Fat Girl Gone Thin

This Tuesday was my father’s birthday. Sixty-five. A “big one” he tells me. So I invite the family over for dinner, on a week-night, which I know is a mistake.

But this is the least of my worries. What worries me are the varied palates that I have invited to my table.

I know my father’s food habits well. Nothing spicy, no bell peppers, no olives, no tofu. My sister is easy – no cake. For the most part, everyone else will eat anything that’s hot and put in front of them.

The only question left is my four-year-old nephew. Making something that passes his taste tests is more stressful, and might I say, more unpredictable,  than a visit from a New York Times food critic.

I started my grocery list with a text message to my sister:

“Do you think Kai would eat chicken?”

“He’ll eat it but only if there is no yucky stuff on it. Yucky stuff includes anything and everything. I’ll bring a bottle of wine.”

Later in a phone call, she added peeled cucumbers to the ok list.  I saw visions of a candlelit table with plates of unseasoned chicken, white rice and cucumber slices with candles stuck in them. Yumm.

As a general rule I try to make birthday dinners more exotic than the likes of the early bird special at the retirement home, but things were looking questionable.

At the store I scanned the isles for white food. Potatoes are white. Eggs are white. White cheese is white. But potatoes are boring if you can’t do anything to them and eggs have yolks, and those are yellow. I grabbed the cheese, a box of cous couse (it’s off-white, right?)

In the produce department, I went crazy. An eggplant, red onions, portabello mushrooms. It’s not a grown-up dinner if there isn’t at least one thing on the menu that gets rejected – so I decided to funnel all my crazy cookery into that.

Back in the meat department, it was cornish game hens. This because, (1) it is impressive to give everyone their own bird, (2) they’re easy to cook and (3) it’s just like a tiny chicken.

Home from work at 5:30 and dinner at 7:30 – I ran, literally ran, into the kitchen and turned on the oven. A gentle dusting of salt and pepper, and off they went to cook while I multi-tasked hiding unfolded laundry in my bedroom and washing dishes.

As the witching hour arrived, I sliced the veggies and threw them in a bag with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Grill, on. Off I went to set the table.

All told, dinner was ready 15 minutes late. In my mind it was a miracle. More of a miracle was that my nephew left with a tummy full of apples, “chicken” and, as he said, kookoo (this is cous cous in English).

As for my 9-year-old niece. Well, that is a different story. When you’re a bit older, old enough to know that chicken isn’t supposed to look like that and balsamic glaze isn’t exactly a regular in your lunchbox, cous cous seems like the only safe thing on the plate.

Oh well. You win some you lose some. As for the vegetable stack. It got hot praises from the adults at the table. Some even asked for seconds. If you’re interested, here’s the recipe:

Vegetable stacks with herbed ricotta

Slice one eggplant and two red onions about 1/2 inch thick. Place the slices, along with 6 portabello mushrooms (stems removed) in a Ziploc bag with a cup of balsamic vinegar and 1/2 cup olive oil. Allow them to marinate on the counter for two hours.

Grill the vegetable slices and mushrooms on each side for approx. 3 minutes. Just enough to caramelize the vinegar mixture and soften the veggies.

While the veggies grill, mix a small container of ricotta (10 oz.) with 1 tbl. basil and two gloves of minced garlic.

Arrange the mushrooms bottom-side up on a plate, place a dollop of ricotta on top. Add a layer of eggplant and another dollop of ricotta. Finally, add a layer of onion and a final dollop of ricotta.

You can continue to stack these as high as you like, but I stuck with one round of each vegetable.