My Father's Daughter

author's note

I literally could not have written this book without the tireless, artful assistance of Julia Turshen, who stood over my shoulder at the stove and chopping block for the better part of a year, bringing a method to my freestyling madness. She quantified, tested, and retested every recipe, oversaw the production of the photos, helped brainstorm in a crisis, and, above all, was my intellectual and emotional support through the whole process.

He and I were always inseparable. When I was a baby, my mother was essentially the breadwinner in our house while my father was trying to rustle up a career in television. He walked me in his arms all night long as, by all accounts, I never slept. He took me everywhere with him, to each meeting and each diner, always ready to supply me with my fix of Red Cheek apple juice. We went to Jewish delicatessens and to now-extinct drive-ins where I was introduced to the finer points of the egg cream and the ice cream float. Health food was never really on the agenda; it was about fun and deliciousness and togetherness.

When I was a kid in Santa Monica, California, he often took us out to eat in what was then the start of the "California cuisine" era, taking great pride in my brother and me eating what would have been unheard of for him as a kid (oysters, artichokes, blue cheese, anything French). He looked forward to going out for a family meal with the genuine excitement of someone who never grew up eating in restaurants, and somehow that happiness, when we were all getting in the car, never seemed to wear off, no matter how many times we went to Michael's or 72 Market Street. For years, this excitement for food was limited to dining out—there wasn't a lot of agonizing over the home menu or tons of shopping and chopping. But that would change. Looking back, I think it all started with the pancakes.

My father was a master pancake maker. To the point that anyone who ever tried them would vouch that they were the best they had ever had. They still will to this day. They were thin, and light, and had that perfect subtle tang from fresh buttermilk. The pancake making started as a casual weekend breakfast thing and became a ritual. He became obsessed with perfecting them, eventually making the batter the night before as he was convinced it had some discreet effect on the outcome. Not only would we, his children and wife, delight in the taste of those mini stacks with warmed up maple syrup, but our extended family of friends would as well, the size of the group often swelling to twenty or so. I think he started to feel the impact of making people so content and relaxed and sated with those pancakes. He was, after all, the most loving and nurturing of all men.

When I was about eighteen we started cooking together. I'm not sure exactly how it started, what day it was, or how it was catalyzed. I just remember that we were both living back in Santa Monica (I was trying to get work as an actress and was hostessing in a fish restaurant) and we got tired of the giant supply of spaghetti and meatballs my mother had very kindly made and left in the freezer since she was working in New York. We decided to make a meal, and from there we got kind of obsessed. We would watch the cooking channel together as much as we watched NFL football, often with me resting in the crook of his arm. We would call each other with things we had learned, compare tips, recipes, and ideas like making salad dressing by putting all the ingredients into a little glass jar and shaking it up (utterly revolutionary to us at the time) or dicing an onion by cutting it in half vertically, making small slices vertically, then cutting horizontally, essentially eliminating the "chopping." "What kind of moron am I that I nevah thought of this!" he would say in his heavily accented New York–ese.

My father's meals got more layered and more complex in lots of ways, and, in other ways, he stuck to his basic greatest hits. The most striking aspect of his cooking was how much joy he derived from feeding people that he loved. I mean, genuine, bursting happiness. And he instilled in me the idea that a meal made for your family is an expression of love, a source of pleasure—not only in the visceral enjoyment of the food, but also in the magic that is created when you imbue food with energy and nurturing.

I understood him more fully when I had my own children. Over the years I had learned how to cook through trial and error, through cooking classes, through lessons with chef friends, but it had always been for fun. Now it seemed much more, well, important. Unlike my daddy, who back in the day thought Oreos and a glass of milk were snack worthy, I became a bit obsessed with providing my kids with healthy, unprocessed foods. This was informed by a period of eating a strictly macrobiotic diet, which, ironically enough, I had started when my father was diagnosed with throat cancer in the fall of 1998. I was devastated by his diagnosis and became convinced that he could heal himself with good foods and alternative medicine, even if he was resistant to the (perhaps naive) idea. I armed myself by reading anything available that linked processed foods, pesticides, growth hormones, preservatives, and the like to cancer and other diseases. I enlisted a macrobiotic counselor who had healed herself from cancer by eating a "healing diet" and also even brought on a chef to get us started. I was dealing with a man who upon hearing his cancer diagnosis went out for hot dogs and after an excruciating throat surgery wanted to go straight to Mr. Chow. I think that he equated his beloved morning coffee with two sugars to being "normal" and never embraced the idea of cutting anything out even if it would have made a difference in his health in the long run.

