Season 3, Episode 4: Setting an Example

Conner: (00:00)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Martin Diez: (00:18)
I remembered when we were working from home during the pandemic, I had back-to-back calls, and sometimes I had the kids also home because they were doing remote learning. And I couldn't find the time to cook, so they asked me, “Hey, Dad, can we cook something?” And I was like, “Okay, what do you want to do?”

Stephanie Conner: (00:36)
Martin Diez is an accomplished pastry chef with Barry Callebaut, a global leader and manufacturer of chocolate and cocoa. Trained in France, Martin moved to the United States a couple of years ago. He and his wife have two boys, ages 8 and 10. And they are instilling in their sons a love and respect for homemade meals, and an appreciation for seasonality, heritage and experimentation.

Stephanie Conner: (01:06)
Happy New Year, and welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner. And today, we're learning from a professional chef who is teaching his young sons how not just to cook, but to savor time in the kitchen.

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Stephanie Conner: (02:03)
This story of setting an example in the kitchen goes back a generation. Martin grew up in Europe with parents who cooked.

Martin Diez: (02:12)
From my childhood I remember, my mom as well as my dad, baking or cooking. It was more my mom, but then when it was related to dessert, we had a couple of trees with apples and so that was my dad, picking the fruits, preparing them and to bake together. So I always have been surrounded by parents that were preparing food at home and not taking food from the freezer or prepared food in order to warm them up at lunch or dinner. So I think there is a huge part of heritage in how our future children will love cooking at home, but also will learn how to cook home. Because it's not something very easy. You can feel a bit clueless by opening your fridge and being surrounded by fruits, vegetables, and some ingredients being, like, wow, what can I do with that? Or I don't want to do any type of mistake or spoiling the food.

Stephanie Conner: (03:09)
Martin spends his days cooking, developing recipes and experimenting with butter, cream, and sugar to make incredible desserts. And when he returns home, he still wants to be in the kitchen, in part because of the value he sees for his boys. So how does he involve them? From the very beginning.

Martin Diez: (03:33)
Everything starts from picking the right ingredients. We do groceries together. We have a farmer market every Wednesday. Usually it's me or my wife, but more often my wife going over there. She has the boys. They are like, oh, I want the mango today, they look so nice, or the plums because it's the season. Helping the boys to understand seasonality. When you bring them to the farmer market, they will understand that it's no more the season of the tomatoes or lettuce, or this fruit has disappeared, but there is another one coming. Apple picking will start soon then pumpkin because we are entering fall and we are going to change our recipes. So they have to understand the seasonality. That's very important. Then you go back home and you try to be creative. We do our bread ourselves. They help to scale. They help to prepare the dough, but they help also to shape the bread when it's ready to be shaped. Of course, it won't be perfect, but it's going to be their bread, they're going to love it. It's very important for them to practice.

Martin Diez: (04:42)
Last time, we did some type of yum yum, you know it's like a dumpling. And they had the filling done. They had to place the filling inside the dough and then to close it. It's a bit kind of tricky. It was a massive amount of work, it took us two hours, but I was surprised. I thought they would do one and saying, hey, dad, it's over, but no, no, no. It's usually what happens with kids, right? But no, they stayed two hours, they did everything perfect. And at the end, they were like, okay, it's over, and they were happy. And you know what? Tasting was not their favorite part, it was really making them. It's wonderful. We tried to be creative. I told you, we do our bread. So when you have like the bread dough, you can do a pizza out of that. You can do breads, you can do chocolate breads. You can do those dumplings. With the same dough, they understand that you can be very versatile and creative.

Martin Diez: (05:38)
With those ingredients, you can do tons of things. It's not always like, okay, we have the cucumber and the cucumber is going to be in slices, and then we put a dressing on that. No, no, no. It's a soup. It's fresh. It's a different type of ingredients that they can have. I know it's big amount of work, but this is something we always have been doing. We cooked food for their lunchbox. I believe it's important for them to have lunchbox done with fresh food. This is something we always have been doing. And they love to do that. I think big chunks of our time is also cooking, but it's very nice and important family moments.

