Eggplant You Can Spread on a Pita (a couple of bucks, maybe an hour including pre-baking the eggplant)

This is a recipe I owe to Manjula, sort of -- it's Manjula plus Bombay Cafe minus oil plus a cuisinart (this is exactly the low-rent one I own), which, trust me, makes it all so much easier.

The first thing you need is two medium eggplant, maybe a couple of pounds at the store. Buy the big ones, not the little Asian or Indian ones. When you're buying eggplant, make sure you get unbruised, shiny eggplants whose tops are still a little greenish.

When you get home, stick the eggplants in the oven on 350 and bake them for about half an hour to forty-five minutes. When you poke one with your finger (be quick: they're hot), it should be soft. Set the cookie sheet somewhere to cool. The eggplants should collapse onto themselves entirely.

When you're ready to make the dip, you'll need:

a red or green pepper diced in about half inch squares (roughly a cup)

a cup of frozen peas, set out to thaw

2 cups of crushed/pureed tomatoes

2 tsp ginger, grated

jalapeno mash

1 TBSP oil

two pinches of asafoetida (hing)

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp coriander

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp red chile powder

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp garam masala

4 TBSP cilantro

Take the eggplants, now cool, and cut off the top. With your fingers, peel off the skin and discard it. Put the pulp into the cuisinart and process smooth. It should take no time at all. Set aside.

In bowl that pours (I use my large measuring cup), mix tomatoes, ginger, jalapeno, coriander, turmeric, red chile and salt. Set aside.

In a large saucepan, heat oil and lightly saute the diced peppers in the oil. Remove to a bowl, leaving the oil behind. If you don't have much, splash in just a hair more. When it's heated so that a cumin seed cracks when it hits it, add the hing and cumin seeds, stirring and cooking one minute.

Add the tomato mixture and cook 2-3 minutes until a little reduced and you can see the oil separating from the tomatoes.

Add pureed eggplant, stir thoroughly, and cook for 8 minutes.

Add reserved peppers, peas, and cilantro. Cook for one minute to heat the peas through.

Remove from heat, stir in garam masala, and EAT. We spread this on whole wheat tortillas I've toasted in a hot skillet. It's AMAZING.

There you go.

Jambalaya; Or, The Inauthenticity Continues ($3 or so, when the okra's out of season, cheaper when it's in; about an hour, including the chopping)

It is not okra season. I confess. I bought okra from Honduras. Bad locavore. BAD.

It was just that I had a sort of craving, or maybe it was that someone else had mentioned okra to me, or maybe it was a longing for high, hot summer, the time when okra is in season. I used to grow okra (it was vegetable of the month at the CDC!) when I lived in Athens, more okra than I knew how to eat.

It's not a lovely plant actually, though its flower is really beautiful, a creamy white with a dark burgundy center and bright yellow stamens. And fresh okra, the kind you cut off the plant, carry inside, wash, cut up, sprinkle with corn meal and pan fry -- say twenty minutes max from plant to teeth -- there is nothing like this.

So homesick was I in Wisconsin that I tried to grow okra there, in the richest soil I think any okra plant has ever seen. It never worked. Okra in Georgia gets chest high, neck high -- in Wisconsin it never came to my knees. I had one blossom, and that was frail and short-lived. I missed okra. It was metonymy for the sun, and warmth, and the green, buzzing, bird-filled outdoors that the wasteland of winter in Wisconsin -- all winter, as far as I'm concerned -- denies the world.

So, yesterday, okra. And with okra: vegetarian jambalaya. Sort of. In a way. If this is jambalaya, it's the okra, the roux and the allspice that make it so. And the hot sauce, I suppose.

Here's how to make it. And thanks to Lucy Curzon for the recipe.

What you need:

1/4 cup salad oil

1/3 c white flour

a little olive oil

1 sm onion, chopped small

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 bay leaves

3 med carrots, peeled and chopped

3-5 peppers, all colors, chopped to make about 2-3 cups

2 tsp basil

1/2 tsp thyme

1 can diced tomatoes, undrained

2 c okra (about 1/2 a pound), sliced

3 c vegetable stock

1/4 tsp allspice

hot sauce of your choice

Chop everything up and set aside. This makes up fast, so you want simply to be dumping as you go. Make some rice (go there; do this), since that's what you'll be serving this over.

In a small heavy skillet, mix the flour and salad oil. Put this on medium heat and stir frequently. This is your roux, which will complicate the taste of the jambalaya (Hank. Sigh.) and thickens it, too.