But all the information that I gathered did make a big personal impact. I learned about how the body can heal itself from almost anything. I learned about the physical and environmental effects of pesticides. I went strictly organic, local, and macro and eliminated dairy, sugar, meat, liquor, gluten, all (I think) in a bid to heal my father by proxy. Of course I couldn't cure him, but I found that my body felt really good. I loved eating this way and I stuck to it for years, although sometimes, damn, I just wanted a slice of coffee cake or a martini with olives.

When I was pregnant a few years later, I could not eat a bowl of brown rice for love or money. I wanted grilled cheese sandwiches and Baskin-Robbins Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream, and, well, you can guess what won out. But when my daughter started eating solid food, the pendulum swung and again I focused on organic and whole foods. I did not want her to ingest pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, antibiotics, or preservatives and I still don't. In fact, sometimes I wonder if my father would still be alive today if he hadn't grown up eating so much of that stuff.

Through this process my father and daughter had unwittingly taught me the importance of balance. Could I use some butter and cheese and eggs in my cooking without going down some kind of hippie shame spiral? Yes. Of course I could. I would go back to eating chicken, but only once in a while and it would be free range and organic. I would support my local farmers always, but if I needed some tomatoes in winter to slowly roast for soup, I would go to the supermarket.

This idea of balance became just an easing up on myself, which is something I find challenging to this day. On a broader scale, I try to remember this balance when I think about being a working mother. How do I cook for my family, do the school run, work on my projects, exercise, and not lose out on a great film project? I can't. And that's okay. Because my instincts have been shaped by a man who knew that family was everything. And my family will always be where I strive most for success. Making a home, cooking with love, and bringing everyone together are my tangible ways of achieving that kind of success.

My father, even through his deteriorating health in the aftermath of his cancer surgery, when his beloved red wine burned his throat and he struggled to chew and swallow, showed me through his own enjoyment that gathering around a table is the high point of the day. Through shared meals and meaningful togetherness, he made happiness feel achievable. He helped me realize it's all about the here and now, that happiness happens on a freezing winter night or in the garden when the weather's warm, often with a good bottle of wine, and always with the people you love. You just need some good ingredients and a few simple recipes, maybe a couple of jokes, or a "topic to dissect" at the table, the way they do at Nora Ephron's house.

And there it is. It's what I believe in. In these pages you will find recipes for simple, (mostly) healthy, delicious food. This is the food I cook for my family and friends, over and over again, the food that never fails me. This book is meant to channel the ethos of my father by sharing the greatest gifts that he imparted to me. Invest in what's real. Clean as you go. Drink while you cook. Make it fun. It doesn't have to be complicated. It will be what it will be.

MY CHILDREN'S MOTHER

Including my children in all aspects culinary is very important to me and always has been. When my daughter, Apple, was born in 2004, I always had her strapped to my chest in one of those BabyBjörn things and later on my hip in the kitchen while I stirred and chopped, one handed at that! Soon she was sitting up and I had fantasies of an extra-high high chair on wheels so she could be out of harm's way but privy to the action as I steamed and pureed her baby food. She was always trying to get a glimpse inside the pot, fascinated by the sounds of simmering and frying, or reaching to hold the big wooden spoon, mystified by its meaning (drumstick? teething device?).

Children are inherently curious about the process of cooking—it's mysterious and vaguely threatening, and seemingly for adults only. Fire and knives, no wonder my son is obsessed with it all. He, like my daughter, loves nothing more than helping me cook a meal. The trick is to let them participate as long as they are interested; eventually they wander off and busy themselves with something else, but lately they've been staying with it.

I believe it is the fact that I am carefully letting them do things that seem beyond their level that keeps them so interested. Whenever I am holding my son so that he can add salt to a sauce or stir something (with a long handle from a safe distance), I regularly think of some parenting advice my father gave on one occasion. His theory was that children positively respond to being trusted with something that they don't expect you to trust them with. And when they are trusted and complete something successfully, not only is their self-esteem buoyed but so is the connection between parent and child. Thus is my willingness to allow them to partake in some of the more adult tasks, with very careful supervision.

The three of us regularly engage in cooking together and doing this is one of my all-time favorite activities—all immersed in a project together, having fun, and making dinner! It is a multitasker's dream, genuine quality time spent while checking something off the list.

It is my belief that children should know about food, should learn how to handle and prepare it. I think of it as a life skill no less important than any other… maybe more so as it will enable them to take control of their health as they get older. They have become well versed in their own likes and they often have opinions about how things are done.

Here are some of the ways that I include them in the process, ways you might be able to incorporate into your routine.

how to use this book

To help you decide which recipes to make depending on your schedule and who you are cooking for, I've added icons to each recipe. Here is the key:

*a family-sized meal that can be tweaked during preparation/cooking/at the end to specialize for both simpler and more sophisticated palates alike

There are also notes on some recipes: "Make It Vegan" or "Make It Kid Friendly" that offer you flexibility depending on your and your children's preferences.