Stephanie Conner: (06:20)
As a chef who spends a lot of time in the kitchen, I presumed Martin could make a lot of dishes from memory, but I wanted to know how he's teaching his kids. Does he teach them to follow recipes or to experiment?

Martin Diez: (06:34)
Yeah. There are two things. We have a recipe book. We write down recipes. Sometimes, we explore some new recipes and they're like, oh, this one, we like it, so we write it down. I told you, I really believe this is a heritage. So I want to do a very nice album book with the pictures and then the recipe and the process, for them to have that in the future, I believe it's very important. Because I have my mom's recipe, and my wife is working with mom and grandma recipe. Our grandma is from Austria, and sometimes we have the apple strudel coming because it's the season that we are always happy to reopen the family recipe book and to go through type of heritage. It's also always driving her back to her childhood, trying to reconnect with the taste buds that she remember and very nice family atmosphere. So I think this is important.

Martin Diez: (07:27)
But there is also the creative part, where I remember when we were working from home during the pandemic, I had back-to-back calls and sometimes I had the kids also home because they were doing remote learning. And I couldn't find the time to cook, so they asked me, “Hey Dad, can we cook something?” And I was like, “Okay, what do you want to do, pasta with eggs maybe or sauce?” I was really surprised because I completely forget about that. I was really focused on my course. And then they came up at some point saying, hey, that's done. I was like, oh, come on. Trust me, the eggs were very well cooked, pasta were perfect. And they did that on their own. Okay, the kitchen was a bit a mess, but that's okay. You're so proud. They are eight and 10 and they're able to provide a lunch, so I was very proud about that.

Stephanie Conner: (08:15)
I was also curious if he's run up against any challenges from his kids about cooking being for girls. But the example that Martin and his wife set has been so strong and is set on a foundation of generations of men and women cooking, that his sons have never considered cooking a gendered activity.

Martin Diez: (08:35)
They see both parents cooking, so there is no stereotype over there. I would be surprised they come up to think it's stereotype because they also have grandfathers cooking. It's part of the European heritage and they're really cooking very good food. They are always asking for their grandfather's recipe, for example, or those type of things that they love. We should not refrain any kids to go in the cooking because I think it's also part of a very important diet, but a way of life as well. Cooking your own is also preventing your body to get any disease related to allergies or diabetes or those type of things. It's very important to know what you have in your plate. As soon as you have your own vegetables that you pick, fruits, and your own meats and cream and butter and then you're able to cook that, you are sure that you are not really always eating processed food.

Stephanie Conner: (09:34)
Health, heritage and family togetherness are central to Martin's cooking philosophy.

Martin Diez: (09:41)
It's very nice to create strong bonds with family members. It's also important to be together. I don't know about you, but for us, we have our dinnertime and everyone is around the same table. And this is the moment we ask everyone, hey, how was your day, what do you have on your plate, as kind of important moments. We try to have them every day, and then even if my wife is working, I'm working and kids they have a very intense sports schedule after school, but we trying to find the moment where we are all together eating. And even if the food sometimes is made over the weekend and then we just have to reheat it, we have been cooking, that's important for us.

Stephanie Conner: (10:20)
Martin experiments constantly as he develops recipes for Barry Callebaut and he's encouraging his kids to experiment as well. But, for most of us, experimenting, even veering from a recipe just a little, can be daunting. What happens if we mess up?

Martin Diez: (10:40)
How do you recover from mistake? The mistakes I try never to do. And then this is always my big advice is when it is related to baking, the baking time are always – don't trust them. You don't know if the same oven was used. You don't know if it's a ventless oven or not. Is it a deck oven, is it a rotative one, is it like, it's crazy. Ovens are all different. It's gas, it's electricity. So it's always easier to bake a bit more than opening the oven when it is too late. And this is a mistake you cannot recover from is overbaked or overcooked, to be honest. Even when you do some type of reduction, if you want to do like imagine a bolognese or a tomato sauce and then sometimes you hear like, okay, leave on the gas for few minutes in order to reduce. That's where you need to pay really ultra attention, because you don't want to overcook or caramelize or burn. That mistake, it's very difficult to recover from that.

