›› Coming home from work on a cold night in January, I called my son, Hans, to see if he wanted to go out for Chinese. “Not really. Want me to make some dinner?” I smiled into my cell phone. Any parent will tell you that “Want me to make some dinner?” is among the questions you least expect to be asked by your college freshman.
“Sure, that’s great,” I said, trying to sound casual. We chatted about what raw materials were in the fridge. I told him to have fun. He didn’t need a recipe.
What a joy it was to be greeted at my front door by the herby aroma of sautéing salmon, simmering coconut milk sauce and steaming basmati. As I sat in the kitchen, Hans said, “I didn’t realize how much I missed having a kitchen.”
He’d been at Willamette University for months — sharing a dorm room with two guys, playing football and eating semi-healthfully in a cafeteria.
“It’s really nice to be able to make something good,” he said, and he cooked many meals for himself and me until he went back to school.
Listen: I’m thrilled with how the kid turned out, culinarily and otherwise, but it was no foregone conclusion that Hans would walk away as a foodie nineteen years ago.
Hans’ mom and I were both foodies long before that moniker became au courant. She ate everything she loved during pregnancy, and we hoped an in utero infusion of risotto and green chiles would spark his nascent taste buds.
He got little or no “baby” food and started eating what we ate early on. We never assumed he had baby taste buds as he turned up his nose at the typically crappy kid’s menus. We never forced him to clean his plate.
We would visit farmer’s markets to taste veggies and crush herbs to hold under his nose. In our garden he would help his mom harvest rhubarb, raspberries and beans. Once he even stomped grapes for homemade wine.
We took him out to dinner when he was a toddler but knew he wouldn’t tolerate a two-hour, multi-course feast. He was fine at noisy, lively dim sum eateries, Furr’s Cafeteria and brewpubs. When we travelled, whether to Michigan or Paris, discovering local tastes was the prime directive.
All this culinary chatter is fine, but with two parents working full-time and commuting we were also realistic. I bought more than a few Lunchables. Over the years our so-called “Gourmet Boy” consumed approximately 10,000 pounds of peanut butter: Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy. More than a few times we ate in front of the TV instead of at the table, as experts recommend. Hans still loves the mac and cheese at Noodles & Co. and now he happily adds the steak and broccoli I always demanded. When Hans was 6, I became the dining critic at the Rocky Mountain News. I told him I needed his help reviewing and made him promise one thing: He had to taste everything we ordered. If he didn’t like it, he didn’t have to eat any more. Amazingly, he kept the promise. Unfortunately, he also developed a thing for foie gras and St. Andre triple cream cheese. He didn’t know it was “weird” so he tasted and became fond of sushi with raw quail egg yolks and flying fish eggs. I loved our family dinners for our conversations about everything as much as the fare.
Before he was born, I had assembled kid-oriented cookbooks. We never used one of them. I edit recipes for a living and never cooked using them. When I cooked, I showed the boy what I was doing to improvise a meal. Do you want the chicken thighs roasted with rosemary? Sauteed with sesame oil and tamari? Served with smashed potatoes or macaroni? I told him that when you have no script, you have to taste constantly and pay attention, and add more herbs, wine or broth as needed.
He would go grocery shopping with me, partially to guarantee I bought stuff he liked, but we’d also to gawk at weird, new, highly processed food products.
High school came and he was consumed with being an athlete, studying and girls, but for a high school catering class project, he made amazing ravioli filled with grilled corn, roasted green chilies and chevre.
Yes, it really was his idea … as was going boar hunting in Texas with his wrestling coach, leaving me with a freezer still full of boar sausage and loin.
He now proudly regales friends with tales of the bizarre stuff he’s tasted ranging from frog’s legs to whole tiny silver fish at a Chinese place to oddly stringy fermented natto at a Japanese bar.
I so look forward to hearing of Hans’s culinary adventures, from the first time he wins a woman’s heart with a perfectly made omelet to cooking friends a Thanksgiving feast.
Luckily, he’s interested in economics, maybe law, and not journalism. That means he might earn a big enough salary to feed his increasingly sophisticated palate.
For now, I’m just looking forward to this summer and the gastronomic pleasures he’ll create just because he can. n