|
|
| Joyce Goldstein |
Passing on the Torch of Good Taste
by Molly O'Neill
Grandma's little foodies
“Gramma,” declared Adam Goldstein when he was 10 years old, “ever since I was 3 and ate at Ton Kiang, I’ve had an Asian palate.”
Even his grandmother, Joyce Goldstein, the former owner of Square One restaurant in San Francisco and the author of 26 cookbooks was taken aback.
“Once in a while I come up against the difference between these children who are growing up in foodie households today and what my childhood was like,” she says, adding, “I bought him a wok.”
Goldstein, who grew up in New York City, came from a rather monolithic culinary tradition. Her family, she says, considered it crucial to kill food by overcooking, “to cook it more just to make sure it was dead.”
She had to learn to cook, she says. Her grandchildren, Elena, now 14, and Adam, “the Asian Palate,” who is now 11, “choose to cook.” Three-year old Antonio, is an enthusiastic eater.
Goldstein’s culinary education began when, as a graduate student in painting at Yale, she began working her way through cookbooks and giving dinner parties. She continued to teach herself by traveling, reading copiously, experimenting constantly, and working at Chez Panisse. She eventually opened Square One with a Mediterranean menu and, thanks to her son, Evan Goldstein, a master sommelier, a brilliant wine cellar. Her grandchildren, on the other hand, needn’t log many miles for cooking lessons. They go to “Gramma,” who lives almost next door.
“I’ve cooked for them, I’ve cooked with them, I’ll do whatever it takes,” she says. “I didn’t spend that much time with my grandparents. I hardly knew them. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my grandchildren.”
Hanging out in the kitchen together tendered an easy intimacy, taught them to taste, and taught them to do other things as well. When the grandchildren were very young, Goldstein would place them on the kitchen counter, appoint them as her official tasters, and rely on their opinions. “Does the soup need more pepper?” she would ask. “Is there enough basil in the pasta?” Before they went to kindergarten, her grandchildren had learned to adjust seasoning.
Their tastes, says Mrs. Goldstein, evolved as steadily as their bodies stretched and lengthened. There was the year of hating salad, the time of no tomatoes, the months of vegetable objections.
“I didn’t cook children’s food and I didn’t cook à la carte,” says Goldstein. “If they didn’t like one thing, they could find something else on the table to eat.”
There were tastes held in common. Birthdays à la Goldstein, for instance, mean either gateau rolla or éclairs. And there were personal obsessions — Elena’s taste for lobster; Adam’s far-ranging and constantly shifting passions (last year, the Asian Palate fell in love with tapas and requested private instruction in the art of making Spanish tortilla and garlicky aioli for his birthday); Antonio's devotion to panna cotta. (see recipes below OR provide links)
What she hadn’t expected, however, was that the cooking lessons would be more than fun and games. “I started giving them things they could do. I taught them to make the matzoh balls at Passover and put them in charge. I taught them to roll and cut fresh pasta,” she says. Gaining skills, she says, gave the children confidence.
“They know how much effort it takes, they know when they have done it right,” she says. And perhaps most important of all, her grandchildren have learned that they are “worth the time and energy it takes to give themselves a good meal.”
Continue to the recipes: Antonio's Favorite Panna Cotta, Evan's Birthday Éclairs, Joyce's Aioli Oil, Roasted Lobster With Terragon & Lemon Butter, The Goldstein Family's Gateau Rolla, and Tortilla Española
|
