Passionate about home cooking

 

MY FAMILY TABLE: A PASSIONATE PLEA FOR HOME COOKING

 

BY JOHN BESH

 

ANDREWS McNEIL, $35

He’s a James Beard-award winning chef of nine restaurants, so why would John Besh follow up his first best-selling cookbook, “My New Orleans,” with “My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking,” which promotes eating at home, not dining out?

Besh, one of six authors participating in the 2011 Express-News Book Author Luncheon Nov. 14, says the impetus came a few years ago when he made the mistake of questioning his wife, “an Irish American attorney,” about what she was feeding their children.

She turned the question back, telling the celebrated restaurateur that he’d “go to the ends of the earth” for his restaurant clients, but where his family was concerned didn’t think beyond epic Sunday suppers for family and friends.

Her message “hit him like a ton of bricks,” he writes, and inspired the father of four sons to not only participate more in family meals but to bring the same techniques that made him a successful restaurant chef into the home kitchen.

Thus began changes in the way Besh looked at family food. Now when Besh roasts a chicken, he’ll put in a second to be used later for chicken salad or broth for the chicken soup that his son loves. Or he’ll add a pork shoulder to use as the basis for a second meal. He loosely plans the week’s menus, stocking the pantry that same way he does at his restaurant.

“Even if I’m not there, I have the … (makings for) things that make her life easier and the children’s lives better,” he says.

Besh still wants people to support their local chefs — including those at his San Antonio restaurant, Lüke — but the breakdown in families eating together worries him.

“Food is that one thread that can bring people together,” he says. “Too often we resort to takeout (and) overly processed food.”

Besh’s 264-page “My Family Table” is filled with photos as well as recipes, some as simple as his frittata, others as complex as Poached Eggs Satsuma Hollandaise Over Crab Cakes.

Besh calls the family kitchen the last place his family is before they’re tucked in at night and the first place they go when they awaken.

“The kitchen is the center of our house,” he says.

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