Back to School: Kids Lunch Ideas from Italian Chefs

For New York City’s Italian chefs, a perfect pranzo starts with childhood memories of eating pasta at home with family, then cooking from the heart.

As a child, Chef Silvia Barban, a Top Chef contestant and restaurateur of LaRina Pastificio & Vino in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, arrived home at lunchtime to eat spaghetti al pomodoro made by her nonna. (Silvia’s parents both worked during the day). On occasions when Silvia was a bit hyper, her grandmother gave her a small glass with a drop of wine.

Miles away in Bologna, Chef Michele Casadei Massari, from Lucciola Italian Restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, also enjoyed pasta with tomato sauce and peas for lunch and veal cutlet with roasted potatoes prepared by his mother. Cooking in kitchens in Sardinia and Asia, Chef Michele never abandoned his love for spaghetti al pomodoro at lunchtime. He still eats it with a cold, unfiltered extra virgin olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese aged at least 14 months.

All grown up, it’s now Chef Silvia and Michele’s turn to prepare pranzo for children. As families learn to embrace abnormal schedules, what better time than now to learn what Italian chefs recommend for kids?

Chef Silvia shows her niece how to make pasta by hand, loves to spoil her business partners’ one-year-old, Oliver, and of course, indulges her youngest patrons who have been coming to the restaurant for most of their lives by serving them tender gnocchi and cheesy cacio e pepe with a plate of pork guanciale on the side.

For kids who rarely eat lunch at home, Chef Silvia recommends making a four-ingredient pasta salad that stays fresh in a lunchbox.

For Silvia’s four-ingredient pasta salad, take a handful of Genovese basil leaves, which can be an intimidating herb for children, and make a basil oil with salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil from Southern Italy for a fruitier, sweeter taste. Then, roast cherry tomatoes in the oven until they blister. Peel a bit of breakfast radish or run it through a mandolin and thinly slice buffalo mozzarella. (If you don’t like radish, use roasted zucchini, eggplant, or broccoli.) Take some dry pasta – rigatoni or fusilli– and cook al dente. Spread the pasta on a tray with a bit of olive oil in the refrigerator until it cools down. Combine all of the ingredients with drizzled basil oil, adding a layer of buffalo mozzarella on top. (Chef Silvia’s mother is from Calabria, and she says, they love adding cheese on pasta.)

Another quick and healthy option favored by Silvia’s niece is a white pasta made with cauliflower cream. As Silvia says, “the blender is your friend.” Since children can be picky, Silvia found a way to trick her niece into liking the vegetable. Silvia purées the cauliflower, boiling it with onion and garlic until the water has completely evaporated. Then she puts the ingredients into a blender with a splash of extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice. Her niece couldn’t resist the sauce, thinking it was béchamel.

Chef Michele swears by one pasta principle - never cook with more than five ingredients. For his 11-year old daughter, Maitri, he takes requests, but the go-to lunch dish is a classic Pasta al Pomodoro and Risotto al Pomodoro like he ate as a child. Chef Michele is a purist when it comes to ingredients and sticks to them: Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, heirloom tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and his favorite Italian sea salt “sale di Cervia.”

“Maitri is in charge of the menu and the dinner mood,” he explained in an email. Recently, Maitri decided to become a vegetarian, a decision that fills Chef Michele with pride. “She is all my world “from here to the moon and back,” as we love to say to each other!

Before you start, consider Chef Michele’s tenets for cooking with honesty. He believes that feelings, action, procedures, and values all find their place in a dish. “When I am cooking my world is you and your pleasure– I want to provide memories and experience as my family always did for me,” he says.

Therefore, before starting every meal - even lunch - think about this:

“Never in a rush.
Never without a meaning.
Never without only focusing on cooking.
Never with the wrong materials and tools.
Never without tasting.
Never more than five ingredients.
Never without saying, “I love you from here to the moon and back.” (This is only for my daughter. She is the one.)
Always eat with pure sterling flatware.
Never cook while feeling sad.
Never cook without gentle and elegant specific gestures such as washing all the ingredients carefully with the right temperature.
Never drop the ingredients or speed up or take short cuts and no substitutions allowed. (It doesn’t mean not being spontaneous or genuine, but bringing your palate, mouth, heart, and all the respect for the leap of faith of eating something made for someone else.)

All ingredients should be cut to perfection according to the goal of the recipe and according to the best possible result you can achieve. Your goal is the person eating.”