Crannell Family's Cavatelli with Fennel Sausage
Chef Collin Crannell prefers to measure ingredients on a kitchen scale by weight for ease and accuracy. In this recipe, we also provided cup measurements in case you don’t have a scale.
family time
Kids in the Kitchen
When we think about chefs, we typically think about their professional capacity—what they cook, where they cook, how they source, what their food looks and tastes like. As much as they have the unique ability to take us on masterful journeys of the palate in a commercial kitchen, chefs can be just like us when they’re at home. We caught up with three local chefs who gave us a glimpse of life at home in the kitchen with their children. Turns out, moms and dads make great sous chefs.
Read on and then we hope you’ll make the recipes in these pages with the kids in your life.
Downtime for Chef
Since Josh Kellim spends so much of his time as a restaurant chef for Tydes in Four Seasons Resort The Biltmore Santa Barbara, his wife, Lauren, does most of the cooking at home.
“She makes dinner for our daughter every night and leaves a bowl for me to have after work,” says Kellim. “She’s really a much better cook than me, and I love it. She’s amazing.”
Having a family has taken Kellim back to simple, quality ingredients. He pays more attention to his health to set an example for his 4-year-old daughter, Hannah. On his days off, he spends a lot of his time in the kitchen at their home in Ventura. Hannah is eager to spend time cooking with him.
“We put on our aprons and make a new batch of granola with whatever is in season,” says Kellim. “Hannah likes to measure out everything and take a taste of the sugar and honey as we go.”
Hannah also loves going to the farmers’ market with her dad, especially getting to bring home extra carrot tops for her bunnies, he says.
On Sundays, the Kellims often have family dinners with Lauren’s sister and her husband, who have a 3-year-old daughter.
“If it’s taco night, my wife is taking the pork out of the slow cooker, I’m chopping vegetables and Hannah is stirring the beans,” says Kellim. “They live right across the street. We all contribute something to the meal; it’s never exclusively hosted by us,” he explains. “These days are really important to our family. There’s not much better than everyone sitting around the table eating a home-cooked meal.”
Kellim’s love for food, and particularly seafood, grew at the sushi bar in Ventura where he began his career as a dishwasher right after high school. Customer favorites at Tydes include his barbecued octopus with squid ink aioli and charred pineapple and beef tartare with quail egg, sea grass and pickled mustard seed. He also hosts quarterly pop-ups at Paradise Pantry in Ventura with longtime friend and coworker, Joel Huff. He says that their friendship always has centered around staying on the pulse of food.
“These dinners get us out there to see what people in Ventura are liking at the moment.”
Someone’s in the Kitchen with Mom and Dad
Eating well is a family tradition for the Crannells. “Everything in our family is about food,” says Collin Crannell, chef and owner/ operator with his wife, Vicki, of the Moody Rooster in Westlake Village. “Our daughter, Leilah, was sucking on raw shrimp and oysters at Connie and Ted’s [in Santa Monica] when she was just 5 years old,” he says. “My son, Griffin, now nearly 20, was a picky eater until about 15 or 16. Bacon was the gateway for him becoming interested in different foods—so we made a lot of bacon.”
Like the restaurant’s cuisine and Collin’s cooking style, their family life is open and creative, and not defined by the usual standards. They spend nearly all of their time at the restaurant and therefore eat nearly all of their meals there. Collin and Vicki both worked at larger restaurants in Los Angeles, but always had the goal to have a small, neighborhood place of their own.
“It was scary to think of opening a fine-dining restaurant in the suburbs, and giving up my time with our daughter as Girl Scout leader and soccer mom,” says Vicki. “We waited until Griffin was driving and Leilah was old enough to be at the restaurant with us every day. When the timing was right, it came together effortlessly.”
Vicki leaves after the lunch rush to pick up Leilah, now 12 and in her first year of middle school, and bring her back to the restaurant to do homework and be with them. When Collin needs help, he calls out from the kitchen, “Leilah, I need you!” and she will join him to shape cavatelli or separate herbs.
“Sometimes she just wants to make dough, not for baking, but for playing,” says Collin. “If you want to get them in the kitchen, you have to do stuff they want to eat and make it fun.”
Even on Sundays when the restaurant is closed, the Crannells stroll the farmers’ market together, located in the parking lot of the restaurant, and Collin will open up his kitchen at the Moody Rooster, just for the family, to make brunch with fresh eggs and other local finds from the market. They are certainly eating well these days.
A Taste of Texas, Family Style
“We are all family here,” says Executive Chef Sunni Duncan of Farm & Flame, the catering business where she manages the kitchen. Three years ago, after her family’s longtime Chuck Wagon Supper and Cowboy Show closed in Texas, she moved out to California with her husband and two of her three sons. They joined her sister, Heather, who had already been satisfying her friends’—and, later, customers’— taste for authentic Texas barbecue for 25 years. Her oldest son, Austin, 24, stayed in Texas to finish school.
“It’s time-consuming, hard work,” Duncan says of the business. A large portable smoker does some of the hard work for them. Her husband, Daniel, operations manager, handles events. Hunter, 22, works on the smoker and 13-year-old Courtland occasionally takes orders and cooks with his dad on the Farm & Flame truck. Their signature smoked meats are accompanied by pickled green tomatoes, onions and radishes; candied jalapeños; and house-made sauces, salsas and dressings.
“Everything we do is made from scratch,” she says proudly.
The family grew up watching Grandpa make barbecue, and when Duncan was 19, her parents started the dinner show. “Dad had a big smoker built and would start the meat at midnight so he could slice it straight off the smoker for the following night’s show—and there’s nothing better than that,” says Duncan. A gun twirler and stunt man, with Western movie credits, her dad also provided much of the entertainment for the show.
Duncan says she’s fortunate that her kids have always liked to try new things. “My youngest, Courtland, is really trying to like oysters—not liking them yet, but he keeps trying to. His favorites are yellowtail fish and artichokes. Probably the artichokes because before he knew what to do with them, his dad would scrape them out and feed them to him.”
“All three of my boys have always loved lima beans, even when they were little,” Duncan says. One of their favorite dishes at home is chicken breasts baked in zesty Italian dressing, served over long-grain brown rice, with boiled lima beans with butter and parmesan. She says it’s quick and easy when she has been cooking all day at work.
“On Wednesdays, we know we are going to have a good meal,” says Duncan. “It’s usually a shorter workday and I can bring home a chicken from Autonomy Farms or fresh ingredients for spinach frittata after spending the morning at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market.”
The Duncans love making soup. “Getting my boys’ help making stock has been great,” she says, “since it doesn’t require expert knife skills, just quick chopping, and everything goes in the pot.”
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