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Take Sam Stoloff, a literary agent, who is the primary cook in his two-income, two-commute, three-child household, a job that grew weightier a few years ago when his family moved from Manhattan--where takeout was an easy option--to South Orange, N.J. Stoloff has been cooking his way through Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef. On his lunch break he scours New York City for ingredients like the smoked paprika needed for a chickpea dish he recently made. Stoloff's strategy is to stock a great pantry--with items like homemade salsas and tomato sauce put up from his own garden, plus 100 lbs. of organic free-range beef, which anchors the basement freezer. He then "cooks ahead" on Sunday afternoons and has meals partly ready for those hectic weeknights when he comes home at 5:30, followed by his wife Ilena Silverman, a magazine editor, at 6. The kids--Anya, 7, Katya, 4, and Silas, 1--need to eat immediately, or meltdowns ensue.
Stoloff became the guy in the kitchen because cooking had always been part of his relationships. "Either I became the cook, or it was part of my courtship practice." He also finds cooking "deeply comfortable and satisfying." "There's nothing better," he says, "than being in the kitchen and listening to baseball on the radio. That's my idea of heaven."
The arrangement pleases his wife as well. She says it underpins "my sense that I can pull off this life--job, three kids." The kids like it too, and Anya pitches in with enthusiasm. "I'll now let her chop with the sharp knife, and I won't even watch her," Stoloff says proudly. "Ilena's kind of flabbergasted."
For true foodie dads like Stoloff, restraint, not extra enthusiasm, is what's required to keep the home running smoothly. One recent weeknight, for example, Stoloff decided to use some ricotta he had on hand to make cheesecake instead of just focusing on the meal. "That decision to make one thing extra," he freely admits, "messes everything up. But mostly, I keep myself in check--unless we're having a dinner party. Then I go nuts."
Going overboard is not uncommon for male home chefs. Food writer and blogger Derrick Schneider (obsessionwithfood com believes that's because men often bring their competitive zeal into the kitchen, aiming to master skills and impress eaters.
John Brumbach, a part-time video editor and stay-at-home dad in Omaha, Neb., found himself going overboard soon after he took over the home kitchen for his family of five. He and his wife, a cable-company marketing director, promptly gained 10 lbs. each. The culprit: butter. Brumbach now sees his job as keeping the family healthy and happy. He flips through cooking magazines and watches the Food Network, then adapts recipes or "change[s] them drastically" to suit the family's palates. "I work with my kids to find out what their taste will tolerate," he says. "So now I do a soy broccoli and a pan-seared asparagus with lemon, and they love it. I also really try to make sure they think that cooking is fun. Kids who grow up feeling shunned in the kitchen end up not liking the kitchen. They start feeling like, 'I'm outta here; guess I'll go play video games.'"