The casserole revisited

As I was nursing my youngest to sleep tonight, my mind started wandering (as it often does) to the blog entry I was writing last night. In one of the paragraphs, I wrote about the typical American meal being at odds with some other cuisines that I find more easily incorporates more ingredients in one bite, thus making it a heck of a lot easier to introduce lots of good veggies, meats, grains, etc. to ourselves and our little ones. And then it struck me. This is actually a VERY American idea. How could I have forgotten the casserole (or as my Midwestern relatives like to call it, the "hotdish")? After all, I practically grew up on them (okay, so maybe it has its origins in British and French cooking, but still). The casserole became popular in American cooking in the 50s when new forms of metal and glass cookware came onto the scene. By the 70s, housewives and working mothers everywhere were making casseroles as an easy "one-pot" meal that they could fit into their increasingly busy lives as they juggled new roles as mothers, wives, and double-income earners. Of course, this also coincided with the ever-popular processed foods that were entering the market: condensed soups, those over-salted and over-cooked-until-unrecognizable canned vegetables, ground meat that was becoming more and more industrialized. Needless to say, this American comfort food was becoming something rather inedible and quite unsophisticated, even with its popularity as an easy dinnertime option.

Today, magazines such as Saveur, have amazing modern-day recipes for casseroles, using fresh ingredients and organic meats from the farmers markets. I even came across an annual casserole party in Brooklyn now in its sixth year, started by a Missouri native like myself named Emily Farris who is "crazy about casseroles" and is dedicated to creating and finding original casserole recipes. She has even written a book on the subject. How cool is that. And it doesn't stop there, I also discovered another blog called Not Eating Out in New York, written by Cathy Erway, also in Brooklyn, who also wrote a book about her experience not eating out at all in New York for two years and cooking at home. She has wonderful casserole recipes, as well as many other delicious and original dishes, on her site.

So, I take it back. Perhaps we don't always need to look to the outside to gain a new perspective. Perhaps there is something wonderful in embracing one's past and making it your own. Seeing the beauty in the origin of a thing and creating something even better. That is what we all seek to do every day as individuals, partners, parents, and friends. And if you have a great idea for an original casserole, please pass it along!

Dinnertime cues

Tonight Nalin made an awesome stir fry. I think he's sort of perfected the art. He makes it slightly different every time, but the two main ingredients are pretty consistent: chicken and celery. Today he added leeks, carrots, a zucchini, and a bit of spinach. Seasoned simply with a few drops of sesame oil, soy sauce, and black pepper, and it is ready to top off the rice. This is a favorite dish around the house. Tonight, Ettu remarked, "Delicious, papa," as he spooned in large bites. And this brings me to a topic that seems to come up quite often in my conversations with friends and family: how to get kids to eat healthy and diverse food.

Prior to writing tonight, I was reading an article on the Dr. Sears website (a favorite parenting reference around here) entitled "Nutri-Tip—Ways to Introduce New Foods to Picky Eaters." It got me thinking about how lucky we've been to be able to feed our boys (3-1/2 and nearly 2) a variety of foods like the stir fry mentioned above, and they really seem to enjoy almost everything (don't get me wrong, we have had many meals or days, for that matter, when they have refused everything we have offered). Ironically, the one thing I can rarely get them to eat is macaroni and cheese. The article has some great tips on how to diversify your child's palette. It strikes me that many adults would benefit from this advice as well. My favorite line in the article is "Don't expect love at first bite." Ultimately, the goal is to make eating a satisfying and interesting experience. And we certainly can't expect our kids to eat in ways that differ drastically from our own. If we ourselves are hesitant to try new things and eat healthy ingredients, then why would we think our children would be any different?

A stir fry, like an Indian curry dish, or even a layered pasta, incorporates several ingredients in one bite. It challenges the typical American notion of the dinner plate with the meat, the vegetable, the grain/bread, and the fruit/jello all in distinct and separate locales. I've always thought that this type of dinner automatically sets a parent up for failure, as the comparisons from meat to vegetable, from bread to fruit, create conflicts in little minds as they struggle to find the one thing on the plate that they like to eat, rather than experiencing the meal as a whole. And parents often seem a bit hesitant to let their children experiment with new foods, spices, textures, assuming that their children "won't like that." Who knows? They just might surprise you.

