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At first glance it may look like cheating. How come your son’s plate looks as skeletal as ever — one grape tomato, two potatoes, and an avocado chunk — while yours is bountiful and filled with fresh fish and vegetables? How can that count as a bona fide family dinner when you are so clearly eating two separate meals? Let me assure you, a Deconstructed Dinner is not only family dinner, it is, in my opinion, one of the few Sure Things in the whole shady business of family dinner.

The idea is this: Take your most favorite meals — you know the ones you used to make (order in?) before you had kids, like sushi, stir-fries, paella, salads (like this salmon salad) that included more than just a grape tomato — and then think about all the ingredients that go into it. If there are at least three in there that your kid will eat, you’re in business.

Next, think about ways to prepare and serve the meal that allow those three ingredients to be presentable (read: edible) to your kid. Take, for example, Salmon Salad. You may have to pluck a few pieces of salmon out of the platter before you toss with dressing. For tacos, you may have to extract a few cubes of the cooked chicken before tossing with the tomatillo sauce. Fried Rice? Consider scrambling the egg separate from the soy saucy fried rice to retain the eggs yellow color, i.e. the only acceptable color for a scrambled egg in your child’s opinion. Roasted Vegetables? Maybe keep a small pile of the orange peppers and carrots on the counter before tossing the rest with olive oil and shoving in the oven — if that’s what it takes to get them to eat basically the same thing as you, it’s not that huge a sacrifice.

The point is, with this strategy you are not sinking to the lowest common denominator version of your favorite meal. Only the kids are. And that’s fine. Because the more you do it, the more accustomed they get to the way that particular dish is “supposed” to be eaten. You are stealthily teaching without nagging. (Always the goal.)

There are all kinds of ways to deconstruct a meal. You can do it on the front-end (extracting ingredients as you go) or you can do it on the back end (like the salmon salad, for instance, plating all the ingredients in separate rows on a platter). You can use small bowls for toppings and fillings when you’re making tacos or sesame noodles, or you can just throw all the components on a cutting board, with dressings, sauces, and spices on the side if that’s the only way it will fly.

You will see lots of deconstructing going on in my house. In the Time for Dinner cookbook I put together with my Cookie cohorts, there is in fact an entire chapter devoted to the concept. That book doesn’t come out until September 2010, though. So in the meantime, start with Salmon Salad & Oven Fries. Click to the jump for the recipe.

(all mixed together)

Salmon Salad with Oven Fries
I love this recipe because you use the same pot of boiling water to cook your vegetables. Boiled potatoes also work well in this salad if you don’t want to make the oven fries.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Put a large platter or baking dish next to stovetop. Put a medium pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. While you wait, prepare your vegetables: chop ends off green beans, peel the husks of corn, trim asparagus, peel potatoes etc.

Cook Vegetables: Add each respective vegetable in shifts to boiling water, removing each onewith a slotted spoon when they are done cooking (beans: 3 minutes; asparagus: 4 minutes; corn: 7 minutes). Place each in its own row on your platter. While boiling happens, peel and chop cukes, tomatoes, any vegetable you have in the fridge and lay each in a row on the platter.

Prepare Salmon: Sprinkle a 1 1/4-pound salmon filet with salt and pepper. Roast in a foil-lined baking dish in preheated oven for 15 minutes.When it’s done (since you’re going to chop it all up you can chop right into middle of the filet and see if it’s at desired doneness) flake it with a fork and make a row of it on your platter.

Serve with Oven Fries and your favorite vinaigrette. (I like one made with olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and pepper.) Make sure the vinaigrette gets tossed in after the kids are served. Let the kids serve themselves if possible.

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