Cooking for Your Kids | Joshua David Stein
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Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Joshua David Stein: My name is Joshua David Stein, and I'm the author of Cooking for Your Kids: At Home with the World's Greatest Chefs.
Suzy Chase: Before diving into this book, I'd like to thank my new sponsor, Bloomist. Bloomist creates and curates simple, sustainable products that inspire you to design a calm, natural refuge at home. I'm excited to announce they've just introduced a new tabletop and kitchen collection that's truly stunning. Surround yourself with beautiful elements of nature when you're cooking, dining and entertaining, and make nature home. Visit www.Bloomist.com and use the code Cookery20 to get 20% off your first purchase, or click the link in the show notes. Now, on with the show.
Suzy Chase: I thought this cookbook would be the perfect choice for kicking off season seven, because for many of us, our kids were at home doing remote schooling last year, and frankly, every meal I made for my son seemed like a blur. You wrote in the book, "Sometimes the kitchen isn't a refuge." And I'm starting to get excited about cooking again and getting back to a normal routine. How about you?
Joshua David Stein: I feel like I have a bit of a complicated situation, or I don't even know if it's complicated. My kids homeschooled last year, we took them out of the school system, but I also share custody with them with their mom so a lot of the daily cooking falls to her. But I'm very happy, extremely happy, that they will be occupied by someone else until three, because for the last, it feels like, two years, I would just be picking them up at 1:00 PM every day, and yeah, responsible for lunch and dinner those days. I have to say, even as I was writing this book, I was also ordering so much from restaurants and spending so much money, or at home trying and failing to make things that they like, that just to have a little more breathing room, even if it's just until the afternoon, I feel like is a godsend.
Suzy Chase: Oh yeah. I totally get the trying and failing, because I was trying to make restaurant style meals and it was a total fail.
Joshua David Stein: Yeah. I feel like as someone who loves food, which I do, and I love cooking, I mostly love food more than cooking to be honest.
Suzy Chase: Same.
Joshua David Stein: But I would put so much of my own ego into the meals. I'm not afraid to admit it, I live by the New York Times cooking section. You'd be reading something which sounds so delightful, and whatever, it has fresh herbs and, I don't know, even if it's a sheet pan thing, it sounds sophisticated. In my mind, I'm like, "I want this life where I make this and my kids eat it," and all they want is pizza without the sauce. It's really humbling and has taken many moons to be appropriately humbled to realize it's not really what I want to make and what I want my life to be, but kind of what it is.
Suzy Chase: You write so beautifully in this book about how exhausting parenting is, but on the other hand, it's full of rewarding moments. The wonderful thing about this cookbook is that it's not just merely a collection of recipes you can make for your kids. I felt like I was getting to know these chefs from a different perspective as a parent and I felt like they put a lot of thought into each recipe they contributed to this cookbook. I'd love to hear about your system of collecting recipes from the world's greatest chefs, which I love, and how you chose these specific chefs.
Joshua David Stein: I hadn't been in the US editor of Where Chefs Eat, which is at Phaidon, and my job was to find all the chefs for North and South America. I had wonderful colleagues who were doing the same for Europe and Asia, and glaringly, not so much Africa in this edition. I had a spreadsheet of chefs and contacts that I knew. In that book, each chef recommends eight different restaurants, so you end up with this massive global database. Where I started was clearly they had to be parents, ideally they'd be parents of youngest children, teenagers is fine, but not grown children, and it was important to have geographic diversity, very important. So many of these books end up being the United States and then Asia, I find, and Europe, so making sure it was geographically diverse, and making sure that it wasn't all men, which I think was so salient in this instance because we're talking about how to raise a kid and one of the reasons why there are fewer women in fine dining, although I'll get into the fact that not all of these are fine dining restaurants, but one of the reasons why is because the punishing work-life balance doesn't really allow for childbearing. It was important to me to get an equal distribution between men and women. The book is laid out and there's 50 entries, I would say entities. I think there's something like 16 couples and then the rest is equally divided by men and women. I wanted to go beyond the traditional, I'm using air quotes, best restaurants. When you use a metric like that, there's already inequality enshrined in that list. Going beyond that, looking at additional sources, expanding the notion of what a great chef is. It's not all about the stars, because I also think that there's so many voices which are not solicited when you use such a narrow definition. Basically, what I did is I came up with this ideal list, geographical spread, gender, race, and built my list that way. Then in certain areas like, "Oh, I need a United States chef," if someone dropped out, then I would have a replacement. But I was really happy with the contributors and very, very grateful. I did interviews with each of them to talk about that other stuff which shows up in the cookbook as in the headnotes sometimes and then in sidebars, which is a non-romantic idea and non-romantic advice and just the reality of what it's like to raise kids as a professional who works six nights a week. That's how everything came together.
Suzy Chase: I love that, because I find in the food world, everything is so romanticized, like, "I just whipped this together," and that's not the reality of it. The reality of parenting is it's hard, and it's been really hard these past couple of years.
