Food In the Mouths of Babes

There comes a time in most foodies’ lives when they lose interest in restaurant food. I recall when it happened to me and my wife: The third week of February, 2010.

That’s when our son was born.

But being the frequent eater-outers that we were, we didn’t give in without a fight. We managed a few dinners when he was still just a few months old, carrying him into a restaurant in a carry-cot, where he would blissfully sleep through sizzler smoke, loud background music and rambunctious conversations from neighbouring tables.

Then, he grew up. And stayed awake. And wanted to play with the cutlery. And pull down the tablecloths with the glasses on top. And get down from his chair (which, unlike at home, have no restraining belts) and run around the restaurant. So we kind of gave up. And our monthly dining-out budget morphed into his monthly diaper budget.

I guess that’s when we decided we had to replace eat-out with cook-in more often. The food we focussed on was reflective of our pre-parenthood restaurant choices: Roughly an 80:20 split between European and South-East Asian cuisines.

Now that we’re able to go back to eating out again, thanks to our son’s daytime nanny who’s available to babysit on the occasional evening, we’re not all that thrilled. Probably because diligent home cooking with quality ingredients easily beats the pants off most restaurant food. That, or Bangalore restaurants have become much less dependable at the Rs 1,000-1,500 meal-for-two price point.

Anyway, baby or not, cooking at home the kind of stuff you usually eat outside is a good habit, not least because, in the words of Calvin’s dad, “it builds character”! It’s usually tastier, cheaper and ends up training your palate for the subtleties of good food.

And the fundamental ingredient of a DIY gourmand’s kitchen? A healthy quantity of good stock in the freezer.

Good stock is quite simply the magical ingredient that can be combined with any number of starting raw materials—Italian rice, fish fillets, minced meat or even just random vegetables—into seriously tasty dishes.

Because my wife is vegetarian, we opt for a vegetarian stock which is a couple of notches less flavourful than a chicken one, but still a delightful ingredient.

Making it is relatively simple. Dice anywhere from 500-750 gm of onions, carrots and celery in a 2:1:1 mix. This mix, the mirepoix, is the core of the stock’s flavour. Combine it with one or two chopped leeks, a chopped fennel bulb (if you don’t find it, skip it—no big deal) and a couple of tomatoes and turnips (even parsnips will do), diced. The best part is none of the vegetable ingredients need to be super-fresh, even stuff a couple of weeks old and shrivelled will do.

Sweat them all together for about 10 minutes in a large heated pot with 50-60 ml of whatever cooking oil you use.

Then do your bit for India’s wine industry—add a quarter litre of white wine (I’m no oenophile, but, frankly, cooking is about the only use I find for most Indian wines) with three to four litres of water and a sachet d’epices, comprising a bay leaf, half-a-teaspoon of dried thyme and some crushed peppercorns and about seven to eight parsley stems (they have a stronger flavour than the leaves) tied in a cheesecloth (a tea ball will do). Its job is to infuse specific spice flavours into foods like soups or stocks. A variation of the sachet is a bouquet garni, where a few more herbs like parsley, thyme, basil or rosemary are tied together into a bundle.

Let everything come to a boil, then reduce and simmer for about 45 minutes. Cool, strain and pour it into multiple plastic containers before freezing it. Since you can’t part-thaw frozen stock, freeze them in multiple ice trays and break apart as many stock cubes as you need for a meal. This batch of stock should last you anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on usage.

Home cooking sometimes helps clear prejudices against certain dishes. For instance, much as I loved the Pixar animated movie Ratatouille and the delightful use a simple peasant meal of stewed vegetables in the movie’s central argument, I found the actual dish too tomato-ey and lacking in distinct flavours.

Similar was the case with lasagna. Never a fan of cheesy pastas, my poor opinion of lasagna was validated each time I felt adventurous and ordered it at a restaurant. Almost always the cheese overpowered everything else.

But taken together—the mélange of vegetable flavours and tomato sauce with the richness of egg, cream and cheese and the reassuring texture of pasta—I discovered one of my favourite home-cooking dishes: Ratatouille Lasagna. Make the ratatouille by creating a wine-reduced tomato sauce (use canned ones) and thickly sliced, lightly pan-cooked courgette and mushrooms. (I don’t particularly care for aubergine.) Cook six lasagna sheets till al dente. Alternately layer the sheets and the ratatouille mix in a lightly oiled baking dish.

The final step is what makes the dish a winner for me: A beaten mix of two eggs and a few tablespoons of cream poured over the lasagna, and sprinkled with about 75gm of good quality mozzarella and 25 gm of your favourite hard cheese (Parmesan, Grana Padano or Pecorino), grated. The eggs, cream and cheese look, smell and taste like heaven at the end of the 15-25 minutes they spend in a pre-heated oven at around 190-200 degrees Celsius.

That brings me to the chap who was responsible for our eating-out sabbatical—our son. Not willing to accept his terms so easily, we’re trying to get him to appreciate eating-in mama and papa’s cooking. Just over two now, he’s got a strong but fluctuating set of taste preferences which put paid to any pat theories about cooking for babies. But one dish that he’s loved every single time is a very “adult” whole wheat spaghetti with a cream-and-wine sauce.

Cook the whole wheat spaghetti as per instructions—bear in mind that a toddler may not care for al dente toothsomeness. For the sauce, saute a finely chopped half-onion and a couple of garlic cloves in olive oil till the onions are translucent. Then add about 100-125 ml cream. Bring to boil over low heat and simmer till the cream thickens slightly. Add about 10-15 ml of white wine and let it simmer for another three to four minutes. My wife usually adds a little bit of the vegetable stock to adjust the consistency of the sauce along with some chopped basil (or parsley, oregano, marjoram) and salt. Cook for another minute. Turn off the heat. Drain the pasta and toss it with the sauce.

Since we’ve discovered from experience that our son doesn’t prefer freshly ground pepper, we use a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg which he seems to either like or not mind.

We’ve noticed that he responds better to newer foods if you show him how it was made, or teach him the ingredients that go into it. From scrambling eggs to baking to pressure-cooking to spreading peanut butter and fruit jelly on his toast, I’ve realised that the thrill of learning something new often carries over to the enthusiasm with which babies approach their meals.

Treating babies like mini-adults is another key trick towards making their mealtimes more enjoyable for you and them. So his breakfast, lunch and dinner is always served at the dining table, with him strapped into his high chair. While it sounds anal, I believe it communicates a key point to impressionable minds: That you have a finite time and space for your meals. Used to mostly being told what to do, babies also appreciate things better when you offer them real choice. Simple questions like, “Do you want raisins in your muesli or bananas?” or “The chicken is spicy. Do you want to eat it?” not only makes them feel more important, but helps them develop powers of reasoning and sort taste preferences quicker.

One last discovery on the topic of baby palates. Though my wife and I took to the taste of dark chocolate in our early 30s, it was an acquired taste. Having made that choice, we can’t now stand the overpowering taste of sugar and/or milk in regular chocolates.

But I was surprised when our son’s unblemished palate took to dark chocolate quite naturally, so much so that the last few times people have offered him regular chocolates, he took a bite, wrinkled his nose, then played around with the rest of it before throwing it.

There wasn’t a prouder gourmand dad in the world those days.