Okay, Ian, here we go—open your surprise box and tell me what you have.” I’ve got my finger on my phone, the timer set for thirty minutes, ready to go. Ian’s little face is so serious. For a ten-year-old he has tremendous focus.
“Let’s see,” he says, furrowing his dark brows over huge green eyes, his dark curls a little unruly and popping out from underneath his black bandanna. He reaches inside the lidded wooden box that says Darcy’s Treasures in faded pink lettering on the side, a loving donation to his training from his twelve-year-old sister. “I’ve got a leftover cooked pork chop from dinner last night, an acorn squash, pistachio nuts, and honey vinegar.”
“Okay,” I say, practically watching the wheels turning in his little head. “Time starts . . . now!”
Ian gets down to business, steeling his little chef’s knife.
“Talk me through it as you go,” I say.
“I’m going to do a pork chop and roasted squash quesadilla with pistachio chimichurri and honey vinegar crema.”
“That seems smart. Tell me why as you prep.”
Ian begins slicing the acorn squash into rings, laying them on a baking sheet and drizzling with olive oil. “Well, the pork chop is already cooked, and quesadillas are a smart use for leftovers because they cook fast so things don’t have time to dry out or get tough. The squash has good sweetness, which will go well with the pork, and will also be friends with the honey vinegar.”
“Good. Why not just toss the pistachios into the quesadilla?”
He seasons the acorn squash rings expertly with kosher salt, taking a pinch from the bowl and holding his hand at eye level, raining the salt crystals down evenly over the squash, and then pops the tray in the oven. “Because the heat of cooking would make them lose their snap and you need that textural element for contrast with the soft quesadilla.”
“Excellent. Tell me about the chimichurri.”
He throws the pistachios into a small nonstick sauté pan and starts to toast them. “Well, I’m toasting the nuts to bring out the flavor and intensify the crunch, and I’m going to chop them roughly and mix them with minced green olives, mint, parsley, shallots, olive oil, a touch of the honey vinegar, maybe some red pepper flakes for heat.”
I’m so freaking proud of this kid, rattling off chimichurri ingredients like a boss. I know I inherited him with a heck of a palate, but in the last six years, I feel like I’ve practically raised him from a pup. “I thought you were using the honey vinegar in the crema.”
He smiles wryly. “Judges love it when you use ingredients in multiple ways.”
I laugh. “Boom.”
Ian is training with me for America’s Junior SuperChef. The wildly popular kids’ version of the reality television culinary competition is holding Chicago casting tryouts in five months. Ian tried out last year and made it through the fourth round, getting cut before callbacks. But he’s a champ and not a quitter, and they asked him to come back to auditions this year, which makes me think they are setting him up to be this season’s comeback kid. I’ve been the personal chef for his family, the Farbers, since he was four. I spend three days a week with them, prepping breakfasts and school lunches for Ian and his brother and two sisters, filling the fridge and pantry with reasonably healthy, easy-to-grab snacks for the kids and their endless gaggle of friends who always seem to be hanging around the house, and cooking heat-and-eat dinners. One afternoon a week I train Ian after school. As a personal chef I hit the goddamn motherlode.
The Farbers are the kind of rich that would make the Koch brothers say, “Damn, that’s a lot of money,” and the kind of people who make sure you would never in a million years suspect that they have that kind of wealth. Shelby and Brad were college sweethearts, fell madly in love, and got married right after graduation, before he invented some super-secret something or other related to communications that he sold for a couple of billion before he was thirty. But unlike some of their much less flush contemporaries, they don’t broadcast it. Brad runs a tutoring nonprofit that focuses on providing safe and structured after-school programs to underserved neighborhoods. He looks like your basic sweet Jewish dad, a little bit paunchy, a little bit balding, average height and looks. Shelby is tiny, maybe five foot even, and slim, with an appetite like a lumberjack and the metabolism of a hummingbird. I’d hate her if she weren’t so damned nice. She keeps her dark hair in a pixie cut, lives in well-worn jeans, Brad’s old sweaters, and ratty Converse All-Stars, and is beyond devoted to her family. She treats me like a sister. Their house, while in the tony Lincoln Park neighborhood not far from where I went to high school, is not on one of the main McMansion streets, but tucked away on a small side street on the northern edge of the neighborhood.
The former three-flat that they converted to a single-family home still has all of its turn-of-the-century charm and quirks. They personally drop their kids off at school and take them to soccer games and go to recitals. They have a couple of regular babysitters for when they go out evenings, just local teenagers picking up extra money, and a housekeeper who comes twice a week to keep the mess under control. Brad drives an ancient Wagoneer that he restored himself, and Shelby has an Infinity SUV that is five years old. I’d say ninety percent of their extensive philanthropic generosity is donated either anonymously or in honor of other people.