Joshua David Stein: Other than doing cookbooks, I was for a long time the editor-at-large at a parenting website called Fatherly. I really think that that romantic aspirational model, although it might inspire some people, for me, it really is demoralizing because that's not what my life is like. You already feel like a failure when it's not working out, so to feel like a failure because it's not working out and then to feel like you are alone, that there's other people for whom it's just effortless, is really hard. My approach is always I want to be of service, I want this to be content which is useful, but it also models the fact that even the people who you think should not struggle with this, they also struggle with this. I hope to give parents recipes, but also show them that they're not alone in struggling.
Suzy Chase: You just said a little bit ago that it's not all high-end restaurants in this book, but there's no lack of flavor and sophistication in these recipes.
Joshua David Stein: Flavor and sophistication are not Coterminous with fine dining.
Suzy Chase: It's funny, because that's what we're kind of raised to believe.
Joshua David Stein: Yes, but erroneously.
Suzy Chase: Yeah. How did the food photography work? Was it submitted by the chefs?
Joshua David Stein: Oh man. Yeah, many took pictures, some didn't. I ended up shooting a lot of them in my apartment, which I hope no one will be the ... Well, I don't know, maybe I hope someone will be this obsessive. But you can see repeated countertops, where I'd go over to friend's houses and shoot on their counter. One of the shots is on my floor because it kind of looks like a cutting board. Then, in cases where I couldn't shoot it, they didn't provide anything, so I did all the illustrations too. I would draw what I thought what the dish was.
Suzy Chase: That's hilarious.
Joshua David Stein: I mean, and I think the genesis of that clearly was financial consideration on behalf of Phaidon, but I think it also actually worked in this specific case because it does feel almost like a DIY project that I did in the past year while I was stuck at home, making the dishes, shooting them, illustrating the manuscript, writing the headnotes, the recipes, the sidebar, all that stuff was just me in my bedroom over a period of months.
Suzy Chase: You wrote in the book, "We become who we are around the tables of our childhood," and you also talk about something called the lunchbox moment. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joshua David Stein: Yeah, those are like two separate things. I feel like the moments that I had around my family's dinner table or breakfast table, same table actually, were very formative for me in the sense that that's when my sister, my mom and I, before we all went off to school or work, and it was a touch point for our day. This was kind of like a moment where we would argue and converse and chat and joke and connect. As for the lunchbox moment, that's actually a term which is used by a lot of Asian-Americans for when they go to school and they open up their lunchboxes, which have gimbap or whatever it is that their parents made them, and they're sort of shamed or shunned in some way by the other kids. It's that opening of the lunchbox and realizing they're not the same as the other kids, lunchboxes that can have a very profound effect on a lot of kids. A lot of chefs have talked about it. I'm actually finishing up a children's book called Lunch From Home, which is all about this lunchbox moment, and it features four chefs who go through it and how they deal with it.
Suzy Chase: I'm so curious to hear about quark pancakes on page 36 from Vladimir Mukhin of White Rabbit in Moscow, he has an 11-year-old and a five-year-old. What is quark?
Joshua David Stein: Quark is basically soured milk and then you drain the curds into a cheese. It's kind of like cottage cheese or cream cheese, like a farmer's cheese.
Suzy Chase: Okay.
Joshua David Stein: In Russian, it's called tvorag, if you see it at the store, T-V-O-R-A-G. I mean, Vladimir, the White Rabbit, he was on Chef's Table and he's talking about how he uses moose lips and all of these very far out Russian ingredients. Then I love it that he just makes his kids basically cheese pancakes, and the other one is like zucchini fritters or something like that.
Suzy Chase: Speaking of pancakes, you have few memories as a child in the kitchen, but you fondly remember your father's pancakes.
Joshua David Stein: Yes. I used to marvel that he would make snails out of them, you know? Now that I realize it's just one big pancake and then like two little tails, but I really loved when he made pancakes. The other thing, which I don't know if I wrote about, it's in the book actually, one of the recipes Brooke Williamson recommends, is we used to call it a gashouse egg. It's butter-covered bread, you put it in the pan, you cut out a circle in the center, you break an egg into it. I don't know what you called it.
Suzy Chase: That's called egg in a hole.
Joshua David Stein: Yes. Some people call it egg in a hole, we call it gashouse egg. There are all of these other names for it. That was a moment of enlightenment as well, that we all basically did the same thing but we all called it something else and not everyone called it a gashouse egg. I don't even know why we called it a gashouse egg.
Suzy Chase: I know, where'd you grow up?
Joshua David Stein: Pennsylvania.
Suzy Chase: Wow. It might be a Pennsylvania thing.
Joshua David Stein: But I think gashouse egg may be an Indiana thing, because I know my grandparents who lived in Indiana called it that too. Or maybe it's just a weird Stein thing and doesn't exist outside of the house.
Suzy Chase: I think we need to Google that.
Joshua David Stein: We do, but not now.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, not now.
Joshua David Stein: Later.
Suzy Chase: Talk a little bit about how breakfast is the perfect place to gently expand palates.
