Matthew Amster-Burton's "Hungry Monkey"

The other day I was at Lucy's gymnastics class and a very nice mom I met there let me borrow a food memoir she had been reading. The author was a parent/chef writing about feeding her kids. The mom who gave it to me had abandoned the book halfway, but thought I might give it a go anyway. I got about 10 pages in before I realized it was the most boring book ever to have been penned by anyone in modern civilization. Chaucer was more boring, but not by much.

Truth is, writing about food and kids and making it interesting is harder than it looks.

Many kid/food books (and blogs for that matter) are overly earnest "Your child will gobble up this delicious TOFU SCRAMBLE. My Harry eats it every day." Too many focus on dumbing down food so kids will eat it "Here's how to make the broccoli look like a magic elfin forest. Kids love trees." And face it, many just end up making you feel like crap, "Charlie's favorite afternoon snack is kale...Charlie eats kale three times a day! His doctor says he's the healthiest kid he's ever seen!" I mean, no one with a normal, finicky kid wants to hear about how some chef's kid slurps down eel and asks for kimchi to be served at his birthday party.

Writing about kids and food in most people's hands is a big, fat bore. It is nearly overlooked by much of the food writing community, for good reason. And that's why, when someone does it well, with humor grounded in reality, it is a relief. And well-worth the read.

So, I'm telling you to by-pass all the other smiley-faced recipe books this holiday season, the ones that tell you your kid should be eating and loving Pea Popsicles (Good God) or the food memoirs from parent cooks who have one year olds who can spot a chive across the room, and pick up Matthew Amster-Burton's book, "Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater."


Hungry Monkey is about Matthew's food adventures with his young daughter, Iris. In the hands of another food writer, this could be the reading equivalent of eating a piece of dry toast, but Matthew - in between challenging but compulsively do-able recipes for such dishes as Carnitas, Pad Thai, Thai Catfish Cakes and Iris' favorite Ants on a Tree - shows his readers that even kids who have pretty adventurous eating habits can despise something as simple as soup and take serious offense to something as middle of the road as ketchup.

I don't do a lot of stumping here, and Matthew is a blog-friend, so bear in mind I am less than impartial, (I have been a big Roots and Grubs fan since I started blogging) but I think he has something special here. I think he wrote the book that other food writers should have written and didn't. I think marrying food and kids and humor is a winner for the reader because - as you do with Hungry Monkey - you'll learn a little something, pick up a few good recipes you can take back to your own kitchen, laugh out loud and wake your spouse from a deep, deep sleep and ultimately, you'll realize how absurd feeding your kids can be and how we are all in the same ridiculous, mind-numbingly frustrating boat together.

Matthew was kind enough to answer a little Q & A for me. I think you will find him joyously warped. He also uses the word "fuck" in his interviews, which I find kind of sexy.

xo YM
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1. Most people aspire to have a full fridge and shop as minimally as possible. Why do you love a bare fridge and shop like 8 times a week? That’s so quirky.

I love grocery shopping. One of the reasons I love it is that I only have one kid and I rarely take her along. But I also love going outside. I live in one of the world's most awesome neighborhoods, and every time I go out I feel like part of a story.

A bare fridge means I can make whatever I want for dinner tonight without feeling guilty about neglecting the stuff in the fridge.
Easier said than done. Earlier this week Laurie said to me, "There seem to be a lot of assorted meats in the fridge."

"Just chicken and pork," I said.

"And ham. And what's in this box?"

"Roast duck," I admitted. Oops.

2. Can you talk a little bit about giving kids decision-making power at dinner and how you tackled that with Iris? How important do you think it is that kids can choose dinner sometimes and what if they choose Ho-Ho’s?

I think Ho-Hos for dinner would be fucking hilarious. Don't Ho Hos look a lot like sushi rolls? Everyone will get a little dish of chocolate sauce and a dab of mint green whipped cream to mix in, and Iris will be required to eat her Ho Ho slices with chopsticks.

Okay, I'm convinced. Ho Hos tonight. Thanks for the idea.

Seriously, I love cooking dinner but hate deciding what to make. Iris likes making a pick every week. Everyone wins. She's never chosen something absurd, but if she did, I would totally go with it. Lately, her top picks have been pizza, burgers, udon noodles, tortilla soup, and sukiyaki.

3. What do you wish Iris would just love to eat, but doesn’t? Have you tried overtly to “cultivate” her taste or are you as laid back and cool as I suspect?

