Extravagant Hot Breakfasts, Nori For "Texture Variation" + Kimchi On Absolutely (Almost) Everything
Katie Kitamura's Cub Street Diet
Hi friends,
It is our honor and pleasure to present today’s Cub Street Diet from the peerless Katie Kitamura, one of the finest American novelists around. From her debut The Long Shot to 2018’s A Separation and the more recent Intimacies, her elegant prose is hypnotic and irresistible—no one writes about a woman navigating the slippery channels of her own mind quite like Katie. (If you need further convincing, Barack Obama agrees with us.)
Her newest book, Audition, is no exception. It’s a genre-defying novel about the performance of motherhood, womanhood and personhood with the propulsive engine of a psychological thriller and the gravitas of a family drama. And lucky for all of us, it’s out today! Get your hands on a copy and check out Katie’s event calendar to see her live in conversation with people like Danzy Senna, Teju Cole and Rachel Kushner.
And yet, even a renowned novelist’s children have to eat! Read on for a glimpse into Katie’s family kitchen, replete with breakfasts both extravagant and….not.
Greta + Fanny
Monday
My children dream of extravagant hot breakfasts. Noodles, dumplings, rice and nori. If they plead hard enough, my husband will make them ramen for breakfast. Today is one of those days, and the toppings are more than usually plentiful: a boiled egg, slices of charred chicken, pickled bamboo and kimchee and sheets of nori tucked along the sides of the bowl.
I don't like eating first thing in the morning; I usually eat after I've had coffee, and I like to save my coffee for when I actually sit down at my desk to write. The kids eat an improbable amount of food before I hustle them to the bus. Their school is next to a farmer’s market, and even though I know they are definitely full from breakfast, they claim to be hungry. I buy them apple cider donuts for later; they end up eating them on the two minute walk between the bus stop and their school, but at least they start the day happy.
That evening, my son (12) has a basketball game, and part of playing team sports seems to involve going for pizza after the game. My daughter (9) is permitted to tag along and the entire family eats slices of extremely dense cheese pizza. This is not the kind of pizza that has a thin crust and is wood-fired, where you need to eat a whole pizza to feel full. This is the kind of pizza that leaves you comatose after a single slice.
However, by the time we get home, the kids are hungry again and we make kimchi pancakes. This is the ultimate pantry meal because it only has three ingredients: flour, kimchi and water. Does water count as an ingredient? Anyway, they come out crispy on the outside and nicely gooey on the inside, and my son has the inspired idea of eating the pancake slices wrapped in sheets of nori and dipped in soy and vinegar sauce, which he claims adds more “texture variation” to the dish and he’s not wrong.
Tuesday
It's my husband's turn to do the school run so the kids know there's no chance of noodles. I cut off slices from the enormous loaf I bought the day before at the farmer's market and make toast. The kids eat a couple slices each, and I remember to put out the fruit I also bought at the farmer's market, which they also eat.
Who knows what they eat for lunch? Some days they emerge from school in a reasonably good mood, which generally indicates that they ate their lunch and their blood sugar levels are stable. Other days they’re both angry and weepy and that is when I know lunch was barbecue tofu or pasta, which they invariably describe as “watery.”
Today is one of those days, so we make an emergency stop at the diner around the corner from their school. The kids each order a sandwich and I order mozzarella sticks and there are also fries and milk shakes and their good mood is rapidly restored.
There is a clear division of labor in our household, whereby I don't cook and my husband does. However, if my husband is out, then dinner falls on me, and I find myself googling things like “fifteen minute dinners” or “dinner using only five ingredients.” The results have historically been mixed but have generated a few unequivocal triumphs, including miso butter pasta, which is what I make tonight. I serve it with little dishes of slivered nori and green onions so we can add toppings as desired. After I've served, I realize there are no vegetables on the table so I cut up some cucumbers and dress them in soy and sesame oil and happily the children eat everything.
Wednesday
My husband makes toast with mushrooms that we got at the farmer’s market. The mushrooms are a thing of beauty but the children assiduously eat around them. I stand firm and there is no donut on the way to school.
I am cooking dinner again, which means it's time for my second fail safe dinner: a rice bowl. I cook some rice in my Zojirushi (it cooks rice perfectly and then keeps it warm for up to 24 hours; if I could have only one countertop appliance, I would choose a rice cooker over a toaster every time) and then top bowls of lovely, fluffy, steaming Japanese rice with slices of avocado and cucumber, a fried egg and more kimchi. The children poke at the egg and look generally unimpressed and then ignore me and read their books for the duration of dinner.
A note about kimchi. I really like kimchi. There are a lot of great kimchi brands out there; I like Kimchi Kooks because it's produced in New York and comes in extremely large 32 oz jars with plain lids that can then be scrubbed clean and used for any number of storage purposes (on saving glass jars, read this beautiful piece by Catherine Lacey over at The Yale Review). Everyone in my family loves kimchi and we probably go through a jar a week, which might sound improbable until you realize that we are individually capable of putting it on nearly everything we eat.
Thursday
This time, my son has basketball practice at the mind-numbingly early hour of 7AM. He claims that his coach brings donuts and bagels and waxes poetic about team breakfast, so my husband and I decide it is okay to head out the door having fed him only a glass of skyr. I am not even sure if you can use the verb feed for a liquid.
After we drop him off at practice, my daughter and I go to the coffee shop where she eats a slice of banana bread as a reward for the early start and I drink a coffee. I tell her that I need to get some reading done and she’ll have to entertain herself until it’s time to go to school. Somehow, I end up scrolling on my phone for an hour while she reads about a hundred pages of her book, and I'm reminded of how much more efficient I would be if I threw my phone in the river.
Dinner is on my husband. He makes a beautiful roast chicken with roasted potatoes and peas and salad and everyone is reminded of what a wonderful person he is and why we love him so very much. There is even dessert: pie with ice cream and fruit.
Friday
The end of the week! Yesterday, while I was busy not writing, I made granola following the Eleven Madison Park recipe that has a lot of pistachios and coconut and dried fruit in it. It’s more or less impossible to mess up and the results are consistently delicious, but my children do not agree and eat it only under duress, which is what they do today.
Dinner is my third and final fail safe meal. As a family, we all like dishes that use Asian ingredients, which means that my holy trinity is Hetty McKinnon, Eric Kim and—as is the case tonight—Genevieve Ko. (A small side note: whenever I have to make something for a bake sale, I make Eric Kim's black sesame Rice Krispie treats, which require no effort but somehow come across as if they do.)
Anyway, I have been making Turkey Bolognese for the kids since they were preverbal, but this Genevieve Ko version involves stirring in a couple spoonfuls of red curry paste into the sauce and then dousing the pasta in splashes of cream. It’s easy and delicious and I could eat it forever.
I've been trying to branch out with my mushroom picks lately! Did a chicken of the woods on my grill it was divine