🥔 Food People, Parent Picks: Marc's Favorite Things
The chef-owner of Peasant and Forge on hot sauce, the peeler he won't live without, and why ordering pizza sometimes is the whole point.
Food People, Parent Picks: we ask our favorite chefs, food writers, and industry insiders who we interview in our Order Up! Series to share the products, books, and bites they can’t live without.
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If you read Marc's Order Up! conversation earlier this week, you already know he's spent the last few years rewriting what being a chef and a dad at the same time looks like. Here's the rapid-fire follow-up: the hot sauce lineup in his fridge, the Tuesday dinner his seven-year-old never turns down, a hosting trick that came straight off Peasant's menu, and the advice he'd give any tired parent standing in the kitchen at 6 p.m. wondering what's for dinner.
Read our full Order Up! conversation with Marc Forgione right here, and follow him at @marcforgione and @peasantnyc on Instagram.
What’s always in your home fridge, no matter how busy you are?
Hot sauce. Many different kinds. There’s no such thing as too many.
The 5:30 p.m. dinner that always saves you when you need to get something on the table fast for a hungry seven-year-old?
Chicken cutlets. Classic. Always works.
The one kitchen tool you’d replace immediately if it broke?
My peeler. Don’t ask me to cook without a good one.
A simple meal your son never complains about?
Tuesday fish night. I buy fresh fish from the farmer’s market on Saturday — cod, sole, whatever the guy has — and we cook it Tuesday. Nothing fancy: a sauce meunière with lemon, capers, parsley, and butter. Sonny goes crazy for it.
A shortcut more home cooks should embrace?
Slow-cooking in the oven. Buy a pork shoulder, season it, put it in the oven at 200°F, and walk away. Come home, dinner’s done. Very hard to mess up.
Something at the grocery store that’s worth spending a little more money on?
Extra virgin olive oil. Get the good stuff — it shows up in everything.
And something where the basic version is perfectly fine?
Kosher dill pickles. No need to get fancy.
Your go-to move to turn a regular dinner into something that feels special — without a lot of extra work?
Swirl something into mashed potatoes. Basil pesto or even tomato sauce, stirred right in. Suddenly the same mashed potatoes you served last week look different and taste different. Old-school restaurants used to do it too. Small trick, big payoff.
A hosting trick from your restaurants that works surprisingly well at home?
Shake-your-own carbonara. We do a dish at Peasant where you shake your carbonara in a jar, and I’ve started doing it at home when people come over. Prep everything, set the jars out, let everyone shake their own before pouring it onto a plate. It doesn’t have to be carbonara either — a salad, cucumbers with vinaigrette, whatever. It’s just fun.
One thing you’ve stopped stressing about as a parent when it comes to food?
Forcing them to eat. I used to get mad and pull the whole “there are starving people in Africa” thing. I don’t anymore. I just don’t make them something else. Nine times out of ten, they end up eating what’s on the table. And if they don’t, they don’t. That would be my best advice — don’t stress about finishing the plate. Just don’t cook a second dinner.
Last one: a busy, tired parent is standing in the kitchen feeling defeated at dinnertime. What do you tell them?
Order pizza. Honestly. Having pizza with your kid can be just as meaningful as preparing a six-hour meal. It’s about sitting down and eating with your kid. That’s the whole thing.