In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium high heat and saute the onions, garlic, bay and up to about a TBSP of either red pepper flakes or jalapeno paste. When the onions have softened and become transparent (this should take a minute or two), add the carrots, peppers, basil, and thyme. Stirring every once and a while so the vegetables don't burn, cook for 5 minutes.

Add tomatoes, okra, stock, and allspice. Stir to combine.

Cover and cook for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, turn the heat up on the roux and stir constantly. It should begin to turn very dark brown, sort of burned-looking. Keep it moving in the pan. You want it about the color of nicely tanned leather and to smell almost nutty. When you've achieved this, turn the heat off and go do something until the vegetables are cooked.

After twenty minutes, check that the carrots are soft enough (run a fork into the largest piece you can find). If they are, scrape the roux into the vegetables, stirring the vegetables constantly so they don't cook the flour into dumplings. If this happens, it's not a big deal: you just have something less jambalaya than -- I don't know -- quasi-Caribbean vegetable and dumpling stew. Still edible. Still actually pretty tasty (yes, I've done this; that's how I know).

Drape this over some rice, in bowls. Dump on the hot sauce of your choice (classic is Tabasco, but we're real fond of Cholula ourselves). Eat.

There you go.

My Nana Calls This Gravy (about $15 makes two lasagna's worth; about 20 minutes)

My Nana. She's 91. Born in Italy, I think outside Rome. Her father was a scholar, then a coal miner. One of her sisters died in the flu epidemic in 1918; she still has two brothers living, one older, one younger.

My Nana has lived on Long Island (good lord, it has its own website!) for half a century or more, in the same house facing the neighborhood school. She had three children after the war: my aunt Irene, my father, and my uncle Rich. When my father was 17 he and my mother, the 16-year-old daughter of a local Irish family, made me, then relinquished me to my adoptive parents. Two years later, when my bioparents were legal, they married and then had five children: Chris, Missy, Tom, John, and Tracey. We found each other ten years ago. Which is when I met my Nana, who filled her house with her relatives so that I could meet them all.

This is a nice story, and I'm betting you think that what's about to follow is her recipe for red gravy. Actually, it's sort of my sister Missy's recipe, only not quite that either. And maybe she got it from our Nana, I don't know. All I know is that one day I was visiting the coast and Missy said, let's make spaghetti sauce. And I blinked and said, okay, and then we were shopping, and then she was dumping things in a pot, and all of a sudden, blammo. My whole spaghetti sauce nightmare of a childhood ended. Ended, I say. Blammo.

Because as is probably clear to you from my other posts, my mother, bless her heart, was a modern cook. Packages. Pre-made stuff. If it came in a box or a can it was way superior to the raw, naked, whole stuff. I don't blame her. She's a product of her generation, as I am of mine. Thus, on the issue of red sauce she was multiply screwed: she didn't have the ethnic, class, or more generally cultural impetus to make her own. Her idea of getting spaghetti sauce was--go to A&P. Find Ragu. Buy Ragu. Heat Ragu with browned ground beef. Serve over spaghetti noodles. Side salad of iceberg lettuce, pallid tomato, carrot dimes, either Ranch or Good Seasons Italian.

This isn't Ragu. Doesn't have fifty weird ingredients, preservatives, all that sugar. It takes almost no time to fix.

As I've written it, this makes maybe three quarts of sauce, enough for two lasagnas and a little more. Decrease as necessary for your purposes.

Here's what you need:

Stock pot

olive oil

crushed garlic

oregano

basil

red pepper flakes and/or jalapeno mash

vegetables (here, it's onions, green peppers, and broccoli, though just about any sort will do)

Three large (32 oz) cans of crushed tomatoes

one small can of tomato paste

opt. med can of diced tomatoes

a little red wine

possibly a TBSP of sugar

possibly a little salt

Chop all your vegetables up. Set aside onions and peppers, since they'll go in first. But you can glop the rest together.

Open the cans. If you're using diced tomatoes, drain them only. Don't drain the others (you can't actually, but I didn't want you to try).

In the stock pot, heat up enough oil just to cover the bottom. I'd say about 4-5 TBSP max. Use med heat.

When you can smell the oil, or when it starts to shimmer, drop in a heaping spoon of garlic, a handful (maybe 3 TBSP) of oregano, half that of basil (so maybe a TBSP and a half), and some red pepper flakes or jalapeno mash.

Saute these in the oil for just a minute. Don't burn the garlic. This is easy to do, so err on the side of undercooking.

Add onions, peppers, celery, any veg that's there just for flavor. Saute until just limp, stirring pretty constantly.

When the onions are translucent, or the other vegetables are just a little soft, add the tomatoes.

Stir. Turn the heat to low. Cook uncovered for about five minutes, until the tomatoes are simmering. Taste.

