During the workweek, John Donohue is an editor at the Goings On About Town section of the New Yorker. But most weekends — and on the rare weeknight when he has time — you can find him in his kitchen, cooking for his wife and two young daughters. Fatherhood is still a role more associated with breadwinning than bread-baking, so Donohue began to chart his experiences in an excellent blog called Stay at Stove Dad. His upcoming book, Man with a Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers who Cook for Their Families, is a further meditation on food and family, featuring essays from notable writers (as well as some average dads) about their experiences in the kitchen. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon; it’s official release date is May 17 (in plenty of time for Father’s Day, of course).
Donohue took time to talk blogging, stewing and parenting with us at the (mostly) non-food blog DadWagon. He was also kind enough to share, below the interview, five tips for dads who cook and a surefire puttanesca recipe.
Q: One thing that really stands out in Stay at Stove Dad is how much you are trying to have a rich home life outside of work. Even in this day and age, it can be hard for fathers to do that.
A: Ha, a rich home life! I guess I do, but it feels so harried that it’s hard to recognize as such. That’s the power of narrative. Also another reason to have pseudonyms [ed. note: Donohue refers to his wife only as Santa Maria on the blog; his daughters go by the noms de guerre Pinta and Nina]. Whose story is this anyway, and isn’t it just a story? (More on DadWagon.com: Should You Put Your Kids’ Pictures on the Internet?)
Q: Somewhere else, Santa Maria is blogging furiously about how watery her husband’s soups are because he works too late to start them right.
A: That’s one of the drawbacks of working in publishing, where the hours skew so late. I’m often home only in time to read to the kids and put them to bed, not to eat with them, and rarely to cook for them, on a weeknight.
I work a lot in advance. I make sure there are things I’ve made that they like to eat. I make soups and stews on the weekends, for example. And you should see my freezer. There’s nary an inch of free space in it.
Q: Did your father cook for you?
A: My father did not cook. He didn’t even grill, the traditional domain of the men. I’m the second youngest out of five and I think he used to grill earlier on in my parents’ marriage, but I recall my mother saying that she got tired of waiting for him to get the meal on the table and she eventually took even that task over from him. All he could make was coffee, probably because he couldn’t live without it. I grew up in a very traditional household. My father worked, and my mother ran the house. She never taught me to cook, but I learned a lot from her about healthy food. She never fried anything, and always served fresh vegetables with every meal. I owe my healthy palate to her. (More on DadWagon.com: Roger Ebert Talks with DadWagon about One-Pot Cooking)
Q: So you’re an auto-didact? Are you trying to give your kids more exposure to cooking than you had?
A: Yes, self-taught all the way. I worked in a retail fish market as a teenager and I learned a lot from a few of the other employees, some of whom were down-on-their-luck grads of the CIA and who had lost their restaurants. The oven didn’t work, though, so I learned how to sauté and use a stovetop to its maximum advantage. As for my kids, I didn’t set out to expose them, but it’s happening by default. As a father, I’m sure you know how kids idolize their parents. They seem to want to do anything that I want to do, at least at this age, so they follow me into the kitchen. It used to be harder to cook with them (as my wife said, “cooking with kids is like showering with monkeys”) but they’re getting a bit older now and my five-year-old just started using a steak knife to chop green beans. We live in a Brooklyn apartment with a phone-booth sized galley kitchen. I’ve never child-proofed the place. I just tell them to stay away from the oven when it’s hot and I’ve taught them that the sound of something sizzling on the stovetop means that it is wicked hot. I do turn pot handles in though. I miss my kids when I’m busy in the kitchen, so I’m glad they want to join me there.
Q: What are their palates like? I ask because we’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kids will and won’t eat and why. Is involving them in the kitchen part of getting them to eat more than, say, tater tots?
A: Their palates are their own domains. My thought on what kids eat and why has to do with things other than taste, and maybe we can talk about that too. They love sweet things, of course, but they also have a salty tooth (is there such a thing?). My eldest eats mussels and clams (both cooked) and somehow has a fairly broad palate though she’s adept at saying no to new things. She won’t eat any fruit, though, not even a jam or preserve. My youngest eats all kinds of fruits.
Q: Other than taste? As in, parental behavior? TV advertising? The scourge of “Kids’ Menus?” Pray tell.