Joshua David Stein: As an adult and a restaurant critic, I find it so frustrating how breakfast is so standardized. You go to a restaurant with an otherwise innovative chef and it's still just omelets and eggs and toast and bacon and whatever. But for a kid, I think you can use something like eggs, which scrambled are just like a medium, to carry forth other flavors, whether it's exploring spice, like Asma Khan's recipe, even something like lox, you have your base layer, which is comforting and known and then you can add incrementally innovation or experimentation or something new on top of that, but you have, at its heart, something that's familiar.
Joshua David Stein: I think kids do well when they're guided towards experimenting as opposed to thrown into the deep end. That's why I think that so much of this stuff really depends on what is your own family dynamic? If you have a secure attachment with your kid and the ability to push them in these ways and to guide them, then that's wonderful. Not everyone has that. For me, when I think about it, it's like I have to let go of something. If I have to let go of something, I'm going to let go of trying to push them too hard in terms of food.
Suzy Chase: They're growing up in Brooklyn, right?
Joshua David Stein: Yes.
Suzy Chase: So their palate is going to be so far past yours by the time they hit high school.
Joshua David Stein: I think so. I mean, I will say that they've inherited my love of restaurants. I love it that they love Nom Wah, I love it that we got to Pacificana in Sunset Park, we got to like Dim Sum Gogo. They know what they like. They ingest the culture and the vivacity of a restaurant and I really love that too, so we do share some things, of course.
Suzy Chase: My kid's favorite restaurant is Nom Wah.
Joshua David Stein: Yeah, there's so much there. There's so much history, there's so much people watching, the food is delicious.
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Joshua David Stein: You know, I did the Nom Wah cookbook as well, so I was very fortunate to be part of that world a little bit and get endless dumplings.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, I had that cookbook on my show.
Joshua David Stein: With Wilson.
Suzy Chase: Yes, I love Wilson. We've been going there since my kid was in preschool, when Wilson first opened it.
Joshua David Stein: Again, sometimes my kids don't want to go into Manhattan. Okay, well, we'll just hop on the bike and we bike out to Pacificana, which is a totally different feel, definitely banquet style. I feel like it's not so much my trying to show them things as much as following their interests and trying to add on a little where I can.
Suzy Chase: Over the weekend, I made the recipe for spring rolls on page 108 from Bo Songvisava. Is that how you pronounce her name?
Joshua David Stein: Yes, Songvisava.
Suzy Chase: And Dylan Jones from Bo.Lan in Bangkok. Dylan wrote that this was Bo's inspiration because she loves origami and she can fit a bunch of vegetables into the spring roll and the kids think they're fun to eat, it's a win-win.
Joshua David Stein: They were, I think, one of the first couples that submitted a recipe. They are wonderful, and that idea of, in this case it's a spring roll but there's also a bunch of dumplings in the book, things where kids can also ... Just to be clear, this book is not cooking with your kids, it's cooking for your kids. But that said, a lot of the chefs said that one of the ways they get their kids interested in food is by partaking in the cooking process. Something like folding spring rolls or closing dumplings, if you mess up, you're not going to slice off your hand, those are very easy activities for kids to participate in. Then once they participate, then naturally they want to eat more, they're more interested in what shows up on the plate.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Dream Dinner Party, where I ask you who you most want to invite to your dream dinner party and why.
Joshua David Stein: Well, can I ask some clarifying questions?
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Joshua David Stein: Do they have to be alive?
Suzy Chase: No, they can be whatever, alive, dead, in the middle of a coma.
Joshua David Stein: But if they are dead, when they come to your dinner party, they will be alive.
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Joshua David Stein: Okay. It's a weird answer, but I've been reading a lot about Francis Ford Coppola. He's so interesting to me because he has made these amazing films and then he's made some clunkers and then he's also made movies just because he needs to pay the bills, and he has hotels. He's an interesting mix to me of auteur and just a super pragmatic, "I'm going to make art. If I'm going to make art, I'm going to do this. Yeah, I'm compromised, but I'm just going to do it." You know what I mean?
Suzy Chase: And he'd bring in the wine.
Joshua David Stein: And to me, as a writer, I'm so interested in artists who choose their spots of when to be purely their vision and then when they have to pay the bills. It's something that I think a lot of writers and a lot of creative people and a lot of artists struggle with and I really admire how he knits that all together. I think I would ask him to come over for dinner, and yes, bring the wine, and maybe his daughter and maybe his son, and maybe Nick Cage could come along too, who's a Coppola.
Suzy Chase: Yes, he is a Coppola.
Joshua David Stein: Yeah. It would be a big, fun dinner party. Lots of yelling I assume.
Suzy Chase: But that's familiar to you.
Joshua David Stein.: Yes, unfortunately.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Joshua David Stein: I have a website, Joshua David Stein. I'm on Instagram @JoshuaDavidStein. I think I'm on Twitter @FakeJoshStein, although I don't use that. But I also have a newsletter which is very occasional on Substack called the JDS Newsletter. So all of those places.
Suzy Chase: To purchase Cooking for Your Kids and support the podcast, head on over to www.cookerybythebook.com. Thanks, Joshua, for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Joshua David Stein: Thank you, Suzy. It was a wonderful.
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