In Short Order - Part I

If anyone had told me when I was younger that one day I would teach a subject directly related to organizational skills, I would simply have chuckled, the way Sarah chuckled when G‑d told her she would bear a child in her old age. Being knee-deep in the food business, and living with a healthy dose of paranoia about all food-related disorders, it is only natural that I would strive to devise every possible way to create exciting, nutritious, economical and streamlined meals without ever sacrificing flavor. The following is a compilation of my personal thoughts on eating well and sensibly, in short order and in style, for those times we want a great meal but are too harried or even too lazy to fuss over cooking. As I will explain, the key is to surround oneself with the best tools and ingredients. Not the most expensive, mind you: Just the best!

It invariably goes downhill as soon as I open the containerPrepared versus from scratch: Whenever there is an opportunity to save cooking or prepping time and still eat well with minimal or no loss of nutrition, I am the first to take it. Every so often, I play devil's advocate, bring home the latest manufactured creations and let them face off against my own from-scratch ones, just to make sure I'm not missing any valuable shortcuts. A marinade, a salad dressing, a cake mix, a pancake mix, frozen fish sticks, frozen chicken schnitzels, and so on. And only the premium brands, mind you. But it invariably goes downhill as soon as I open the container; just one taste and I realize I've only wasted my time and money. For example, store-bought dressings and marinades save only a minute or two and don't hold a candle to their homemade counterparts. Only a hopeless provincial would find polyester as sensuous as silk, copper as precious as gold, stainless steel as luxurious as silver. Why should it be any different with food?

I recently read an essay in which the author described his unhappy childhood revolving around a wheeling-dealing father who spent most of his days racking his brains on how to make lots of money not working and not spending and not providing and not getting caught in the system, while he declaimed excitedly and relentlessly about his vision of a glamorous leisurely life to his wary and deprived family. The upshot was, predictably, that while all his neighborhood friends looked well fed, well adjusted, and well provided for, he and his siblings looked disheveled and were uprooted from house to house and from school to school. Wouldn't it upset you to learn that cooks-from-scratch spend less time and effort making real delicious nutritious food than others who end up with devitalized boring food using mixes, cans, and other dreadful things? What could possibly beat the real thing?

Consider store-bought cake mixes and pancake mixes versus the from-scratch versions. Instructions for the store-bought varieties read roughly as follows: preheat your oven, grease a tube pan (or heat your skillet), add an egg, add milk, mix, bake. Then you clean up the bowl, pan, mold, or skillet, and you're done. This is precisely the same process used to make cakes, muffins, or pancakes from scratch—using a mix is not a stitch less work, and it's more expensive. We always want a bargain, be it expressed in time or money saved, and we tell ourselves, naively, that if something comes in a package, it must mean it is saving something.

I understand using something bottled or packaged or powdered if we are, say, camping, or traveling, stranded in the boondocks or otherwise away from home and its amenities. Yes, in a pinch, we must do whatever it takes to subsist. But to live in a home equipped with the best appliances, to be surrounded with all the comforts a home can afford us, to be cornered by spectacular markets open at all hours and gorging with beautiful produce (my mother cried the first time she visited an American supermarket: she had no idea such plenty actually existed; she had thought of it as a Shangri-La fantasy), and to come home with such meager pickings as bottled dressings, precooked meals, cold cuts, and canned vegetables? Why condemn oneself voluntarily to a chronic on-one-foot position (excuse the imagery), a perennial "in a pinch" way of life? How disquieting this must feel! How it must downgrade and impoverish the quality of life!

It's infinitely more delicious and more nutritious than the store-bought calamity A closer look at commercially prepared foods shows that all they are saving us is the "burden" of reaching for a pinch of salt, or a teaspoon of vanilla or baking powder. And as payment, we sacrifice good flavor, good nutrition, and pile on the preservatives, fat, and goodness knows what else. Take packaged fish sticks and chicken nuggets, for example: you bake them for seven to eight minutes, and get some rubbery mess. Instead, you could heat a splash of olive oil in a skillet and sauté a few pieces of fish, chicken cutlets, or steaks two to three minutes on each side—it's ready in less time, and it's infinitely more delicious and more nutritious than the store-bought calamity you and I never need to settle for.

What are the benefits of eating a salad with homemade dressing? A piece of fish or chicken properly and briefly sautéed in a skillet or oven-roasted? A few crêpes whipped up in your own blender? A slice of cake or a muffin made from scratch in about five minutes? The answer is infuriatingly simple: it looks good and inviting, it tastes good, it feels good, it is leaner, it's ready in no time, and it yields ample servings. As important, it fosters a mood of wholesomeness, togetherness, and good cheer. You will want to eat this way more often, and have everyone around you enjoy it as well. To sum up: You don't like to cook? That's quite all right, there is a perfect dinner out there for you and yours, ready in ten minutes, no experience necessary, going for broke: pick up a bag of salad greens, dress them with a little olive oil, vinegar (any except white, which I find too acrid in a dressing) or lemon juice, salt and pepper; sauté some salmon slices in a few drops olive oil, two to three minutes on each side; in the same skillet, sauté some fresh or frozen spinach until wilted; boil some corn on the cob for two to three minutes.