A: Oh, I only have my own experience to go on, and what comes to mind for me is this. For all the choices that kids are offered in their little lives, they really have very little autonomy. Basically, they’re told when to go to bed, when to get up, when to go to school, and who to play with (“playdate” is a word made up by grown ups), so, my thought is that at the table, they’re presented with a rare opportunity, the chance to say “no” and to establish their identities. The dynamic is about power. At the table, the child has power to control what goes in his or her mouth, and also, power to get a great reaction out of mom or dad. All eyes end upon on the kid who fusses and refuses to eat X or Y. I can’t even get my daughter, the one who eats mussels and other weird things, to even try strawberry jam or orange marmalade. If she tasted it, she would like it. Those things are like candy, which she sensibly adores, but because they are “fruit” she refuses them. (More on DadWagon.com: The Insufferable Smugness of Parents whose Kids Eat Everything)
Q: That does make sense. In the age of rectal thermometers, I can see how asserting control over what they put in their mouths would be appealing. So tell me about the book. It’s not autobiographical: you’re editing it, not writing about your families experience per se.
A: No, Man with a Pan
The book features recipes and essays by the likes of Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Mark Kurlansky, Jim Harrison, and Stephen King, but it also includes interviews that I conducted with working dads around the country. I talked with a bond trader in L.A., a carpenter in Brooklyn, a Broadway trombonist in NJ, an economist in Manhattan, and a leading cancer researcher in Boston. I wanted to hear their own experiences and get them to share their recipes. (More on DadWagon.com: A Modest Proposal for Brooklyn Locavores — Eat More Children)
Q: The tools to cope: that’s a powerful offer. Before we finish, can you share a few tips and a favorite recipe — either from the blog or the book — for our readers?
A: Yes, happy to provide. Thanks to you.
Five Tips for Dads who Cook and a Recipe
1) Keep a shopping list handy in the kitchen. One of the fathers I interviewed for Man with a Pan
2) Keep a stocked larder with the following goods, most of which are imperishable and the rest of which tend to last a long time: dried pasta, capers, anchovies, canned peeled plum tomatoes, black olives and garlic. This way you can make a puttanesca sauce at a moment’s notice. Start the water for the pasta before you make the sauce, and you’ll have dinner on the table by the time the pasta is cooked.
3) Clean as you cook. A messy kitchen is one that’s impossible to think and work in. You are not trying to impress anyone with your cooking, you are just trying to get dinner on the table. And you don’t want to make extra work for your spouse; if she is doing the dishes and you create a mountain of them, it tends to negate the good will you might have created by cooking in the first place.
4) Use your freezer. There are many things you can make in advance in large quantities when you have free time that can be frozen in serving-size containers and defrosted on a weeknight. If you start the cooking when you walk in the door, dinner will be ready practically by the time you get your shoes off.
5) Don’t sweat it if your children won’t eat something. Offer them a choice of one or two things (don’t fall into the trap of becoming a short-order cook) and if they don’t want either, let them go hungry. They won’t starve.
Recipe: Puttanesca Sauce
This is one of the oldest recipes in the world, if its association with the world’s oldest profession is to be believed. Reputedly developed by prostitutes, it has the advantage of being quick and, if you stock your larder correctly, almost always easy to make with what’s on hand at home.
1 28 oz. can peeled plum tomatoes, crushed (or hit with an immersion blender, which is something every home cook should have, and is very fast)
4 or more cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
3 anchovy fillets
1 chili pepper (or a shake of crushed red pepper); optional
1 tablespoon capers
12 or so black olives, pitted and sliced
Herbs such as basil or oregano, to taste; also optional
Heat some olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan.
Add the garlic and anchovies and chili pepper. Saute until garlic is soft and the anchovies have dissolved, then add tomatoes and reduce. (Control the spiciness of the sauce by how long you leave the pepper in it — the longer it stays, the hotter it will be).
When the sauce thickens (in about 15 minutes), add capers and olives and any herbs.
Serve over the pasta of your choice.
Nathan Thornburgh is a contributing writer at TIME. He co-founded the parenting blog DadWagon.com in 2009 to help explore the many ways he may be damaging his kids — Dalia, 4, and Nico, 2.
