When I first proposed Guys’ Night to our sons, Oscar and Julius, it wasn’t our first rodeo. We had spent plenty of nights alone together. Formalizing the ritual was my attempt to awaken the sense of opportunity presented by a family meal minus Mom that went beyond the established pillars of pizza and screen time.
The boys are enthusiastic, if idiosyncratic, eaters.
Served food he doesn’t immediately recognize, Julius, age 8, typically responds by sitting upside down in his chair or staring at his plate as though it were a scar-faced man with a hook for a hand. Oscar, age 10, is a principled pescatarian who can be persuaded to make exceptions to his diet for meatballs, chicken wings, xiao long bao, andouille gumbo, Texas barbecue and veal.
Selecting the dish to initiate our tradition was not a trivial matter. I wanted it to be anchored by an ingredient that speaks to where we live, in southeastern Louisiana, but doesn’t conform to stereotypes about what guys like us are supposed to eat. That meant no vernacular dishes — our New Orleans kids eat plenty of New Orleans cooking — and no performative carnivorism. Our Guys’ Night would not be typecast.
Swordfish checked a lot of boxes. It’s new to the boys, with a name that appeals to their fascination with brutal combat. It was also what was available, fresh from the Gulf, at our favorite fishmonger in March.
Recipe: Swordfish With Tomatoes
“So what are we going to do with this thing?” Julius asked, staring at the unwrapped swordfish steak. The plan was to come up with a recipe on the fly, with ingredients we normally have on hand.
Our first thought: tomatoes. Why? Nathalie, my wife, doesn’t like them. Her not being around to exercise a veto meant we could use cherry tomatoes, which we always have for the boys’ school lunches.
I gave Oscar the task of halving the tomatoes and a cup of olives. The boys have loved olives since I informed them, in their pre-verbal years, that they could sleep outside if they didn’t. I had in mind a hearty sauce with the girth of a side dish that drew on elements of puttanesca, cioppino and Louisiana-style court-bouillon.
Julius helped sear the swordfish and stir the sauce we built in the same pan. Oscar drizzled olive oil and sprinkled salt over slices of sourdough from a stash in the freezer.
We brought it all to the table, serving ourselves in shallow bowls and wiping the sauce clean out of the pan with torn pieces of toast. “I love our Guys’ Night,” Oscar said, speaking for us all.
A tradition was born, though not all Guys’ Nights feature swordfish. The rules are loose, including who can participate. The boys even celebrate Guys’ Night when I’m not around, with Nathalie as a full partner, as long as she dresses like me. I’m fine with this, apart from the suggestion that I only ever wear baggy shorts, a baseball cap and T-shirts from my favorite crawfish joints.
“Mom, this is one of the best Guys’ Night recipes,” Julius told her the last time we made the swordfish, last month. It was our first full-family Guys’ Night.
We even made a separate olive sauce, without tomatoes, for Nathalie. Because that’s what nice guys do.
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Brett Anderson joined the Food desk as a contributor in July 2019. He was restaurant critic and features writer at The Times-Picayune, in New Orleans, from 2000 to 2019. He has won three James Beard awards, including the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award, and was named Eater’s Reporter of the Year in 2017 for his reporting on sexual harassment in the restaurant industry.
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