not easy. But I totally think they are worth the trouble. It’s an opportunity to talk, to slow down, to catch up. And there is real value in simply being together, eating together, even when nothing of any great importance is said.
TLT: What would you say to someone who thinks he/she is just too busy to pull off family weeknight dining?
JMH: If I can do it, anyone can. My wife and I have demanding full-time jobs. I take care of my son and his many activities, take care of the house, the cats, the bills, the telephone calls… All the many things that intrude on our family time and our ability to get everyone to the table. But I’ve made it a priority. Which isn’t to say I can make a lot of time for it. But I don’t believe you need a lot of time to have a good family meal. And I also don’t think you need to rely on processed food or take-out.
My trick is to simply build meals around staples — grains, seafood, meat and veggies. I take a couple of those each night, add some high-flavor ingredients and call it dinner. Not every meal is a stunner, but at least it will be good food. Real food.
Here’s a good example. On nights when I’ve got nothing going my way, I boil up some whole-grain pasta. A few minutes before it’s done, I add a few cups of shelled edamame. Just before draining, I set aside ¼ cup of the cooking water. Then I drain it and return the cooked pasta and edamame to the pot and add some diced cooked meat (I use deli meat, cooked chicken, leftover steak, whatever). Then I grate in some cheese (whatever I have on hand). Then I season with whatever moves me (lately I’ve been all about the Thai red curry paste, but I’m also a big fan of a tiny splash of hot sauce – heightens the flavors of the dish without adding real heat). I toss the whole thing together, adding a bit of the starchy cooking water to help form a sauce. That’s it. Dinner in 20 minutes from pantry staples and leftovers. I probably wouldn’t serve it at a dinner party, but really, how many of us have the time for dinner parties these days, anyway? It was a fast, healthy, affordable and satisfying meal.
TLT: I know you believe in involving your son in your cooking — why do you think that’s important? How do you think he’s benefiting from being in the kitchen with you?
JMH: I’ve involved my son in the cooking since he came home from the hospital. Really. The week he was born, I took him on a sniffing tour of the kitchen, holding up all the spices and coffees and everything for him to smell.
Maybe that’s a bit crazy, but the point is that children have lost touch with food — what real food is, where it comes from, how it is produced and by whom, and what it takes to get it from the farm to the table. Which doesn’t mean every meal should involve a lecture about sustainable agriculture and a reading from Michael Pollan’s latest tome. But the simple act of teaching a child the difference between cinnamon and nutmeg, or how to chop an onion or peel a potato, introduces them to the idea that real food has value and requires effort, that it is something to care about. It also gives them a sense of inclusion, responsibility and ownership in a vital part of family life.
My son is 6 now and he has been doing “real” cooking with me since he was 2. That’s when I gave him his first knife — a 5-inch chef’s knife. Believe it or not, it can be done safely. Parker has never cut himself or me in any way. These days he even sautés for me and a few weeks ago we made hard candy together (which involved him bringing sugar to a 310 F boil).
And I don’t limit his involvement in the cooking to actual cooking. I also involve him in the shopping. Every week we pick out something new to try. We make a special event out of tasting it. It’s a great way to get kids to think beyond their usual foods. They go into the experience knowing they don’t have to like the food, or even eat more than one bite. My son loves this and is always asking if we have new things to try.
TLT: Do you think your son is less picky/more adventurous than most kids due to his involvement in preparing meals? Was that one of the goals of bringing him into the kitchen?
JMH: My son is a pretty adventurous eater. He loves sushi and chicken mole and Ethiopian food. And he is really good about trying new things. We have the one-bite rule. You have to try it, but you don’t have to like it. Food is such a big part of my life, it was really important to me that he be willing to embrace lots of new ingredients and flavors. One of my proudest moments was taking him to a James Beard-winning restaurant for a four-hour 10-course meal when he was 5. He did awesome, eating everything from red wine-braised beef to crispy fried duck skin.