There are dozens of such dinners you can make in a jiffy. Why wait until you become a great gastronome to hunker down and prepare a meal when you can enjoy the results with so little effort right now?

Time your cooking differently: Meeting friends for coffee or lunch? You could choose a restaurant or café, or you could bring them all to your house and prepare a fabulous cup of coffee for everyone in an eight-cup French press in the wink of an eye. A pitcher of iced coffee or tea is just as simple. While you're at it, whip up a great crêpe, omelet, corn bread, or muffin recipe, which will be ready in a few short minutes, fragrant and inviting, with doggie bags for everyone to boot. You don't have to start the baking hours before the guests arrive—do it once they're there, while you're chatting. Will your friends forgive you for multitasking ten minutes out of an hour or two? You bet, especially for a home-baked treat.

Likewise, you can turn on your stove and start some steel-cut oatmeal which will serve eight, ready in a few minutes, as soon as company is scheduled to arrive, or for that matter, on a regular workday just before, not after, you get into the shower (Make a dent, that's my war cry). For pennies and no maintenance, this wonderful treat will be ready and waiting for you to enjoy as is, or with your favorite toppings.

Will your friends forgive you for multitasking ten minutes out of an hour?Organic: In all my long fulfilling years of teaching cooking, I have never recommended organic ingredients, nor said anything against them for that matter. I have simply never broached the subject, for several reasons, a few of which I will list here. For one, having a very open house, I feel I will not be able to afford the great markup of organic products. Secondly, even with all the hype about the benefit of organic foods, I still feel it is a largely uncharted field, and sometimes (excuse the reverse chic reasoning! I recoil from any alarmist literature and slogans) a trap to make some people feel guilty about not using them. I often feel that the organic food industry uses the same excess information and processing as the rest of the food industry, creating the same glut and often dragging the public further from the simplified approach to life that should be its hallmark. Adhering to the orthodox philosophy, catering to very large groups, and already having enough rules to comply with, the last thing I want is to complicate my life still further by superimposing the organic lifestyle to my existing demanding lifestyle. Simply cooking with fresh and seasonal ingredients from regular markets, and getting whole grains and other valuable healthy staples from health food stores, is my main protection and guarantee for good nutrition.

Feeding children: When my son was a little boy of seven or eight, he used to clamor for a play date with his friend Nathan, and we always came away with the same disappointing answer from his mother: "Nathan can't come, he has great separation problems." One day after prodding the mother harder, they both showed up at my house. The mother put on her most solemn face, knelt by her son and told him in a voice barely above a whisper: "Nathan, you understand I am leaving now, I won't be with you? You will be all alone with Maimon and Mrs. Kirschenbaum all day?" "Yes, Mommy, that's all right, we are going to the park and then going for lunch, it will be fun." Two steps from the door, the mother turned around again, looking positively mournful. "Nathan, in case there's any accident, emergency…"

The rest of the sentence was drowned out in Nathan's bawling. I had to tell the mom, "It is you, you, who have a separation problem!" I am pleased to report that Nathan stayed and enjoyed himself immensely, that day and many subsequent others. Likewise, I encounter countless mothers who declare, "My children will never eat this in a million years. They are very fussy eaters. They only like white bread, sliced American cheese, spaghetti with ketchup, pizza and fish sticks." I respectfully don't believe this.

Children will eat what their moms feed them, periodI always wonder at how the very same mothers who will cry at the sight of a scratch on their child will think nothing of feeding him or her foods laden with chemicals: What presents the greater risk and inflicts the most damage? Just because the danger is insidiously incremental doesn't make it any less clear and present. Children will eat what their moms feed them, period.

Let me ask you: What would your child do after being served some soup, a sandwich made with whole grain bread, some roast chicken with brown rice or corn on the cob, and so on, at home (or in school for that matter), several days in a row? Go on a hunger strike? Mount a mutiny with all the kids on the block? Make restaurant reservations? Of course not! He will sit down and eat and enjoy it! He eats junk only because that's what his friends eat, because that's what his mom and his school feeds him, that's what the vending machines heave relentlessly. So, dear moms, unite, dare to be different, resist peer pressure and do the right thing—your children will love you even more if that is at all possible. You will be rewarded with healthy and contented children at a minimal cost of money and time. My granddaughter recently created quite a stir at the supermarket when she asked her mother, at the top of her lungs, to please buy her some pumpkin and some peas, so you see, it is just what you get them used to. And no, she is not a geek, she is, in fact, quite a delightful and fun child!