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.

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.