A Conversation with Ken and Verveine Oringer

EDIBLE BOSTON: Who’s the mastermind behind this cookbook and how long did it take?

VERVEINE: This idea was actually my mom’s. While I was working with ATK [as a kid recipe tester and making cooking video content for ATK Kids], she just threw the idea out there and was like, “What a cool idea would it be to share all of your gluten-free recipes with the world?”

And my dad and I loved it. We wanted to collaborate. We obviously have a great relationship, and it was just something that I would be more than willing to take on.

KEN ORINGER: From beginning to end, the book probably took about a year and a half to two years. We wanted to have it be a kids book and to be available for anybody that really was curious about the food that we serve in our restaurants and the food that a chef’s kids would grow up eating. With 70-plus recipes, it was just a lot of recipe writing and recipe testing and eliminating dishes and putting some others on and always adding to it. Then we had them tested for months and months and months, each recipe tested by kids. There were lots of people and lots of great feedback; some dishes were too complicated and some hit the spot and some we adjusted. It was a really incredible effort by a lot of talented people.

EB: Verveine, between your schooling and your dad’s many restaurants, how did you find time to do the book?

VERVEINE: We had weekly meetings with the people at ATK. I also had homework, so it was this little snippet for this chapter, this little snippet for that chapter and it kind of went along with doing my homework. It was like, OK, I'm going to do my math, I’m doing English and then I’m going to do my cookbook writing. I’ve always loved writing, so it didn’t really feel much like work. It was fun!

EB: So, what was it like working with your dad on a cookbook?

VERVEINE: It’s like anything else I’ve done with my dad; we’ve done mock cooking shows, we’ve done baseball practice… We’ve done so many things together that it was just natural collaborating with him. I think we have a really good relationship. It was good to work with him because he could answer all of my questions. It was a process that he was probably more familiar with than me, even though he’s never made a cookbook.

EB: What was it like working with your daughter?

KEN: It was a dream come true. It was just heaven being able to do anything together and just being able to just spend time just bonding and working on a project to an end goal. It was one of the best experiences of my life. It was incredible!

EB: What are your favorite dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner from the book?

VERVEINE: This is a really difficult question, but if I do have to pick, I would say for breakfast, the mochi waffles with caramel sauce—they are so good and they are really fun to make! We had this amazing caramel sauce that my dad helped me make that I love to put on literally anything, and we always put them with strawberries and powdered sugar. For lunch, either taquitos or maybe sopes. I love sopes because they’re like little tortilla things with a border around them and you can put whatever you want on them. I love putting steak, guacamole and cheese in them. And then for dinner, I would have to say probably beef Bourguignon or truffle pasta. Delicious! I love filling meals like that for dinner.