Chef Adam is playing a kazoo - loudly - while Rachel Ezekiel-Fishbein struggles to concentrate on making Asian marinade for her barbecued chicken wings. The music and the cooking muse are not compatible.
"Adam, do you want to take that into another room?" she asks sweetly.
"No!" her tootling assistant replies with all the defiance that a 2 1/2-year-old can muster. He's wearing a child-sized apron with a "Chef Adam" monogram, but right now the only thing Adam Fishbein wants to make is mischief.
Rachel knows if she waits just a minute, her son will move on to another activity - with luck, a quieter one. And he does.
Rachel and Joel Fishbein are used to coping with pint-sized interruptions while cooking. This morning, they eventually finish the marinade, a baked shrimp dish, and a mocha-fudge cake, dishes for the couple's annual New Year's Day open house in Elkins Park.
The party began on a small scale in 1994, before Adam and his brother Danny, 5, were born. This year Rachel and Joel invited 80 adults and many children to the buffet-style feast, which is preceded by nearly two weeks of shopping, cooking, freezing and thawing.
"This is not a gourmet thing," said Rachel, 36, a public-relations consultant. "People marvel at the amount of food. It's hearty food. It's bad-for-you food. It's plentiful, and it's fun. Most of our baking we do at 7 a.m. in our pj's."
"I never cooked before we were married seven years ago," said Joel, 36, a partner with the Center City law firm Abrahams, Loewenstein & Bushman. He's now comfortable enough in the kitchen to take charge of several dishes for the party: guacamole, beef chili, vegetarian chili, sesame noodles and hot apple cider.
The menu, drawn up a month in advance, always incorporates the Fishbeins' love of Asian flavors (sesame noodles, Thai beef salad, barbecued chicken wings) and Rachel's fondness for chocolate and toffee (mocha buttercrunch pie, chocolate toffee cake, chocolate mousse brownies).
The recipes are drawn from several sources, including friends, Bon Appetit magazine, and a well-thumbed copy of The Frog Commissary Cookbook, a beloved touchstone for Philadelphians whose palates were honed by those two adventurous restaurants in the 1980s.
The book includes a phone number that cooks can call for help with a recipe. Although both Frog and the Commissary have closed, callers are directed to Frog Commissary Catering, which still serves many of the cookbook's dishes.