That said, he’s still a 6-year-old. He’s not a fan of vegetables. And yes, that does drive me nuts. But as with so many aspects of raising children, you pick your battles. He loves brown rice, whole-grain breads and pastas, gobbles fruit of nearly any variety by the pound, and could eat his way through just about any ethnic restaurant. I can live with that compromise for now.
TLT: You candidly admit in your book that having a kid in the kitchen isn’t always easy. What are some tips you have to keep little ones involved — but also out from underfoot — as you prepare dinner?
JMH: Involving your kids in the cooking won’t always be fun and easy. But what about raising children is ALWAYS fun and easy? We do it because it’s important. We do it because the only way to teach children healthy eating habits is to teach them what real food is and what is involved in getting it to the table.
But I also find that involving my son in the cooking can help me. If I give him something to mix or chop or stir, I can be doing something else. It also means I don’t have to worry about what he’s doing or have him hounding me the whole time to do something else.
One trick I have is to let Parker make a spice rub. I have assembled a box of spices and seasonings for him to play with _ castoffs from my own spice cabinet, dollar store finds, etc. He is allowed to mix these as he sees fit. I then try to use his mix in the meal. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. You control what goes into the box, so you know in advance the sorts of flavor combinations the kids can come up with. Sometimes I use his mixture as a dry rub for meat. Other times I toss it with oil and cubed butternut squash that I then roast. I’ve never had a bad dinner using this trick. In fact, there’s even one recipe in my cookbook — child’s play pork tenderloin –that was the result of one of Parker’s spice mixes.
TLT: Is there anything else you’d like to tell Lunch Tray readers about cooking with kids and/or your cookbook?
JMH: Just that real food for real families doesn’t have to be hard. I rarely get take-out. I rarely use processed food. I cook dinner from scratch almost every night. It’s not only possible, but it can taste great. And it’s no great secret. I let the ingredients do the work for me. I flavor the basics – I’m a big fan of boneless, skinless chicken breasts — with bold ingredients that effortlessly add tons of flavor. It keeps my inner foodie happy. It keeps my family fed. It keeps the food on my table real. And it’s all in keeping with my crazy busy life.
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A huge thank you to J.M. Hirsch for coming by The Lunch Tray! You can check out High Flavor Low Labor — and a video that includes little Parker mixing up his spice rub — here.
June says
Some cool ideas here. I like the avocado salsa. But this column seems to be implying that having family dinners during the week is unusual. Now, I don’t have teenagers, yet, so maybe this will change, but we always have family dinner. Don’t most people? If not, what do they do? Or am I living in Brooklyn LaLa land and the rest of America is different.? (Of course, sometimes our family dinners consist of a simple salad with goat cheese – kid’s favorite – and scrambled eggs —trust me, I’ve taken no muss, no fuss to a new level – and here, I’ll include the latest super easyrecipe my kids love.) Chop up sweet potatoes and onions. Put them in a dish along with garlic cloves. Toss with olive oil, salt, paper. Cover. Stick in oven at 400 for about 45 minutes. That’s it.
Love this blog, in case you haven’t figured that.
bettina elias siegel says
I hate to say it, June, but maybe you are living in Brooklyn LaLa land!
Among people I know, my family is in the clear minority in that all four of us have dinner together every night. For many people, one spouse works too late to make it home for dinner, so the other one might give the kids a “kid dinner” and then eat with the other spouse when he/she gets home. Another BIG issue is team sports (which my kids show no interest in at the moment) which disrupts family mealtime with night time practices and games. And then there are all the other activities kids get involved in that can run into dinner time or create conflicting schedules — one kid is home, others not, and everyone just grabs things from the kitchen when they can.
I would never judge other families because I think these obstacles are real and often can’t be prevented, especially the demands of a job that keeps you at an office late. But I do feel (and it sounds like you probably agree) that a family dinner – even when you can pull it off only one or two nights a week – is HUGE for family cohesion, communication, and teaching things like manners and conversational skills. You should give yourself a pat on the back that this is something you take for granted!