I'm extremely laid back (read: lazy). There are definitely things I wish Iris would enjoy, especially spicy things. Like, I can't make Thai curry for the whole family, because if it's not spicy it's not good, and if it is spicy, Iris won't eat it. She also hates risotto. I get away with salad by putting crispy chicken or pork on top.

I wouldn't even know where to begin if I wanted to cultivate Iris's taste in something. It would end up being a catastrophe. I'd be better off hanging my happiness on peace in the Middle East than convincing a five-year-old to eat broccoli.

4. I love that you had a little fun at the expense of Ruth Yaron’s decidedly comprehensive, but super-preachy “Super Baby Food”...How intense is that book? What’s one thing every parent should know about feeding their baby that Yaron won’t tell you or just doesn’t know?

Babies can eat mashed-up grownup food starting with their first mouthful. Just take some of that curry, noodles, casserole, or anything else chewable, smash it, and put it in your baby's mouth.

There's no such thing as baby food.

5. One thing I love about “Hungry Monkey” is how you distinguish between feeding iris and having a lunch date with her. I feel like exhaling every time I think of having a “lunch date” with the kids, not “feeding them”. I’d love to know how Iris would describe a typical lunch date with her dad.

Well, when I wrote that, I was talking about when Iris was a baby and we'd have lunch together at home. Now she's in kindergarten and has lunch with friends at school. Sometimes I get to come along, which is awesome. I love hanging out with kids, because they never complain about their jobs. They want to tell you about something that happened in class that makes no sense and may be fabricated, but who cares?

I do like to take Iris out to lunch on the weekends. The other day we went to Blue C Sushi, the conveyor belt sushi place I described in chapter 18 of Hungry Monkey. They had a new dessert item, mini-donuts.
Iris was thrilled.

By the way, I think you're hinting at the tragic flaw of my book, which is that I style myself as an expert, or at least a reporter from the trenches, but I ONLY HAVE ONE KID. Feeding one kid is easy.

Feeding two kids who are guaranteed to hate precisely the opposite foods, shit, I don't know what I'd do. Drink, I guess.

6. You put candied bacon in your Irish Oats...what else can I do with candied bacon?

Check the ads in the back of the Village Voice for ideas.

7. I remember getting a sneak look at your chapter “The Only Snack Dad in Preschool” just as I was coming upon my own tenure as a snack parent. I felt rejuvenated by your neurotic (I mean that in the nicest way) and hilarious search for the perfect class snacks. What is the best advice you can give parents who are looking to bring or pack snacks/lunch that kids might actually have a snowballs chance in hell of eating?

Here's a lunch that I guarantee your kids will finish: Ho Hos and a juice box.

Just kidding! Sort of. I struggle with this because I don't really like lunch box food myself. If I were packing myself a lunch, I'd make a bento box with rice and leftover meat and vegetables and stuff. I just dropped Iris off at school and, let's see, her lunch contains a couple of slices of ham rolled up in a flour tortilla and sliced (I call this a Ham Ho Ho...not really), a homemade cranberry-coconut cookie, and some dried honeycrisp apple chips.

8. Why? Why? Why are frozen brussel sprouts better than fresh? Is there some kernel of knowledge that has eluded me? (I went out and bought a bag of frozen to test this theory. Very scientific.)

What was the result of your experiment? Here's the deal: fresh brussels sprouts are only really good in the winter, and prepping them is a bitch. Frozen ones require no prep, are always in season, and cost less. And they taste great. Not as good as in-season sprouts from the farmers market, but very good.

9. Do you go out to eat with Iris often? Give us one 4 yr old eating out success story that you are proud of and one you and Iris are still working on?

We have a short roster of local restaurants where we'll take Iris. Any Chinese restaurant is fine, or any burger or pizza place, but the only fancy-ish restaurant we take her to is called Poppy. It's down the street from us, and they serve Indian-inspired thali meals--i.e., a bunch of little dishes of tasty stuff. Every thali includes meat or fish (or good vegetarian options), salad, pickles, hot vegetable sides, sometimes fried stuff. And our friend Dana Cree is the pastry chef and makes a mean dessert thali. It's a great place for kids because they can pick and choose among all the little dishes without being told, "Try this, and this, and this." And one thali can easily feed an adult and a child.

