Ok, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and hope that my wine-loving family and friends don’t completely write off my judgement after this post. The subject, which is obvious from the title, is boxed wine. 

I cook a lot of different foods from a lot of different cultures. I’ve made paneer cheese for saag paneer, stuffed sausage for brats, and cleaned squid for grilled calamari. However, up until very recently, I’d never cooked a whole fish from start to finish. Something about the process of cleaning, preparing and figuring out how to eat it always struck me as something to leave to the pros. 

Perfect apple picking weather requires about 55 degrees, clear sky, and bright sun. Yesterday was perfect, so Sara and I headed to Kane County and harvested about 15 pounds of fruit, mainly Jonagold. About half of the bounty immediately went into apple sauce to be frozen and eaten over the next few months. The rest will be split up between pies, smoothies, regular ol' eating, and apple pancakes. It is apple pancakes that I came to speak of.

Sometimes Pizza Fridays needs a bit more than just pizza. Tonight I seared some Ahi tuna before my pesto, buffalo mozzarella and cherry tomato pizza.

Sara and I recently moved into a new place, so, of course, a housewarming party was in order. We’ve thrown parties in the past, mostly casual BYOB affairs with some chips and dip on the table. This one, however, we wanted to take up a notch and provide food and [of course] alcohol for all of our guests. We sent out the invitation a few weeks in advance, got back about 20 “yes”-es, and set the shopping list. One of my biggest fears is running out of food or alcohol, so I ended up buying 14 bottles of wine, 60 bottles of beer, and lots of hard liquor. Food-wise, I made bruschetta, and bought cheese, dips, and raw materials for 48 slider mini-burgers to whip up on the grill.

Ok, so maybe a little overboard. One of my critical oversights was that several of my friends are still “college partiers”, which means an RSVP of “Hey, I’ll be there with my 3 roommates” really means “Ya, we’ll probably show up, but who knows, we might end up hanging out at our place watching South Park instead”. All in all, we ended up getting about 14 people — a perfectly fine turnout. Except when you have food and drinks for 30.

The alcohol isn’t really a problem — it won’t go to waste as football season gears up. Bruschetta, 5 lbs of ground beef, toasted bread and tons of cheese, on the other hand, doesn’t have much of a shelf life. Rather than throwing out huge quantities of perfectly delicious food, I tried to think of a great dish that would use these ingredients and keep for at least a few days. Eggplant Parmesan Lasagna fit the bill perfectly — bruschetta mixed with the ground beef sounded about right for the sauce, toasted bread turned into crumbs would make for delicious crispy eggplant, and leftover cheese could top it all off.

The sauce was really the standout rock star of the dish. I started with last night’s bruschetta, a combination of tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, basil, olive oil, parmesan, garlic and balsamic vinegar (just keep adjusting until it tastes good). I pureed about 2 cups in the blender until it was the consistency of pasta sauce and added it to a few patties-worth of ground beef that was browning in a saucepan. I cooked that for about 10 minutes, and then added the last cup of the bruschetta to create a flavorful sauce with chunks of juicy tomatoes and ribbons of fresh basil. 

I thinly sliced the eggplant, salted it and let it drain for about an hour. I then lightly coated the slices with flour, dipped them in beaten egg, and coated them with bread crumbs from last night’s toasted baguette. I arranged the slices onto a sprayed cookie sheet and baked them at 425 until the tops were golden brown and crispy, about 20 minutes.

The middle cheese was simply a mixture of cottage cheese (which I prefer to ricotta), spinach (optional, had some in the fridge), parmesan and an egg. 

Now, I just made a few layers — sauce on bottom, then eggplant (or lasagna noodles), cottage cheese mixture and more sauce — until I filled up the pan. Topped it all off with shredded cheese (mozzarella or whatever you have), and baked it for about 30 minutes or so, until the top got just a little bit golden brown. Don’t brown the top too much, or the cheese won’t be as chewy and delicious.

A huge leftover win, if I say so myself. Most importantly, I learned some valuable lessons — bruschetta sauce is awesome, battered and baked eggplant is way better than noodles, and aim for enough food to feed about half of the RSVP’ed guests. The alcohol — well…who knows. You’d hate to run out. 

Make this now.

I still vividly remember the first time I had a real, New York bagel — I was an intern in lower Manhattan, about a week into my first rotation in the world of finance. Fridays anywhere are permeated with that pleasant tingle of an impending weekend, but something about the 13 hour days in my old office made everyone extra giddy when that last day rolled around. That specific Friday, one of the salespeople brought in bagels and lox for breakfast — maybe nothing special to the veteran New Yorkers in the room, but to a guy that had previously only eaten Einstein's and Great American Bagels, these were a revelation.

If there is one item of produce that I most eagerly await every summer, it is the heirloom tomato. They’re definitely good enough to eat by themselves — I usually just slice them up and add a bit of salt — but added to a dish, they take the food to another level. Dishes with heirlooms should keep other flavors simple and clean, so that the bright freshness of the tomatoes isn’t hidden behind loads of other strong tastes. They simply don’t need it.

This summer, I lost air conditioning mere days before a 90+ degree, month-long heat wave. Some might say it was my fault for selling my window AC on Craigslist a few weeks too early in anticipation of a move to a climate-controlled building, but the fact remains that it was HOT. Without any sort of air cooling, I resorted to drinking large quantities of cold beverages, with lots of ice, to stay cool and hydrated. 

I frequently make iced tea in the summer, but until recently, it has been primarily random green and black teas that I wanted to get rid of. Inevitably, the brew timing would be off (it's difficult to extrapolate tea quantities and steeping times from cups to gallons) and the tea would end up either too weak or overpoweringly astringent. Furthermore, the caffeine content of even green tea was too much for me to drink at night, so my iced tea would often sit in the refrigerator for weeks at a time while I drank bland water to keep from drying out.

At the beginning of this heat wave, however, I found myself with several tins of rooibos in iced-friendly flavors (cocomint, if you must ask). I boiled 2 gallons of water, added about a half cup of tea to a spice infuser bag that I had laying around (although a tea ball would work just fine), and let it steep for about 4 hours. One of the beautiful things (which I knew beforehand) about rooibos is that its low tannin content means that it is impossible to oversteep. Boil, dunk, and let it cool on the stove. Presto!

The resulting brew is a tad sweet, simply from the natural sweetness of the plant, and full of all sorts of nutritional benefits. The dark, almost wine-red color is packed with antioxidants, and it has no caffeine, so it's great for drinking at any time of the day. It comes in just about any flavor you can imagine — cocomint was perfect, although Adagio Teas has many others — and is one of the least expensive teas out there. 

I fill up 2 pitchers at a time, and can get through both of them on a hot week. You'll love it.