And thank you for loving TLT! 🙂
Bri says
He’s my new hero. His household sounds so much like mine, but mine on the really good nights — it seems like he’s way more together than we even dream of being! I do love the “smell” tour though — that’s something I’ve done with the boys quite a bit, albeit not from the newborn stage. Any time they’re helping me in the kitchen and there’s something really smell-worthy — cinnamon, a lemon or orange to be cut, fresh herbs on the counter — I hold out those ingredients and encourage them to smell. We talk about what they are, what they smell like, how we eat them. It’s a simple thing that really opens up the kids’ perspectives on using all their senses to experience food.
Timmi says
Great post. I have friends ask me how I got rid of my baby weight so fast. Easy I cook everything we don’t eat out but once a month if we’re lucky. They say they can’t cook or it takes too much time, No it takes about 20-30 minutes with some advance thinking and planning.
Timmi says
@ June our family growing up didn’t have family meals together EVER! Except on holidays. Yea my dad cooked food for us but then we dished it out ourselves and at in front of the tv. Yes an American sin. Also when my husband and I lived in a very small house starting out we didn’t have any room for a table (well we did but it was extra counter space) and the extra stress of trying to clear it to eat together wasn’t worth it. We could have gathered around a coffee table but we didn’t have one of those either, so we ate on the floor or the couch or I ate standing by the counter alot. Our daughter ate in the highchair then a booster chair with attached tray then we made space for a small play table so she could eat there. We have since moved to a bigger house and now we eat together as a family almost every night at a table (LOVE the bigger space!)
June says
Ah–I guess since I am the only parent- and the kids are still too young to fend for themselves, we have no choice except for family dinner. (Gosh, truthfully, I am darn tired of family dinner! Or rather of being the maker of it. Gotta get that boy of mine cooking more – oh wait, too much darn homework! Kvetch, kvetch) And yeah, I guess most people here I know do eat with their kids, or at least one parent eats with the kids. And, to be perfectly honest, my kids to eat at dinner at their friends’ houses at least once a week (does it count if they have a family dinner with someone else’s family?)
Now, I’m off to make the kids smell nutmeg in hopes that they will make me something good with it.
Maggie says
Chef’s knife not necessary – I’d love it if school age students could maneuver tongs or spoons (in the meal lines) to serve themselves!
We don’t have children, husband and I do eat while watching the news or TV. I’d prefer conversation…it’s a compromise. We rarely eat out – I cook on weekends and we have “planned leftovers” and freezer meals for the week. It allows each of us to pick and choose a bit as to what we want.
jenna Food w/ Kid Appeal says
i often get strange looks from people when they’d hear me talk about my preschooler and his knife skills. i can’t boast that we’ve never had a kiddo finger cut, but then again, I cut my fingers in the kitchen on occasion, so it’s par for the course. kids get injured riding bikes and playing ball, why all the nervousness around kitchen utensils?
i came down stairs from snoozing in on Sat. morning to see my boys munching perfectly quartered apples as they watched cartoons. i thought about reminding my six year old that he needs an adult in the kitchen when he cuts hard fruit, but then dismissed the notion. I’ve taught him how to use knifes and i trust him with them. if there was an accident, we can drive to urgent care. no need for him to get the message that the kitchen is a dangerous place for kids.
J. M. it’s not too late for your kiddo to fall in love with veggies! as he ages some of his tastebuds will go away, making some of those bitter flavors more tolerable. as a recovering picky eater, i’ve collected lots of evidence that kids do like and can learn to like veggies. http://tinyurl.com/36ah7ua
bettina elias siegel says
While I hope JM reads Jenna’s link and it helps his son accept veggies, I for one was glad to hear there are kids out there like mine – diving into Ethiopian yet spurning the carrot stick. 🙂
Janet Mitchell says
Your article states miso is widely available at most grocers. I haven’t been able to find it in Fresno, Ca. Can you help me find it?
Janet
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Janet. Do you have a Whole Foods near you or an Asian market? Either will have several types to choose from.