Gracie and Diana.

Parents Who Cook is a Q&A series in which I ask my guests about how their cooking has changed after kids entered the picture, and pick their brains on their best strategies to cook with little ones underfoot.

Diana Abu-Jaber is an American writer of Jordanian origin who has authored four novels — the latest is Birds of Paradise — and a memoir titled The Language of Baklava, in which she explores the story of her family through the foods of her childhood. She has a marvelous way with words and a real gift for bringing characters to life, and the cooking and baking scenes in her books reveal a true appreciation for the craft.

I have been in touch with Diana for a few years — the magic of social media! — and since she has a young daughter, I jumped at the chance to invite her as a guest on the Parents Who Cook series.

Diana is currently working on a follow-up book to her memoir, of which she says, “The new one picks up where Baklava leaves off, at the point where I’m about to embark on a path to becoming a writer, and mentors and advisors keep telling me: you can be a writer or a parent, but you can’t be both. It’s about struggling with hard decisions, economic realities, the intersections of food, family, and art.” (I can’t tell you how excited I am about it.) You can follow her on twitter.

Can you tell us a few words about your daughter? Age, name, temperament?

Gracie is 4 years old. We call her the Wild One, but really she’s a cupcake.

Did having a child change the way you cook?

I’m less spontaneous, but also less careless in my approach to cooking. I spend more time thinking about ingredients, reading labels, considering approaches. I’d love for her to develop good, bold eating habits, but I realize that one has to be realistic about kids’ tastes.

Do you remember what it was like to cook with a newborn? Any tips or saving grace for new parents going through that phase?

I remember that when my parents or friends unexpectedly showed up at our door with meals it was like light breaking from heaven. If you know someone with a newborn, run out right now and buy them a roasted chicken! It’s so hard to manage day-to-day chores and errands with a little baby. Getting groceries (much less preparing them) seemed monumental.

My husband and I relied on a sort of core repertoire of basic dishes that lent themselves to leftovers: lots of easy cuts of meat — pork loin, lamb chops — simple pastas like carbonara, stews, chilis. Sometimes we just scrounged — scrambled eggs, tuna salad — or grazed on ingredients, a little paté, a little cheese, a little salami. Usually one of us would feed the baby while the other would cut up food and feed the spouse.

Over time, have you developed staple dishes or strategies that make it possible to prepare a meal and keep the kid happy at the same time?

Yes — all the dishes in the previous answer. Chicken Marbella, coq au vin. Also, I pay attention to my daughter’s preferences and try to always have those basic ingredients in the house: certain cheeses, nuts, beans, tahini sauce, ham, fruits, etc.

Stock up on tons of fruit — especially berries — and always have heavy cream on hand. She’ll eat any fruit if it’s got even the smallest dab of whipped cream on it. We usually make a double batch of dough for pizza once a week and keep half in the freezer. Same for cookies: bake half, freeze half. Often I’ll just bake a few cookies for her treat.

We’re also fortunate to have a good growing climate here in Florida, so I try to take advantage of that and keep a garden. We grow a selection of herbs and have coconut, key lime, and mango trees. It’s a lot easier (and less expensive) if you don’t have to run to the store for every handful of mint.

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I love legumes of all shapes, colors, and sizes, but if I had to play favorites, it is the chickpea I would single out as the cutest (right?) and the most incredibly versatile.

I love it in my vegetables, in my salads, and in my soups, in my hummus and in my baked falafel (I’ll be sharing a recipe soon), in my Nice-style socca and in my socca tarts (recipe in my upcoming cookbook!).

But my latest, fondest use for the pale yellow, nutty, slightly smoky flour that is ground from dried chickpeas, is this: a simple crêpe batter flavored with cumin that can be whipped up in a matter of minutes, with 100% pantry items.

My latest, fondest use for chickpea flour is this: a simple crêpe batter flavored with cumin that can be whipped up in a matter of minutes, with 100% pantry items.

The resulting golden crêpes (which happen to be gluten-free if that matters to you) are flavorful and nutritious, and can be used in various ways: you can fill them like classic savory crêpes, with whatever ingredients you have on hand; you can garnish them with the spread of your choice, roll them up, and slice them into bite-size vortex rounds; and you can serve them as a side, to dab at the juices of a vegetable curry.

In the photo above, I spread the crêpes first with tahini sauce, then with a dollop of mashed beets — the remnants of a purée I’d made for Milan before deciding beets were way too messy when an 8-month-old is manning the spoon — and a scatter of chopped hazelnuts. It was very, very good.

A nice variation on the process I’ve outlined below is to sprinkle the crêpes with chopped herbs (chives, cilantro), or seeds (sesame, cumin, fennel), or very finely minced or shredded vegetables (scallions, carrots) just after pouring the batter into the skillet, so they’re effectively studded with those ingredients, which looks and tastes lovely.

And next time, I plan to leave the batter out to ferment at room temperature — presumably just until bubbles start to form — to see how the flavor and texture are altered.

Are you a chickpea fan yourself? In what recipes do you like to use chickpea flour?

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Honey jars from Russia, featured on Buzzfeed via Lovely Package.

A few of my favorite finds and reads for January:

~ What’s on the menu? The New York Public Library’s collection of digitized restaurant menus.

~ Some of the coolest food packaging designs of 2012.

~ The unpalatable truth about quinoa, and Tom Philpott’s follow-up post.

~ 50 life hacks to simplify your world.

~ Why do health articles so often get it wrong?

~ The Havas Paris ad agency’s stupendous Happy New Year video — a must-watch for Paris lovers.

~ Tips on learning to cook in France.

~ Comfort food, redefined by Tamar Adler.

How about you, any recent find you’d like to share ?

{See below about winning the garlic press to end all garlic presses.}

Over the years, I’ve gone back and forth on this burning issue: is it a good idea to press garlic?

The question sparks surprisingly violent debates, and often there’s an undercurrent of judgment (“real cooks just chop”) that I find out of place in any cooking discussion: there’s no single right way of doing anything, just different skills and circumstances.

As far as I can tell, here are the pros of each method:

Pros of pressing garlic:

– In just a few seconds and a single gesture, you get garlic pulp that you can add to your dish right away.
– If your knife skills aren’t those of a pro, it can be a challenge to get the garlic chopped evenly so it will cook evenly.
– Pressed garlic blends smoothly with other ingredients, which is particularly useful if you use it raw.
– It limits the lingering smell on your fingers, since you can avoid touching the garlic altogether if you prefer.

Pros of chopping by hand:

– It takes more time to clean the average garlic press than a knife and a cutting board, which you would probably have to clean anyway.
– No one-trick pony taking up space in your utensil drawer.
– You have control over how finely or roughly your garlic is cut.
– You use the whole clove, with none wasted in the crevices of the press.

In my own kitchen, I use a bit of both methods, and sometimes I’ll use my Microplane grater, too. I will usually chop my garlic if I’m already chopping other ingredients, but I reach for the garlic press when I’m pressed for time (ha ha), especially if I add the garlic as a second thought when I’m improvising a dish.

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