The Real Mom Behind Martha’s Recipes
Enter now for a chance to win a signed copy of Mad Hungry Cravings by Lucinda Scala Quinn.
Lucinda Scala Quinn’s name might not be overly familiar, but I’m certain her recipes are. As the Executive Food Director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Lucinda not only oversees the food operation of the company, but she now publishes a series of books and hosts a TV show, under her own name.
When it first published in 2009, Mad Hungry was easily my favourite cookbook of the year. The tagline on the cover read ‘feeding men and boys,’ and as someone who lives in a male-dominated household, it was instantly appealing. However, once I began cooking from the pages, I quickly realized that the book was a practical guide to getting dinner on the table regardless of the gender of your children, and I was smitten.
Her latest book, Mad Hungry Cravings, provides smart strategies for great tasting meals, and questions why anyone would outsource feeding their families when it takes less time, money and effort to cook favourite comfort foods from scratch at home. Passionate about gathering around the table with her own family, Lucinda devised a way to make the foods her kids were craving in an attempt to keep them eating at home in lieu of overpriced restaurants and tired takeout.
In an ‘I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening’ moment, I had the chance to sit down with Lucinda earlier this week to talk about cooking with kids, hosting dinner parties and the cookbooks that changed her life:
When did your boys take an interest in food/cooking and what were some of the jobs they were in charge of?
Well, the biggest thing that happened with all the kids was turning the experience of having to shop regularly into something fun, rather than it being just a nuisance that you had a bunch of little kids with you. It became an experience, and so that’s where it started. It was about teaching them about real food, and stopping by where the peaches were sold and showing them that peaches are fuzzy, and that if it doesn’t smell like a peach, it isn’t going to taste like a peach. I have memories of my own mother taking me around marketing, so for me getting the kids interested in cooking was just about getting them into food.
I actually didn’t try to get them into the kitchen too aggressively, but instead my mission was to get them to the dinner table and engage them in where we bought our food and engage them in what foods they liked’and insist that they eat at the dinner table, which got increasingly important as technology took over. So then when it came to cooking, it was just simple things we made together, like gnocchi, which is nothing more than potato, salt, a bit of flour and egg.
I wanted to let them find their way into the kitchen instead of forcing it. Otherwise it can cause angst; I never want anything anxious around food, whether it’s how you eat or how often you eat, or what you can or can’t eat, so that’s my philosophy which I don’t know if it’s shared with other people who would rather get their kids helping. But I think that’s not really happening until they’re older.
Your family food culture is obviously very important to you. How do you try and inspire more parents to gather, cook and eat with their kids?
Just recognizing that food is a great connector between families is inspiration enough. I have discovered over time that food is a great connector we can use with our families, especially with older children. You can ensnare them with the smells coming from the kitchen and I think even if children leave the clutches of a mom who cares about cooking at home, they eventually wind their way back and want to cook themselves.
The greatest hope we can give ourselves, if we’re honest, is to grow independent souls, and there’s no greater gift to give them then the ability to feed themselves and others around them, particularly if going out is prohibitive financially. I don’t care if you only have a heel of cheese and a box of noodles, you can create something that people can gather around, and it can nourish you physically, emotionally, and ultimately that is the greatest gift you can give someone in today’s world, especially as so many people outsource their food from far distances.
I, personally, find the best recipe ideas come when I’m doing something completely unrelated to food. Where does your recipe inspiration come from?
It’s a culmination of so many things. I crave something, eat it and then wonder how I can figure out something different to do with it. Sometimes it’s when I’m cooking dinner for the family and I have nothing but a bag of poblano peppers that I open myself up and see where that takes me. When I was on vacation, I was reading a book about a musician and on one page he said there was only one thing he cooked and that was Sheppard’s pie. His way of doing it was so unusual that I developed an entire recipe based on his method. Inspiration is everywhere.
My very favourite thing about Mad Hungry Cravings is the section title ‘The Larder.’ Where did the idea to add a guide to the pantry essentials of ethnic cuisines comes from? Which one is your favourite to cook from?
The larder makes the recipes doable. I finally realized that sometimes it’s a mom’s cooking that holds the most sway over our memories, but often times it’s the food in the outside world that holds the most sway over our imaginations. My kids are city kids and they got to go out on their own in the fifth grade. I wanted to keep the kids eating at my table, so it became important to cook what they were craving. But you can’t really tell people to cook what you crave if you don’t have the ingredients on hand. So I really wanted to put some love into the pantry items you need so that if you have a craving for pork-fried rice you already had a handful of the ingredients required in your pantry or freezer.
I don’t know though if I can pick a favourite. I love them all.
I’m pretty passionate about throwing parties and having guests for dinner. Which recipes from the book would combine to make the perfect dinner party?
My advice for dinner parties is this: put your ‘stake in the sand’ with one idea or recipe and build around it. Don’t try too many new things at one time. From the book, I suggest the chicken tikka masala and vegetable biryani and serve it with some yogurt, store-bought chutneys, etc. I have menus in the books, which are perfect for entertaining, and the Greek one is just as good as the Indian or the Mediterranean. They’re a good starting point.
Your ideal breakfast is:
I alternate between oatmeal and green smoothies Monday to Thursday and then I let it rip on Fridays. Anytime I’m in Canada I love to go for peameal bacon, and I love any kind of bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches. Or sometimes I go for sweet. The double-pork sausages and blueberry pancakes from the book are pretty perfect. That would be one of my favourite breakfast combinations because you get the salty and the sweet.
The cookbook that changed you is:
In 1973 I had a pasta cookbook, and I first had it in Italian and then I bought it in English and it completely transformed and cemented my understanding of how Italians view pasta. That was transformative. Other books that had a huge impact on me were The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook by Nancy Harmon Jenkins and Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking is literally in tatters in my kitchen.
Enter now for a chance to win a signed copy of Mad Hungry Cravings by Lucinda Scala Quinn.
