I’ll be home for dinner

I haven’t been home from the office during the week in time to make a family dinner since, well, since I went back to work when my older child was a year-old toddler. Now 13 and 10, our kids eat with the baby-sitter hours earlier than would be possible if they had to wait for us.

Rejecting any semblance of respect for this particular 1950s ideal has always taken the pressure off everyone at our house. No one complains, least of all me.

So it was with great consternation that I read Jeff and Jodie Morgan’s “The Working Parents Cookbook,” a paean to the family dinner hour. Guilt started to gnaw at my carefully rationalized approach to dinner from the first page.

The Morgans’ new cookbook, their first as a couple, grew out of their family maxim that the dinner hour is sacred. Preserving a time each evening when they can sit down to eat, and talk, with their two teenage daughters is religion to the Morgans.

Good food can be made quickly. Time, or rather the lack of it, doesn’t need to be the enemy of the family dinner, according to the Napa Valley couple with careers as a vintner and social worker. (Jeff had a previous life as a wine and food writer, penning “Dean & DeLuca: The Food and Wine Cookbook,” published in 2002.)

It’s hardly a new idea. And I might have ignored the Morgans’ take on it, as I have most everyone else’s, if it weren’t for their refreshingly down-to-earth approach. Our weekends can be as hectic as the weekdays, and appealing dishes that fall together fast are appreciated at our house.

The Morgans have a knack for creating enticing recipes that can sound as good to a picky 5-year-old as they do to a sophisticated adult. Their recipes are easy to make, probably even for teenage cooks. Take their chicken kebabs marinated in yogurt and spices, a refreshing dish for people who rely on the grill to get meat on the table quickly. Yogurt, fresh ginger, cilantro, garlic, cumin and coriander turn cubes of workaday chicken breast into a Middle Eastern treat.

Our family dinner night is Sunday. So before going to my son’s afternoon baseball game, I spent 15 minutes throwing together the marinade, tossed in the chicken and put the whole thing in the fridge. After the game, it took only a couple of minutes to grill the kebabs. The meat retained a pretty sheen from the yogurt glaze, along with a milky moistness that defied the gas grill’s tendency to suck the moisture out of chicken.

The couscous salad with tomato and cilantro could have used a little more olive oil and a little less raw red onion. Still, it got us thinking about couscous salads, previously not on our short list. A quick scrounge around in the fridge and we were adding cubes of feta, chunks of avocado and chopped celery to perk it up.

A dish that is as appetizing as the kebabs is the white bean soup with kale. It’s a straightforward one-pot meal that’s a notch above the typical bean soup melange. The kale retained its structure and bite without being overpowering.

Making it work

It wasn’t, however, a 15-minute preparation, as the recipe says. This was a 40-minute chopping project. And even though we had soaked the beans for 24 hours, they were still crunchy after the one hour of cooking dictated in the recipe and needed at least half an hour more cook time. A better idea would have been to make the soup a day ahead and reheat it for dinner, a perfectly reasonable approach to meeting the conflicting schedules of most families. In fact, preparation times and cooking times were underestimated in many of the recipes I tested.

We paired the soup with Poopsie’s creamy corn cakes, wildly flavorful treats that elevated garden-variety corn cakes by adding jalapeno chiles, onions and Cheddar cheese. The recipe makes enough corn cakes for an army.

For dessert, we whipped up the flourless chocolate cake, a super-sweet treat that vanished as soon as it was pulled from the oven. For my taste, it was too sweet, so we’ve adapted the recipe, cutting the sugar from 1 cup to three-fourths cup. But my children loved it as it was.

On the whole, the recipes were good enough and easy enough to cause a pause in my resolve never to rush home to prepare a weekday family dinner.

The momentary madness passed, and then came inspiration: I’ve asked our baby-sitter to use “The Working Parents Cookbook” to make dinner. Now we’re hotfooting it home so we can eat these dishes with the kids.

It’s not the ‘50s ideal, but something tells me the Morgans would approve.

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Flourless chocolate cake

Total time: 1 hour, 5 minutes

Servings: 6 to 8

Note: Adapted from “The Working Parents Cookbook.”

1 teaspoon plus 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4cup granulated sugar,

divided

4 eggs, separated

2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

1/2 cup whipping cream, whipped

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9-inch round cake pan with parchment paper, then grease with 1 teaspoon butter.

2. In a small saucepan, combine the chocolate and the remaining one-half cup butter over low heat and melt, stirring often until smooth. Stir in the vanilla, remove from the heat and cover to keep warm.

3. In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer, beat one-half cup of the granulated sugar with the egg yolks until pale in color. In a large bowl, using clean beaters, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Slowly add the remaining one-fourth cup granulated sugar to the egg whites, beat until stiff peaks form, about 30 seconds.

4. Using a plastic spatula, gently stir the egg yolk mixture into the egg whites just until combined. Then gently stir in the melted chocolate until the mixture is a uniform chocolate color.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the cake until a fork or toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry, about 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto a serving plate and let cool completely. Remove the parchment paper. Using a fine-mesh sieve, dust the top of the cake with the confectioners’ sugar. Top each serving with a dollop of whipped cream.

Each serving: 387 calories; 5 grams protein; 39 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 26 grams fat; 15 grams saturated fat; 149 mg. cholesterol; 39 mg. sodium.

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Chicken kebabs marinated in yogurt and spices

Total time: 35 minutes, plus 2 to 4 hours marinating

Servings: 6

Note: If you use wooden skewers, remember to soak them in water first.

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/2cup plain whole-milk yogurt

3 tablespoons chopped

cilantro

1 tablespoon grated fresh

ginger

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 tablespoons canola oil,

divided

1 teaspoon salt

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into

2-inch cubes

1. In a large glass or ceramic bowl, combine the lemon juice, yogurt, cilantro, ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, 1 tablespoon of the canola oil and the salt. Stir in the chicken cubes, cover and refrigerate for 2 to 4 hours.

2. Prepare a fire in a grill or preheat the broiler. Remove the chicken cubes from the marinade and thread onto metal skewers. Brush the chicken with the remaining 1 tablespoon canola oil. Place the skewers on the grill rack or on a broiler pan and grill or broil, turning occasionally, until the chicken is opaque throughout, 12 to 18 minutes. If using a grill, close the top for the last 5 minutes to ensure thorough cooking. Serve immediately.

Each serving: 192 calories; 31 grams protein; 0 carbohydrates;

0 fiber; 7 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 84 mg. cholesterol; 172 mg. sodium.

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Poopsie’s creamy corn cakes

Total time: 1 hour

Servings: Makes 24 corn cakes

Note: From a friend of the authors, nicknamed Poopsie

1 tablespoon oil

1 cup cornmeal

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2/3cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, cooled slightly

1 medium onion, diced

2 jalapeno chiles, seeded and finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups freshly grated Cheddar cheese

1 can (14 to 15 ounces) creamed corn

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly brush 24 muffin-pan cups with the oil.

2. In a large bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a medium bowl, stir together the eggs, milk and melted butter. In a third, small bowl, stir together the onion, jalapenos and garlic.

3. Using a wooden spoon, stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture. Then stir in the onion mixture, the cheese and the creamed corn.

4. Ladle the batter into the muffin cups, filling each cup about three-fourths full. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a corn cake comes out dry, about 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack for 5 minutes. Turn out and serve warm or at room temperature.

Each cake: 167 calories; 4 grams protein; 20 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 8 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 38 mg. cholesterol; 208 mg. sodium.