Some very belated, and very disorganized, and unforgiveably unreciped, tidbits from the past weeks:

Lucky boyfriend got three birthday cakes this year: favorite flourless chocolate, pumpkin cake, and a (very messy but delicious) triple-layer mint chocolate chip ice cream cake with mint chocolate ganache and whipped topping (one layer was another flourless chocolate, so this might’ve had an unfair edge on being the best of the three.)

I flew home for Thanksgiving to be with my family and spent three days straight cooking: multiple loaves of Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread (I feel like an idiot for ever having even experimented with bread recipes other than this one). Savory cornbread to turn into a marvelous stuffing and sweet cornbread (for which I made homemade buttermilk for the first time) to bring to a family friend’s Thanksgiving potluck. Melissa Clark’s Mashed Potato Casserole which I worried would verge on Deen-esque and did, gloriously so. Roasted sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, salt and chili powder. Very garlicky hummus. Brussels sprouts steamed with caramelized shallots. Vegan wild rice pilaf with sauteed onions, apples and raisins and toasted chopped almonds. Turkey. My mom made cranberry sauce, as she does every year, with a recipe I just found out this year is her grandmother’s. She does the pies, too, before the sun rises, and made an extra that my dad and I ate for breakfast and lunch. I made apple yogurt cake, trying to recreate one that I’d invented before but not written down (successfully!). And flourless chocolate cake, again. And vegan pumpkin chocolate cake. And pumpkin butter with fresh-squeezed apple juice and lots of ginger that turned out even better than Trader Joe’s. I couldn’t stop. It was the perfect vacation.

Dinner last night was cheesy, saucy, salty eggplant parm, which I’ve attempted to make several times before (and always failed in one way or another). Last night’s was excellent, and reminded me how much I like eggplant (some fantastic baigan bharta at Tiffin Wallah Friday night helped too). It’s easy and done in under an hour and doesn’t even require a side of linguine or garlic bread (although I’m sure there wouldn’t be complaints).

Eggplant parmesan:

• One large eggplant (you’ll only use half, if that)
• About 3/4 cup shredded parmesan
• About 3 oz fresh mozzarella
• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 3 eggs
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 1 jar sauce, or homemade (this was Trader Joe’s marinara)
• lots of salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and garlic powder

1. Begin by slicing the eggplant into pieces about 1/2 inch thick. Salt them on both sides and let them sit in a colander for 15-30 minutes to let out some of the moisture. Rinse them and pat them dry.
2. Beat the eggs in a bowl. In another bowl, mix together breadcrumbs and seasoning. Dip each eggplant slice in the breadcrumbs, then the eggs, then the breadcrumbs again. Fry in about 2 tbsp of olive oil, 2-3 minutes on each side or until browned. Add more olive oil to the pan after each batch.
3. Coat the bottom of a 9x9 square baking dish with sauce. Add a layer of fried eggplant. Top with some shredded parmesan and more sauce. Then add another layer of fried eggplant, more parmesan, more sauce, and on top, the mozzarella in pieces.
4. Bake, covered, for about 20-25 minutes. Uncover and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until the mozzarella is browned and the sauce is bubbly.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore tofu. Really, I do. I like it in stir-frys. I like it crispy and pan-fried in olive oil. I like it instead of ricotta in my lasagna recipe. And I like it - um, wait. Those are all of the things I ever do with tofu. For someone who was vegan for over a year, my lack of tofumagination is kind of depressing. So today, I did something I sort of rarely do for a regular weeknight dinner - I actually sought out a recipe! I landed on Katie and Leeanne Chin’s Braised Stuffed Tofu, which looked perfect except for the fact that I A) didn’t have Sichuan cabbage, mushrooms, cornstarch, bok choy, or oyster sauce and B) was totally skeptical of the proposition that I could panfry a delicate stuffing-filled tofu square on both sides without it sticking to the pan, imploding into a goopy mess, or setting off my fire alarm (or all of the above). So I improvised. 

Stuffed tofu squares:

• 1 block firm tofu
• 2 frozen veggie burgers of your choice (or half a baked potato and some curry powder, or whatever you think will be yummy)
• 1/4 cup frozen peas
• 1/4 cup frozen spinach
• about 4 tbsp olive oil
• about 4 tbsp soy sauce, tamari or namashoyu

1. Cut the tofu into twelve equal-sized squares and dry them as best you can with a cloth (don’t use paper towels, you’ll go through a whole roll).
2. Carefully scoop out a small spoonful of tofu from the middle of each square - don’t scoop all the way through to the other side, and leave enough of a border that the squares remain sturdy. Douse the empty squares with soy sauce.
3. Cook the veggie burgers, frozen vegetables and scooped-out tofu innards in a saucepan until cooked through. Fill each tofu square with a spoonful of the mixture.
4. Heat the olive oil in a large wok or skillet. Place the squares in the wok and cook until at least the bottoms are panfried. If you’re brave, try flipping them. If you’re me, cover with a lid to steam the tops.