It's important to taste at this point because your tomatoes might be very acid. If they taste like can, or sort of bitter, you'll need to add the sugar. This happens unpredictably, so you have to taste. Add salt at this point, too, if you feel you need it. I almost never feel I do.

When the tomatoes taste right to you, add the rest of the veg and about a third cup of wine. I generally just dump, about two glugs.

Bring to a boil over low-med heat (to keep you from having red sauce popping all over your kitchen). Taste, adjust for bitterness -- more sugar -- or for richness -- more wine. Let simmer until the vegetables are just cooked through.

If the sauce looks too thin, add more paste or just let it cook down for a while. This will overcook the vegetables, however, so unless that's okay with you, use the paste to thicken.

[This is a picture of the sauce boiling. I thought it was really neat: a still of motion. Also, the sauce launched a giant blob of red stuff into the atmosphere; it landed on my arm, where I licked it off like Yukon Cornelius licks his pick.]

There you go.

Stone [Soup] Salad (virtually free; less than fifteen minutes)

This is virtually free, since what you're doing is using the odds and ends you have left over in the fridge to make the salad. You may have to buy some lettuce (you know you want the vegetarian starter kit, right?). Or maybe you have some, or some spinach, or something leafy and green? That's where you start.

Chuck can make two meals: this, and a pasta dish he calls carbonara, but it's really just pasta with olives and turkey bacon. It's really good, equally as good as his salad. He tells me that most of his cooking life was spent microwaving fish sticks or eating processed cheese on tortillas (microwaved). There's a good story about a last minute Thanksgiving he and his brother Bob ended up eating at 3am the morning after Thanksgiving. I've seen him make Bisquick pancakes -- and they're also good. But yeah. Now that we live together, mostly I cook.

Here, however, is his "famous" salad. Salad, in this part of the world, is best in fall and spring, when lettuce is fresh and local.

This one he made for dinner, and the way he makes them, they are a dinner.

What you'll need:

Green leafy substance (this is romaine, but any lettuce or non-cooking greens will do)

some fruit (here he's got apples, tangerines, dates, and raisins)

some vegetables (carrots, tomatoes, scallions, green peppers)

some nuts (here, pecans [how to say it like a native] and walnuts)

some salty stuff (like pickles, olives, capers)

some cheese and whatever else you have a spoonful or two of left in the fridge

Some spices (here, dill, cilantro, red pepper and black pepper)

What you do:

Wash what needs washing. Cut up what needs cutting up into bite-sized pieces.

Tear the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.

Put this in the bottom of a big bowl.

But the other bite-sized stuff on top.

Shake on some Parmesan or other cheese.

Toss and serve.

We eat this without dressing, but for guests we have some bottled stuff, or I drizzle on a little mustard mixed with honey and olive oil, or some Good Seasons Italian.

There you go.

Curried Rice

This recipe is modified from one I found in an old cookbook called, scandalously enough, Vegetarian Pleasures, which makes me think about the line in Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”: “My vegetable love should grow/ Vaster than empires and more slow.” Try to tell students that that’s not about using food to masturbate. Go ahead. I have.

Here are the ingredients as I use them, though you should substitute as you please: this is tofu (cut in cubes and pressed dry), spices (coriander, salt, paprika, turmeric), peas, soy sauce, cooked and chilled rice, carrots, and peppers.

The first thing you want to do is heat just a little oil in a wok and sauté the tofu until it’s golden; you’ll do this in batches. Remove and drain on paper towels.

Pre-cook the carrots in the microwave for a minute, then finish them in the residual oil in the wok. Add the peppers, cook for just a minute, then add the spices, and cook for another minute until the vegetables are well coated. Remove them from the wok and set aside. You can mix them with the tofu if you like, since everything’s going together eventually anyway.

In the residue of oil and spices, heat the rice, adding water to keep it from sticking. You may need up to two cups of water for this so keep some nearby. The rice will turn yellow from the turmeric.

Smash the clumps with your spoon so the rice separates and heats through. This is fun, particularly if you’re feeling anxious or frustrated. When the rice is heated, add the tofu, peas, carrots, and peppers. Heat until peas are cooked, stirring gently to keep the rice from sticking. Add soy sauce. Serve with Indian pickle (we’re partial to Vimal chilli pickle or mango pickle [or you could make your own: we get our pickle at the Dekalb Farmers' Market], but that might be because it’s the only kind we can get here, I don’t know). We eat this with tortillas, but if you have naan or roti, it’s probably better that way.

I’ve experimented with using other vegetables (basically because I was too lazy to go to the store). Virtually everything works. Also: add some jalapeno paste when you add the spices. It’s even better that way.

There you go.