Both of my boys did not eat much of anything solid until the age of one. With Ettu we were so excited to make our own baby food at home with all organic ingredients and a food mill. From the age of six months on he'd barely have 3-4 bites of any of it at one sitting (he never even touched the rice cereals). We were frustrated and nervous when at age one he had still hardly ventured from the Os or berries we'd put in front of him on the table. That is until we talked to our pediatrician who, upon hearing that I was still breastfeeding, told us not to worry, that he's getting what he needs and will eventually start showing more interest in food. Sure enough, at just past one year, he went straight for the mango guacamole (with cumin, garlic, and lime) Nalin had made one night for a party. He ate almost an entire bowl. From that moment on, we fed him what we were eating and have done pretty well ever since (Korean tofu soup was a favorite of Ettu's for a while). It seems that he just needed a little flavor and spice!

I know that this openness may not last forever as our children grow and become more independent, but I'm hoping that we can encourage a love and curiosity of food that will last throughout their lives. That is the ultimate goal, perhaps. When you are open to new experiences, then there tends to be a natural link to good ingredients, a new way to use spices, and hopefully a connection to a broader world around you. And cooking at home is always the healthiest option. Knowing what is going into your food is half the battle.

Bengali cauli

When we were in India earlier this month, we went to a great Bengali restaurant in Delhi with Nalin's brother called Oh! Calcutta. One of my favorite dishes on the buffet that day was a cauliflower dish in a lovely gravy made of coconut, mustard, some spice. So simple and so wonderful. So tonight, I decided to try my hand at that dish. With the limited time I had to surf the web to find a comparable recipe (with Nooa trying to sit on my lap, press the keys, and grab the mouse), I soon gave up and decided to wing it. I had taken some fish out of the freezer to have on the side, and it was already nearly 6:00, so I needed to get going. I would love to say that I recreated this dish perfectly, but that would be quite an exaggeration. It turned out pretty good, though. And the salmon curry was a nice complement. You will notice that I don't add much spice (in terms of chillies) to most of our food. The main reason for that as much as we like spicy food ourselves, we are cooking for the kids as well. Nalin and I use a lot of pickle or chillies on the side, but you can spice up the dish to your liking.

So here's what I did:

Cauliflower in yogurt, mustard, and coconut
Ingredients: olive oil, onion, cauliflower, garlic, ginger, turmeric, salt, cumin seeds, a little masala spice mix (coriander, turmeric, fenugreek, chillies, cumin, cinnamon, clove), a dash of sugar, some frozen grated coconut, mustard powder and seeds, cilantro.

• Heat olive oil in the pot and throw in some mustard and cumin seeds. Chop up a half onion, three or four cloves of garlic, and about a square inch of ginger and add that to the hot oil. Saute for a few minutes. As the onion, ginger, and garlic is cooking, cut up one small cauliflower.
• Add the cauliflower and about a tsp of kosher salt to the onion and garlic. Mix together about a half cup of yogurt with a little water and add some turmeric, a little masala spice mix (this is optional, as I just happened to have it handy; any curry/masala would work, but one with fenugreek is nice), some mustard powder if you have it (otherwise, a little prepared mustard should be fine), just a dash of sugar, and set aside.
• Once the cauliflower has browned a bit, Add the yogurt mix and about a fourth a cup of coconut (we keep a bag of frozen coconut in the fridge that you can easily defrost with a little cold water running over it in a colander). Stir well and put the lid on and cook on low for about a half hour until the cauliflower is quite tender and has soaked in all the yogurt mix.
• At the end, take off the lid and turn up the heat for about five minutes. Top with some chopped cilantro.

Salmon curry with roasted tomato

Ingredients: wild salmon, onion, garlic, ginger, roasted tomatoes (I'll talk more about this essential part of my kitchen later), lime, salt, turmeric, cinnamon, ground cumin, and a little tamarind paste dissolved in water.

• Cut up the salmon in nice sized chunks. Add about a teaspoon of turmeric, a little cinnamon, about a teaspoon of ground cumin, and some salt. Mix into the salmon and add a little lime.
• Heat the olive oil in a cast iron or enamel pot. When hot, add the salmon to brown. While the salmon is browning, cut up a half onion, a couple garlic cloves, and a little ginger. 
• When the salmon has browned a few minutes, add the onion mix and about a half cup of roasted tomato puree*. Mix in the tamarind water. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes.