Oven fries:

• 1 large russet potato
• about 4 tbsp olive oil
• salt, pepper, garlic powder and cayenne
• KETCHUP

1. Wash the potato and slice it up into equal-sized slivers. Toss them in a bowl with salt, pepper, garlic powder and cayenne (as much as you’re into). Place fries in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet or dish and bake at 400 degrees for about an hour, depending on how crispy you like them.
2. Serve with SO MUCH KETCHUP. MORE. MORE THAN THAT.

Even though the weather outside is still persistently not autumnal enough, I’m forging ahead anyway with my knitted wool tights and hot ginger tea and legwarmers and lace-up boots and new Neon Indian album and oversized sweaters and hearty, heavy one-pot meals that are best eaten curled up on the sofa in aforementioned legwarmers.

Back-to-school season changes Sundays, giving them a bittersweetness that everyone remembers from being small and clinging desperately to each of those last weekend hours that belong solely, wholly to you. We have Sunday rituals that consist of the fleamarket and grocery shopping, brunch and a long walk and a lot of sitting around reading and talking about how sometime, maybe, later, some laundry ought to get done. I felt like cooking something that would take a long time but not much effort, and since our new oven doesn’t get installed until tomorrow, it had to be be a stovetop project. I wanted a meat dish that would end up braised and fork-tender, falling apart at each bite. This chicken is fantastic, and I’m sure it’ll be even better for lunch tomorrow. The best kind of time invested on a Sunday - the kind that makes the following Monday substantially better in return.

Stovetop slow-cooked barbecue chicken:

• 2 pounds (give or take) boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 12 oz beer (Trader Joe’s Simpler Times, here)
• 18 oz barbecue sauce, homemade or your favorite (This was Trader Joe’s Kansas City Style, which is sweet & smoky and has a super-rich, smooth texture that the dish relies on.)
• 1 red onion
• black pepper, garlic powder and cayenne to taste

1. Sear the chicken breasts in an empty nonstick stock pot or Dutch oven. 
2. Add the barbecue sauce and beer.
3. Slice the onion thinly and add it raw to the pot, along with the spices. 
4. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for at least two to four hours. Stir often enough to keep the pot’s contents from starting to stick to the bottom, using a spatula or fork to help the shredding process along. 
5. Serve on sandwiches, or with baked potatoes, or with corn on the cob. We had ours with big salads and homemade chips.

Our new kitchen on the upper west side is not perfect. It has perks: the dishwasher, the fantastic stainless steel appliances and black marble counters. It also has cons, the most significant of which is the fact that pretty much whenever you pan-fry anything with the remotest amount of gusto, the smoke alarm in the living room adjacent goes off. And off. And off. No amount of standing on chairs, fanning with cardboard, pressing the button, or removing the batteries can shut this thing up. I have a headache just thinking about it (or maybe that’s the meat sweats). So last night, when we made a boneless prime dry-aged ribeye for dinner, our time was pretty equally split between tending to the steak and tending to the screeching smoke detector. It was still good, and worth the effort, but when we went to cook the other of the two pieces of meat I’d bought today for lunch, I took the time to rig a complex fan system to prevent the same chaos from happening again. 

It worked! And in the time saved in dealing with the smoke alarm, I made an absolutely fantastic side dish of red peppers, onions and carrots in red wine sauce. Whenever I make a vegetable side with steak, I have a terrible habit of ignoring it altogether. Other than sauteed portobellos (which my boyfriend doesn’t like), this was the first non-potato side to truly enhance my steak experience. We ate it with fresh-baked seven-grain bread and pinot noir. Hello, adult lunch.

Peppers & onions in red wine sauce:

• 1 raw red bell pepper, sliced
• 1 jar roasted red bell peppers, sliced
• 1 medium yellow sweet onion, sliced
• 1/2 cup baby carrots
• 2 cups red wine (this was 2007 Cherry Hill Winery Pinot Noir Papillon from Lot18, which I bought solely because of the puppy on the label)
• 3/4 cup marinara sauce (this was Trader Joe’s)
• 2 tbsp herbs de provence
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• plenty of sea salt to taste

1. Saute sliced vegetables in the bottom of a stockpot with olive oil and herbs.
2. When onions are golden and translucent, add red wine, marinara and sauce.
3. Cook uncovered at least 10 minutes, then covered an additional 5-10 minutes.