What’s for dinner? That’s the question the four Pollan family women kept finding themselves asking one another. With families of their own, they were looking for inspiration for easy meals they could make time and time again. And if they were all searching for his suppertime holy grail, surely, they thought, others must be too.
The Pollan Family Table, written by Corky Pollan and her daughters Lori, Tracy and Dana, was the answer.
“We really came up with the idea for the book because we wanted a book like this,” Lori said in a group phone interview with the Gazette that included all the Pollan woman. “We cook dinner for our families every night and forget what we like to make. We needed some ideas and wouldn’t it be great if there was a book full of dinner recipes, with mix and match sides?”
Corky, Dana and Lori will talk about the book with author Joan Nathan on Sunday at 3 p.m. in Chilmark as part of the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival.
Growing up, the kitchen was the centerpiece of the Pollan family household. There was no such thing as too many cooks in the kitchen. Today, in this family of food enthusiasts, activists, fitness experts and writers, the vibe continues.
“We all get very excited about the dishes, we all love food and getting together,” Corky Pollan said. “It’s all very lively and a lot of chatting and discussion of what we’re making.”
“It can sometimes get a little lonely when you hear everything going on outside of the kitchen,” Dana said. “When we’re together and it’s the four of us cooking together, that draws everybody in. We’re a magnet, and all of the sudden everybody’s in the kitchen.”
“It makes it more fun,” Lori added.
In addition to recipes and shopping lists, the cookbook includes pantry essentials, a glossary of culinary terms and cooking shortcuts. The authors also provide cooking tools no one should live without. In the Pollan family, that includes rimmed baking sheets.
“We use those all the time,” Corky said. “A lot of people don’t know how handy those rimmed baking sheets are. We use them for roasting vegetables or to cook an entire meal. They really save time, just put everything on it and put it in the hot oven.”
And just like a meal made in the kitchen, the book was a true group creation.
“We gave one another assignments,” Corky said. “It was always amazing. When we went to meet with the publishers they asked us who wrote the cookbook and we said we all wrote it. They were just amazed that we all had the same voice.”
The Pollan brother, author and food activist Michael Pollan got in on the act too by coaching family members during the writing process and writing the introduction to the book.
The book chronicles the stories of a family of voracious eaters, and many of the eating habits began on the Vineyard. As kids, every summer the Pollan family piled in the car and drove from their home on Long Island to their summer home in Aquinnah. First stop, Menemsha.
“The Vineyard was really where we started eating locally,” Tracy said. “With all of the seafood there, we were always eating whatever was fresh at Larsen’s or Poole’s.” She recalled: “While [Corky] was preparing dinner, we would all sit outside on the porch and each got to pick our own lobster. We’d name it and have lobster races around the porch.”
“There were lots of small farm stands, especially around Beetlebung corner,” Dana said. “I remember stopping with Corky and the sisters, picking up fresh local vegetables for dinner that night.”
“Shopping on the Vineyard seemed like the Vineyard experience,” Corky added. “Everyday we’d go to the farm stand, get what you need. It was all so incredibly fresh here. It’s just such a wonderful experience.”
As kids, the siblings would get family shellfish permits and go out to dig steamers and rake quahaugs. Clams weren’t their favorite to eat, but finding them right under foot was fun.
These days, Vineyard meals are determined by how long they can stay on the beach and still put dinner on the table. They try to keep it simple and local, sometimes a barbecue, but always a “culmination of beautiful days,” Lori said.
On this particular night, Dana was making crispy quinoa burgers and Corky was cooking up a Thai cod broth, both from the cookbook. Lori and Tracy were together on Long Island, trying out a new recipe, a salad with avocado, mango and tomatoes. A chorus of “yums” rang out in unison.
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