I served these two dishes with rice and a little yogurt, chutney, and pickle on the side. The boys are quite fond of fish, and mixed with the cauliflower and rice, they ate everything (but the pickle and chutney). Not quite the Oh! Calcutta experience, but I guess home in Chicago with my limited Bengali food experience, it will have to do.

Sugar?

Photo by Nalin Bhutt

Well, for all the emphasis on eating well and right, it seems as if the biggest challenge is that of the sweet tooth. I always like to say that as the granddaughter of German and Danish grandmothers who were always baking cakes, cookies, and breads and treated chocolate as a next of kin, I came by it honestly. Who knows. We all love excuses. So, as the afternoon arrives, and we've been out and about at the museum, doing a bit of shopping, and driving along the lake as our little ones sleep, Nalin and I naturally gravitate toward the subject of something sweet to go with our afternoon tea. And we know someone else in the backseat who will love the idea of a cupcake from the Bleeding Heart Bakery. (Nice how you can start to blame it on your kids as you indulge yourself, right?)

Sidenote: We always prided ourselves on the fact that Ettu never liked sweets prior to the age of two, and we were pretty great at keeping the sugar at bay during these formative months. But soon he was craving those goodies just like the rest of us. And how he loves his chocolate and ice cream. Nooa is still in that lovely little bubble of indifference, even though with the second child we haven't been quite as good at the "no sugar" rule, but Ettu goes crazy for the sweets.

So, while the kids were still asleep in the back, I hopped out the corner of Damen and Belmont and picked three lovely cupcakes: one chocolate with peanut butter, one vanilla with sea salt and caramel, and one dark chocolate soaked in whiskey and stout (for Nalin, of course). When we do indulge like this, we do like to either make things at home or go to places where we know the ingredients are good. Bleeding Heart tends to use all natural and mostly organic ingredients and has quite a few vegan options. I guess as long as we can keep the high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, etc. away from us at all possible, then maybe a bit of indulgence isn't so bad. As for Ettu, he was one happy boy when he woke up from that nap. The first thing he asked for was a fork.

Scramble

Tonight I was really tired. Nalin got home from work, and we both tinkered about while the boys played and clung and scattered things here and there. We thought about getting into the car and getting some middle eastern food somewhat nearby, but somehow I wasn't in the mood. And Nooa was clinging to me and rubbing his eyes. A car ride would not be fun. So we did what we usually do on such nights with little energy and even less creativity. I decided to make a scramble for the boys, put them to bed, and then Nalin would drive out to get Indian take-out for us. A fine plan.

Scrambles are the best. Easy, nutritious, and the kids love them. And here's what you do: sauté a bit of onion, add some veggies and deli meat if you have it around (in this case, I found a nice zucchini, a handful of spinach, and a slice of Applegate Farms ham (the no nitrates in that brand is an added bonus to the great taste). Chop those all up, add to the onions sizzling away in the olive oil, and sprinkle in a bit of kosher salt. Then I mix together three eggs from my favorite place to get eggs (Midnight Sun Organics, which has a booth at our local farmers market - even in the winter), pour in a dash of milk, and add that to the pan once the veggies have started to brown just a tad. A sprinkle of cheddar and a few even stirs to finish cooking the eggs, and voila! A great little meal for the kiddies (and pretty tasty for adults as well if you make a bigger portion). The boys eat every bit and then some applesauce for dessert.

We get them ready, and the boys and I tumble into bed. A story, a song, and they are out. Can't wait for the Indian food to arrive here in just a few minutes. :)

From the mouths of "babes"

So one evening after dinner, my husband, Nalin, and eldest son, Ettu, went out for a ride while I put our youngest to bed. I had made a "one-pot" meal of lamb, lentils, and mustard greens with rice on the side, and Nalin, who adored the meal, asked Ettu if he liked the meal mommy had prepared for everyone. Ettu simply said that yes, he liked the meal, but "mommy isn't such an Indian cook." To which Nalin then asked what kind of cook he thought I was. "An English cook, papa." "What does an English cook make?" Nalin then asked. "Oh, ham, twist, and things." So, it strikes me that Ettu has coined an appropriate name for this blog on cooking and "things." Ham and twist. For all the twists and turns our lives as parents and cooks may take. Salut.