On days when we’ve had one too many meals of mac-and-cheese, I like to turn to the Naked Chef for some sheer escapism.

Jamie Oliver - aka the Naked Chef - is the British boy wonder (okay, he’s in his thirties, but still baby-faced and tousle-haired) with award-winning restaurants and his own cooking show, who learned how to cook growing up in his parent’s pub. And now he’s all grown up, he’s written a book for people like you and me: “Jamie’s Dinners: The essential family cookbook.” As the jacket proclaims, with typical Jamie exuberance: “Real life. Proper Food. It’s dinnertime!”

That’s long as you can accept that “Five Minute Wonders” actually take thirty, and that his idea of a simple jacket potato involves “freshly picked white crabmeat” and “finely chopped mint and chili.”

But that’s not the point. The book is filled with pictures of Jamie, his gorgeous wife Jools and their adorable daughters, Poppy and Daisy, at the dinner table; Jamie picking greens at the local farmer’s market; Jamie stirring a pot on the stove with a toddler on his knee….you can almost smell the tang of the star anise in the dish of sweet duck legs. Just as well, since I don’t often get further than flipping dreamily through the pages.

Except for one brief, glorious afternoon last weekend. For once, I was organized enough to shop for ingredients for one of the less daunting concoctions - The Real Mushroom Soup. Let’s just say this is not Campbell’s.

As the baby napped and my husband took a break from his job as stay-at-home Dad at the neighborhood Dunn Brothers, the three-year-old sat on the kitchen counter and “helped.” Together we learned the difference between porcini and shiitake and oyster mushrooms (okay, I added button mushrooms for bulk…do you know how much porcini COSTS??). And at the end, she helped me sprinkle chopped parsley in and a big dollop of mascarpone. Maybe I wouldn’t have made the pages of Jamie’s Dinners with my pink swim goggles on to survive chopping an entire red onion, but oh, how gourmet I felt. As the book advised, we even made a little bowl of zest of lemon and lemon juice to spoon in the middle of our bowls upon serving.

That was when the spell broke. The three-year-old made a face at the lemon juice in her soup and pushed the bowl away. The baby tasted a few wary spoonfuls then gagged and spat out a porcini morsel. But it was good while it lasted and my husband proclaimed it delicious.

Cribsheeters, what’s dinner like at your house? How do you reconcile your own gourmet yearnings with what the littlest and pickiest eaters will swallow? Any recipe book recommendations?

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 10:26 am and is filed under Books, Family Life, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.