Bequeathing a Broad Palate

After a pretty bland culinary upbringing – tuna on faux wheat bread fermenting in my warm lunch bag was fairly typical, I had a good bit of fortune and was able to travel through college and graduate school. Ok, so my first overseas trip was to England, and back in those days the British were hard at work earning their reputation for even blander food – greasy fish in newspaper from a chippy or a curry house seemed the most common dining options. Man, have times changed there. Anyway, I eventually made my way around a few continents and along with the great scenery came a diversity of food. I didn’t take to it all immediately, but eventually I came to appreciate much more than tacos and burgers and I began to develop something of a palate. A few friends in Law School had a passion for competitive potluck dinner parties, and with their guidance I was off and running in the world of cuisine - primarily as a consumer of it.

Flash-forward a few years and I’ve got a daughter, Paloma, running around. What more does a parent want than to share the beauty in life while helping them avoid the bland? Could I impart upon her a taste for cuisine?

These days this is no easy task. Social norms based on the Precious Child Syndrome dictate that we force nothing on our kids, not even our dinner. No, if little Johnny wants Kraft Mac and Cheese, rather than the Chicken Marsala you’ve prepared, you better get back to the stove. Cuz’ that’s what his friends’ parents do. And you want to be a good parent, right?

If you try to break out of this mold, you’ve got a spouse holding you firmly to the Syndrome, stirring up the pasta and powdered cheese and saying something like “It’s Ok, Johnny, MOMMY loves you and will make it for you.” Perhaps she rolls her eyes at you. You might as well be sending him out into the jungle alone to survive for a year.

At this point, you’ve got two doors to choose from. Door one: stock up on Kraft Mac and Cheese. Door two: ….

Well, I chose door number two.

While door number two can be a bit more lonely, and joint custody sounds terrible, for the 50% of the time that I had Paloma, I had her to myself. There was no one else now to capitulate and make Mac and Cheese for her when she was with me.

Damn if she didn’t eat the Chicken Marsala put in front of her … eventually. And with a smile. Turns out she liked chicken at the age of three. From then on everything was chicken, naturally. Pork was chicken. Beef was chicken. Lamb was “special chicken.” And she ate it all. Sashimi was uncooked fresh chicken, and she loved that. I turned my head once to talk to a stranger and she choked down $30 worth of Maguro within a minute. Expensive chicken.

When she was 6 we grabbed some sandwiches before sailing and after she bit into hers she said:

“Daddy, you know what the best food in the world is?”

“No, sweetie, what’s that?”

“Dijon. It’s the best. You can eat it on a sandwich. You can eat it on a hot dog, Or you can just eat it all by itself.”

I smiled. Mission accomplished. Soon she was taking down oysters and paddlefish roe.

Only problem is . . . eventually love finds you again. Or finds me. And along with her mom, I got attached to the sweetest 5-year old on the planet - Jillian.

At 5 years old she ate apples. Green apples, red apples. Only apples. (And she was already 5 so that “special chicken” trick wouldn’t work). It turns out that the culinary path from apples doesn’t lead directly to Foie Gras. No, it goes directly to (wait for it), Mac and Cheese.

Now under legal contract you have at least some influence over your wife, but your girlfriend doesn’t give a rat’s ass what you think her daughter ought to eat. Within days of moving in, she’s stove-side dumping a box of Kraft into a saucepan and waiting to add the packet of powdered cheese stuff to make a second dinner for the little one. I learned to tread carefully in the kitchen for fear of tripping over the phantom umbilical cord.

I spent about a year rowing up that stream, encouraging, goading, pushing Jilli to try various new foods. I barely made any progress, and my oar was about broke. If anything I was bordering on alienating her and ensuring that years later I would be called out as the cause of some newly named eating disorder. So I backed off.

Then, on no account of my own wits, a solution presented itself. Always looking up to Paloma, her older stepsister, Jilli began to emulate her. Paloma swallowed an oyster. Jilli choked one down. Paloma ate a poached egg, and Jilli ate hers (whites more firm, please).

Her palate began to grow and while she still has boundaries, she’ll try about anything. Recently I hand-cut steak tartare and she gobbled it up. Often she’ll grab her mother’s glass of wine, swirl it, smell it, and talk about fruit. One more American spared from culinary vacuity.

So it seems there are two paths to bequeathing a broad palate – put dinner in front of your kids and wait until they are hungry. Eventually they will eat the liver and onions and all of the other things you feed them. It’s the method of the Greatest Generation. It raised our parents and most of us.

Alternatively, bring in a ringer and let her do the work.