I never take Iris out to eat with the expectation that she'll try something new. That's a sure way to suck all the fun out of the experience for me. Have you noticed that I put a lot of emphasis on trying to make my life more fun? Me too.

10. You have the best snack philosophy ever – introduce them to the good stuff. I love that you love treats and chocolate and embrace the idea that kids like to eat them too. I also love that you do treats in the afternoon, so there is no “eat your dinner or no dessert” struggle at dinner. Please change the face of neurotic parenting and tell us why we should relax about sweets. And what, if any, constraints do you have on treats and nutrition-challenged snacks?

I think parents have three main worries about sweets: (1) Sweets will make my kid hyper. (2) Sweets will make my kid fat. (3) Other parents will make angry eyebrows at me if they think I'm letting my kid have too many sweets. Number three is probably true. The others are a load of crap. Why should you believe me? Because I'm some random guy on the Internet and I say so. (Seriously, there's more about this in the
book.)

I'm a hedonist. I have three great sensual pleasures in life: food, music, and, uh, I forget the other one (oh yeah, it's the one Iris is allowed to become interested in after I'm dead; see how cool and laid-back I am?). As far as it's possible in this society, I think I have a pretty uncomplicated relationship with food. Iris does, too, and I'd like her to enjoy that for as long as possible. You'd think that would be a recipe for unrestrained gorging on Ho Hos. It's not.

11. How was the process for you while writing this book? Anything totally surprise you? Things you would do again? Or differently?

The irony of every book about the author's family is that the author had to spend long hours away from the family in order to write it. I'm not looking forward to that part when I write another book.

I have to put in a plug for Scrivener, the software I used to write the book. It's a Mac word processor specifically for authors: it doesn't work well for short documents, but for writing a 75,000 word book, it's irreplaceable.

12. Any plans for another book?

I'd like to write another book, but I haven't had the right idea yet, and a sequel to Hungry Monkey isn't in the offing. Sorry!
(Alternatively: you're welcome!)

Matthew Amster-Burton writes for Culinate.com, Mint.com, Seattle Magazine, and the Seattle Times. A former contributing writer for Gourmet, he has been featured in the Best Food Writing anthology repeatedly. Find him online at rootsandgrubs.com.

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Latkes. With 20 Four Year Olds.

I'm not totally a fan of those blogs that break down every step of a recipe in pictures. It's nice - and reassuring as you can check your progress along the way through a recipe - but these step-by-step "do as I do" methods seem redundant and I don't know, controlling. Call me a rebel.

For me, cooking is not a reassuring, measured step-by-step process with one way to do it and all kinds of safe buttons and trap doors to keep one from going over the edge. Cooking is spurting, splattering oil, slashing knife blades, the sound of cool water running over the backs of plump vegetables. It is mistakes and blunders and knife wounds and burnt forearms.

It is the thrill of the perfect cassoulet and the agony of a full dining room of Australians and a Pavlova that looks like it has been run over by a postal truck. It is looking in your fridge and not knowing what the hell you are going to cook, and knowing that you just invited the neighbors for lunch, but undaunted you pull out five lame ingredients and somehow turn that into the best meal of the week.


It's about cooking above your station and figuring out you can create something much more amazing than you thought. It's also about stupifying blunders, like dry, over-done pork, fallen souffles, a dash of salt instead of a dash of sugar, cookies left in the oven until they burn to little black crisps, kitchen walls covered in pureed asparagus after the blender top flies off, a house full of people and dinner on the table 45 minutes too late, lamb that is cooked exactly as long as you think it should be cooked and instead, unfathomably, it is blood-soaked rare, despite what the meat thermometer tells you.


It's also about that last minute save, the sauce that you nearly threw in the trash because it was leaning toward the inedible, that you gave a second chance and lovingly cajoled and prodded and eased back into itself, to form what it should have been all along.

Cooking is a game of chance. A surprise. It is magic, with the big ta-da moment. An extreme sport. And this is why I think kids like it so much. It fits with their sense of danger, abandon, mischief and unmitigated passion.

So, you see here, the kids from Lucy's pre-k class.


Fearless little chefs, wielding box graters and dodging flying drops of boiling oil to make their creations, warriors all of them, and athletes, magicians, escape artists, inventors, adventurers to boot.

This time we made Latkes.





Tomorrow, we round out Hanukkah with Matzo Ball Soup. Next week, we'll be doing two days of Xmas Cookie Hell. I imagine sprinkles in hair and up noses.

