Chow down: Return to the family dinner table

We all know the theory: Families who dine together have kids with better grades and healthier outlooks. But we also know the guilty reality. Getting those overbooked kids and overextended parents to the dinner table takes the scheduling skills of an airport control tower these days — and you can forget what's on the plate.

That's where we're going wrong, says Lucinda Scala Quinn, Martha Stewart's food guru and author of the new "Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys." If the aromas emerging from the kitchen smell amazing, there's no power on Earth that will keep a hungry teen away.

Quinn is in good company. Hers is one of three recent cookbooks urging a return to the family dinner table and — more important — offering tips on how to achieve that Rockwellian vision without going nuts.

Adding their voices to the chorus are Mark Peel, executive chef of Los Angeles' celebrated Campanile and recent guest judge on "Top Chef Las Vegas," and Stockton chefs Rima Barkett and Claudia Pruett, whose new book is aimed at novice cooks of both the grown-up and young variety.

What's needed, they say, is not only a slew of delicious, reliable and eminently doable recipes, but a strategic approach to food preparation.

"The return to the dinner table is not so much about cooking as carving out the time, and that's the hard part," says Peel, by phone from his Los Angeles home. "People don't have — if they ever did — the Ozzie and Harriet schedule any more. I work a lot of nights, but Tuesday nights, I cook at home."

The Campanile chef and father of five bases those meals — and his new cookbook, "New Classic Family Dinners" — on the family-style dinners his famous restaurant began offering 15 years ago. Some were Spanish-themed, others Greek, but the foods he kept coming back to were classic Americana — and some were much maligned. So Peel, a Chez Panisse alum, set out to discover why the Chicken a la King, tuna noodle casseroles and chicken pot pies of his youth had gotten such a bad rap.

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"My mother can make about 10 things, and two are tuna noodle casserole and macaroni and cheese," he says. "But it wasn't out of a package and it wasn't mushroom soup."

When chicken pot pie is made from scratch —"with shredded, cooked chicken, barely cooked vegetables, a light, broth-based sauce and puff pastry crown — it's sublime. As for mac and cheese, says Peel, "It's not mush folded with goop. It's a great casserole with texture: the soft unctuous cheesy center, the crispy edges, the crunchy top with the breadcrumbs."