Martin Diez: (11:44)
That's always my advice, pay attention about cooking and baking time. When it is related to ingredients and the ratio, you try to be mindful of some ingredients are very strong in terms of taste. If you use pepper, for example, if you use ginger, if you use citrus, if you use some type of ingredients that can be very, very strong and overpowering the rest, so try to be mindful about that. Cooking and baking, I always try to pay really a lot of attention, not to overbake or overcook. When you go to the haircutter, it's always easier to remove than to add hairs, right?

Stephanie Conner: (12:21)
Starting with a good recipe as a base, being mindful of strong ingredients, testing in small batches and being careful to not overcook. Those are the keys to preventing truly irrecoverable mistakes. Otherwise, try not to stress and have some fun. Whatever mistakes you do make probably won't matter that much, and that healthy attitude in the kitchen is one of the best examples you can set. And now, it's time for kitchen questions. This season, we're asking chefs some questions to help us all learn more about food and cooking.

Conner: (12:59)
It's time for kitchen questions. I have a question. What would happen if you put a little bit of the wrong ingredient inside a cookie? Why are cupcakes squishy? How often do you burn things on accident? Do you like cake? What is the difference between baking and roasting? What is your favorite recipe?

Stephanie Conner: (13:30)
First up is Phoebe von Reis, a mother of three and a restaurant industry veteran.

Kids: (13:37)
What is a ragu?

Phoebe von Reis: (13:40)
A ragu, it's basically like a sauce. A ragu is something that you cook for a long time and it's mostly put over pasta. Most people make it with tomatoes. And actually my kids don't love tomatoes, which is funny. So you can make a white ragu even. So you're cooking down, the first three things are onion, celery, and carrot, which is the basis for a lot of Italian and French foods. It's mirepoix they call it or in Italian it's soffritto. You cook those down and then you start adding meat. And it just cooks for a really long time. You add in some garlic and some spices like oregano or basil. And then you can turn it into a more sauce-like consistency by adding some tomatoes or some cream. It's just a classic thing to put over pasta.

Stephanie Conner: (14:41)
Next up, Allison Settle, a mom and executive chef at Barn8 at Hermitage Farm in Goshen, Kentucky.

Kids: (14:49)
Is there a kitchen gadget you love?

Allison Settle: (14:53)
I think one of the most useful things that you can have in the kitchen is a coffee grinder. It costs $15. They're at Target and Walmart. They're everywhere. You can use it for coffee and then you clean it out and you can use it for spices. Not only do you get to experience with your pourover skills in your French press experiments, you can grind your own spices. And I think that honestly, something that is going to elevate your cookies more than you think is buying spices in whole—whole coriander, whole cumin—toasting it on the stove, and then grinding it yourself. It's going to change the way that you think about food and it's going to change the way your food tastes. And it's a very, very, very simple thing to do. It's an extra step or two, but for a $15 grinder, you usually can buy your spices cheaper that way as well. Yeah, that's something that I think it's really, really cheap and easy, and it is a gadget but it's very helpful.

Stephanie Conner: (15:51)
Thank you to our kitchen questions chefs, Allison Settle and Phoebe von Reis. You'll hear from them again in upcoming episodes. And thank you to Chef Martin Diez of Barry Callebaut. You can follow Martin @chefmartindiez on Instagram. And I'll share social media and other links for all of our chefs in the show notes at kiddosinthekitchen.com.

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Stephanie Conner: (16:51)
Cooking with our kiddos is about being present and teaching them skills for a healthy, self-reliant future. But it's also about honoring what came before, teaching recipes and exploring flavors from generations past. Food can be a reminder of our heritage. Even if you don't have a rich recipe book passed down over time, the foods you cook and eat every day, the food culture you create in your own home, will become what your kids know and remember, and what they teach their own children. But beyond recipes for dishes, though I contend that those do matter, we can pass down a love for cooking and family through our own example. We can pass down a sense of adventure in the kitchen, a passion for experimentation and the confidence to try new things and roll with mistakes. And we can follow Martin's example. When our kiddos ask, can we cook something? We can stop what we're doing and reply, Okay, what would you like to cook?

Stephanie Conner: (18:32)
Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (18:38)
If you like my mom's podcast as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple podcast, Google podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast.

Stephanie Conner: (18:58)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com, where kiddos cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.