I got this Latke recipe from Smitten Kitchen and I am printing it here nearly verbatim. But it's simple enough that you can eyeball the ingredients and fly free and loose just a little, which is great because that is how kids like to cook. Be damned, quality control. No measuring cups, just lots of living dangerously. Footloose, baby.

We only had a hot plate at our disposal and the oil never really got as hot as I would've hoped. The Latkes crisped up on the outside, but not as much as I would've liked before soaking up a little oil. But considering our second rate equipment, they turned out pretty darn good. And who doesn't love a little extra oil?


By the way, when I made a test batch at home in my very hot, cast iron pan, they crisped up beautifully. I served them to David topped with a poached egg, creme fraiche and chives. I had mine with a slice of Nova, creme fraiche and capers. Edie ate hers with ketchup. Lucy tried them, but decided they tasted too much like french fries and this month we hate french fries. She had egg whites lightly fried in butter.

But I had to ask myself...Why do I only make these once a year? They are awesome brunch food. Even for a Catholic girl.

xo YM

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Latkes (from Smitten Kitchen)

Ingredients

1 large baking potato (1 pound), peeled
1 small onion (4 ounces), peeled
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Peanut oil, for frying

Preparation

On a box grater, coarsely shred the potato and onion. (Grating onions can be pretty pungent, so you'll be doing this for the kids). Wrap in a cheesecloth sling, and squeeze as dry as possible. Let stand for 2 minutes, then squeeze dry again. (Kids really love the shredding and the squeezing).

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, egg, salt and pepper together. Stir in the potato onion mixture until all pieces are evenly coated.

In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil until shimmering. Drop packed teaspoons of the potato mixture into the skillet and flatten them with the back of a spoon. Cook the latkes over moderately high heat until the edges are golden, about 1 1/2 minutes; flip and cook until golden on the bottom, about 1 minute. Drain on paper towels. Repeat with the remaining potato mixture, adding more oil to the skillet as needed.

Do ahead: You can keep latkes warm in the oven for an hour or more, if you’re waiting for stragglers to arrive. Cooked, they keep well in the fridge for a day or two, or in the freezer, well wrapped, for up to two weeks. Reheat them in a single layer on a cookie sheet in a 400 degree oven until they’re crisp again. Bonus: If you undercooked them a bit or didn’t get the browning on them you’d hoped for, you can compensate for this in the oven.

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Operation Christmas Cookie Hell

So, it occurs to me that we know only one neighbor near the country house and that it's about time we met the people around us. The country is a quiet, desolate, dangerous, wild animal-dwelling place. I need re-enforcements.

So, if I'm going to scream for almighty help when a crazed, rabid raccoon corners me in the garage and tries to eat my left ovary for a snack, I want people to come running. Best to get on the neighbors good side from the get-go. Lest someone need to stand over my withering, blood-spurting body and give me CPR as I utter my last, choked words through all the gurgling in my throat, "My husband made me...buy this...damned c-c-country house".

Thus, Operation Christmas Cookie. An effort to woo my new neighbors.

This strategic operation also doubles as a project with the kids. And what a project it is. Making Christmas cookies is an unendurable act of torture. The CIA should retire that tiresome water boarding they do and focus on making convicted terrorists make dough, let it set, roll it out, cut the cookie shapes, decorate with sprinkles, bake and then, make scratch frosting, after they've been forced to go to five supermarkets searching desperately for the ever-illusive mernegue powder, and then delicately drizzle said frosting on the cookies, so that the little trees look they have wafts of snow on their branches.

You want these guys to give up Bin Laden? Well, I have four words for you: HOMEMADE CHRISTMAS COOKIE HELL.


That said, the end product turned out pretty great. But still, not so great as to justify all that work. You bakers out there, I am in awe of you. Really.


And we made labels.


And bought pretty boxes.


And pasted the labels on.


See? This stuff is grueling. I have no idea how Martha Stewart does this.

I packed up the kids and the boxes into the red wagon and we went house to house offering strangers our cookies and begging them to call 911 if ever they hear screaming from inside our house.


This whole endeavor, this wrestling with dough and sprinkles, cost me, like 36 hours of my life. And I still have six mounds of dough in the fridge, ready to be fashioned into my next big idea - which sounded pretty good when I dreamed it up, but now seems like driving hot wooden spikes through my eyeballs and into my brain - which is, gifts of cold, hard dough in wax paper, tied up with ribbon like a tootsie roll, with packets of sprinkles and little Xmas cookie cutters.

