Jessica Battilana - Repertoire

Theres a three-hour stretch between picking up our two young boys from school and settling them into their beds for the night that my wife and I call running the gauntlet.

Were all tired, Sarah and me and the kids, who, having shed shoes and clothing in a trail from the front door to the kitchen, are agitating for attention and dinner. In the old days, before the kids, I might have leisurely pulled a cookbook from the shelf, browsed through for inspiration, and hit the store for ingredients. Id try a new recipe, tweaking it until it was just right; Sarah and I would eat long after dark. But its different now. Kids, work, life I just dont have the time I used to spend dreaming up dinner. No one does.

So whats the solution? Friends whod had children before me promised a future of takeout and cereal for dinner. But Im stubborn. Instead of giving up on cooking at home, I doubled down on it. I discovered that the trickif you can call it thatwas to develop and cook from my own repertoire, my set of durable, flexible recipes that now form the backbone of my cooking life.

Musicians have their own repertoiresthe pieces theyll always know how to play, from wedding marches to funeral dirges, without looking at sheet music. Its the same for a cook. Repertoire recipes are what I serve for both weeknight suppers and dinner parties, the meals that I feed to my sons, the familiar favorites I reach for when its time to celebrate.

They are real recipes from real life, and they really work.

The truth is that home cooks dont need hundreds of recipes in their arsenals. A few dozen good ones and the knowledge and freedom that cooking them frequently gives you are all you really need.

A good recipe behaves; it makes you a promise and keeps it. It turns you into a magician capable of transforming ingredients into a meal that has you doing one of those little kitchen dances between stove and sink. A good recipe never grows oldit changes with you.

Ive cooked my entire life to develop this repertoire, and its damn good. Im giving them to you, these rock-solid, never-fail recipes, ones that are more rewarding than demanding. These are recipes you can trust and use and reuse, recipes with a wide range of flavors and lots of ways to shake them up. They range from curried noodles to a maple-blueberry cornmeal cake to flank steak with salsa verde and bucatini allAmatriciana. They may not appear to have much in common, but a repertoire should be diverse, because thats how all of us want to cook and eat, choosing our dinner based on what sounds good to us and what weve got time to make. It should have keepers you can cook for the rest of your life.