By Maria Babar
The menu of Liza Zeneski’s latest cooking show – a spinach, goat cheese and mushroom quiche – was very kid friendly.
With her two-year-old son Nicholas and the newborn daughter of guest mom, Sylvia Adams joining the the two women in the kitchen, Zeneski and Adams created the dish in about 45 minutes – a doable amount of time for young mothers juggling child care and cooking.
With the camera rolling by Chris Cristina, Zeneski’s partner and editor of the show, Adams went over the ingredient list: eggs, mushroom, milk, spinach and cheese. Next, Adams gave Zeneski step-by-step instructions on how to prepare the dish. After 40 minutes in the oven, the meal was ready to eat.
The set for this episode of “Brooklyn Mama’s Kitchen,” was Adam’s kitchen – a neat, small white kitchen in her Kensington, Brooklyn, apartment.
Zeneski, 30, of Kensington started her show in the hopes of showing the diversity of Brooklyn through cooking. It has been airing since September 2015 and is distributed on her YouTube channel as well as the “Brooklyn Mama’s Kitchen” website.
Zeneski has been a stay-at-home mom since having her second child two years ago. She said that before having children she never had the desire to cook, but after the birth of her first son Zachary she realized the importance of family meals.
Now with two sons the ages 5 and 2, Zeneski knows she has to cook meals that not only have to be quick, but also delicious to satisfy those tiny tummies. She also noticed that whenever she goes out with her group of friends, also with kids, all they talk about is food. That made her realize that a cooking show can help so many other moms who sometimes run out of ideas of what to cook that their kids will also enjoy.
She is slowly growing a presence on social media. Brooklyn Mama’s Kitchen’s YouTube channel has 162 subscribes as of this December. Every week, there is at least one episode shot and every Thursday at 1 p.m the new episode is posted.
“Brooklyn is a perfect place for this cooking show as we have people from all over the world living in one borough and it’s so much fun to cook dishes from different countries/cultures,” Zeneski said.
The show is just one of many food-centric endeavors to emerge from the borough of Brooklyn, which is known for its happening restaurant scene and for producing such foodie events such as Smorgasburg, the popular food market that is operated by the
Brooklyn Flea food market. Smorgasburg was launched in May 2011 and every Saturday and Sunday from April through November it showcases more than 100 local and regional food vendors attracting up to 10,000 visitors from all over the world.
Every week a shooting takes place at another mom’s house. Zeneski, along with two-year-old Nicholas attends the house of a new guest mom who had submitted recipes to be on the show.
“This show has really been a journey for me and I love it so far,” said Zeneski. She looks forward to every week she gets to learn new recipes from moms all over the Ditmas Park, Kensington, and Windsor Terrace neighborhoods.
She says the greats part of Brooklyn is its diversity. She has been able to learn new recipes from Cuban, Puerto Rican, European, and African American cultures.
Zeneski, originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, has been living in New York City since 1999. She was never one who liked to cook, her husband did most of the cooking.
“My husband is an amazing cook so between him cooking, us going out or ordering in cooking was never a priority for me,” Zeneski notes.
That all changed after giving birth to her first son Zachary who is now 5 years old. After having a child, she realized the importance of not only cooking, but having meals together with the family every night.
Liza Zenseki with her husband and sons.
Slowly Zeneski became more adventurous with her cooking ideas instead of making the same dish over and over again. Brooklyn Mama’s Kitchen helps
Zeneski learns new recipes for her family, but also other moms who might be having trouble figuring out what to cook.
Zeneski also cooks a lot with her son Zachary, so she hopes this show will inspire moms to cook with their kids and see how fun it can be.
Anna Hahn, a guest mom on Zeneski’s show, said, “I loved shooting with Liza and Chris. Being a new mother myself, like Liza I also realize the importance of cooking for the family. I cannot even emphasize enough the importance of family meals.”
Nida Nasir and Myra Raj of Ditmas Park are viewers of the show and had a lot of praise for the show. “We are both best friends that love to cook, but because of our busy schedules we find it hard to always come up with new ideas for our kids and husbands that are quick and delicious and watching this show saved us from having to search for difficult recipes online or worse ordering in every night” said Nasir. Raj added “what I love best about the show is seeing Liza’s son help out in the kitchen it just gives me hope that my own son can help me around the kitchen when he gets to that age.”
Zeneski notes that the process of shooting the show is very simple. Her partner Chris Christina does all producing and editing on his Iphone. She lines up the guest moms and they pick a time and day to shoot. The day of the shooting the guest mom, Zeneski, and her toddler get ready to shoot the episode.
“The shoots take about an hour or two depending on how long the cooking takes,” Zeneski points out. “We have at least one shoot every week, if not we shoot at my house,” she says.
She hopes to one day to make it to the food network on cable and eventually worldwide. She has the support of her husband and all the moms who were featured on her show with whom she has developed close personal relationships with.
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