I am a glutton for punishment.

xo YM

PS: If you get a chance, head over to visit the very talented Jennifer Perrillo and donate to her cookie campaign to end childhood hunger, "The 12 Days of Sharing Virtual Cookie Jar". Here's her post on what inspired her to get the cookie jar started and how you can participate. Although I haven't gotten a chance to meet her yet, Jennie's reputation is golden in these parts and if she's involved, it's a good cause. Also, there is still time to post your own cookie recipe and help get the word out.

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Artichokes on Toast with Ricotta, Garlic & Parmesan

Just to recap from my last post, we did boycott Thanksgiving and had a very low key holiday this year. My plan for complacency and family togetherness worked. Bwah ha ha..I am an evil genius.

We played old maids and go fish, baked a rather imperfect cinnamon-laden pie, sewed doll clothes, filled and put out all the bird feeders, which the birds and squirrels nearly finished in like two days. Birds are pigs.

We did some embroidery and started work on the girls playroom. I played with my new camera and irritated everyone with my picture taking until they refused to smile and put sheets of paper over their faces and now I have a hundred pictures with frowns, googly faces and serious poses.


We also babysat "Peek" and "Boo", Edie's class pets...



That's right, they're hermit crabs. And I spent half the five days, leaning into their terrarium wondering why they weren't moving and imagining having to tell Edie's teachers that I killed the class pets. I spent so much time poking them and bathing them trying to get them to move around that I'm pretty sure they are relieved as hell to be back at school.

Crabs are stressful, man. That's all I'm sayin'.


Now, I'm ready for Christmas. Sometimes Thanksgiving wipes me out. Not this year. I'm pumped.

I am making all the ornaments for the New Paltz Christmas tree. We are baking Christmas cookies this weekend and making the rounds to all the neighbors in the country to introduce ourselves with takeout boxes filled with homemade goodies. And I have a great gift idea for the kids in Lucy's class, teachers, my cooking class, which I will share after I shoot them. Okay, after I actually make them.

David will take the kids to the woods to get our tree for the country house. He will have a saw. God love him, he is so freakin' butch.

And there will be holiday-themed cooking with the kids in Lucy's class. There is the tree in Rockefeller Center. Our tree in the NYC apartment and the little mini-tree with pink lights and pink balls in their room. There is much decorating to do. And somewhere we must have a sleigh ride, with horses and jangling bells. And snow. Thick, puffy, billowing, cottony layers of it. I insist.


I feel light, and ready and excited. Santa is coming. We all still believe. And it feels magical.

xo YM
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And I have a delicious winter snack or light supper for you to kick us off...for those nights you want something filling without all that fussing and sitting at the straight back chairs in the dining room...

I was puttering through Michaels looking at their 100 kinds of Christmas Cookie Sprinkles and wondering whether David would care that I was going to blow $100 on sprinkles and cookie cutters, when I spied a Martha Stewart Cookbook - no recall on the exact title - but I happened past this recipe as I was flipping pages and thought it would be a perfect casual supper with a salad or paired with an assortment of cheeses or charcuterie.

As I suspected we ate it and the cheese and a sizeable chunk of duck liver pate with a bottle of wine, standing around the kitchen, leaning on the counters and telling stories about our day. It was quite nice. I adapted this a lot from Martha's original recipe - forgive me Martha - but I believe both are along the same vein.


Artichokes on Toast with Ricotta, Garlic & Parmesan

Ingredients

2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced thin
8 slices rustic bread, about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick
2 olive oil for drizzling
One 12-ounce jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained but moist and chopped
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
Shaved Parmesan cheese
Parsley, for granish

Directions

Thinly slice 1 garlic clove, and set aside. Rub the other over the bread slices and then, slice that thinly as well.

Brush both sides of bread with olive oil. Toast slices in a skillet over medium-high heat until golden and crisp on both sides. Or you can toast these in the oven or on a grill. Transfer to a serving platter, and set aside.

Heat a tablespoon olive oil or so in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and artichoke hearts. Saute until golden, 3 to 4 minutes. Set aside.

Spread ricotta onto toast. Season with salt and pepper. Spoon artichoke mixture onto ricotta. Season again with salt and pepper. Shave fresh parmesan over the top of each. Drizzle with olive oil. Finish in the broiler for about a minute or two. Garnish with chopped parsley.

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