Thursday, June 15, 2023

Cooking Dads

 Father's day is not just about barbecue and dads . fathers today are much more sophisticated than the generations before them. Theyre into hip dishes made with fresh and healthy ingredients.

Cookbook author and new contributor JJ Goode wrote about this in yesterday's New York Times Food section. Today's dad may not even own a grill and may prmot5e a vegan lifestyle. even Mr. Goode, author of such cookbooks as Turkey And The wolf :Flavor Tripping Through new Orleans and Salt and Straw Ice Cream Book, doesn;t even have the trendy Big Green egg grill or a sixteen pound baking steel to make pizza for his kids. WHat  will he work with? Sneaking veggies into his kids pasta sauce for a healthier bite. There are more like him. Basically the star tof this modern dad cusine came from the turn of the century dude cooking where men embraced cool attitudes  and studied the swashbuckling chefs of the era. Still feeding people was still seem as being feminized. for some men that felt risky and they pushed back. They wanted their foods to be different than what moms were making.

Dads have evolved.Raymond Ho of Los Angeles cooks regulary for hist twin daughters. Hwoever he did have a role model in his dad who cooked for his family while his wife worked in a flower shop in Hong Kong.  His father brought him to wet markets to buy fish and meat.Mr. Ho is following suit He  not only splits cooking responsibilites with his wife but also grills on his Traeger pellet smoker and afire pit. he even ages steak. For  the couple Chase weideman-Grant and his husband Cory Grant, cooking meals are aspirational. He grew up watching the great British chef Jamie Oliver creating spaghetti with arugula for his daughters Poppy and daisy. he made his kids three different  roasted veggie dishes. There was cauliflower with chili crisp, carrots with honey and sumac and broccoli with lemon and garlic. None of the fathers Mr. Goode interviewed rfelied on barbecued meat but have a certain masculine take over. Some dads like Nathan englander make pita and baba ganoush from scratch instead of buying them at the grocery.

dad cooking is evolving and will evolve much like fathers themselves. They may grill. They may not. The will have the desire to provide their offspring with good food.