once upon a late summer vegetable dinner

fall will officially be here in a few days, and i am looking forward to it. i've been craving a cool breeze like a pregnant woman looking for some ice cream. i will not miss those sweat soaked days of suffocating in subway stations and attempts to avoid the dubious smells wafting from stewing garbage in new york, but i will miss the summer fruits and vegetables and the many farmers markets they come from. my neighborhood has a great little greenmarket of its' own on sundays and i want to be sure to visit as much as possible before it gets too cold out. this past weekend they had a wonderful little eggplant varietal, known as fairytale. i had seen this vegetable on many menus lately, and in my head it conjured up visions of princesses dining on eggplants while burly men attended to their every culinary need, "oh princess, do you need a little more salt? you have a little something right next to your mouth..let me wipe that for you." i know, i have issues. needless to say, i bought a pound of them, fantasizing about what magical things could happen that night when i cooked them. turns out they're not only totally adorable, but they are also delicious. the eggplants are prized for being uniquely un-bitter and creamy in texture, which is really something to swoon over, if you're as weirdly into vegetables as i am.

i also got a bag of padrone peppers, which are exciting because like their japanese cousin the shisito (seperated at birth twin?), only 1 in 10 of them are spicy. eating them is kind of like playing roulette..but with peppers.

the eggplants i roasted in the oven with some smoked salt and the peppers i charred in a pan with lemon and sea salt. with vegetables that fresh, i really like simple preparations that highlight the natural flavor instead of distracting from them. 

now, a few weeks ago i had an amazing dinner at frank in the east village, which is one of my favorite restaurants in new york. it is simple, unfussy italian food that has never let me down. i have ended up in frank's on many a late night occassion and eaten way better than i should have at those hours and those prices. i dream about their black linguine with calamari and spicy marinara and if you are lucky enough to be there on a night when they have the burrata on the menu, don't even think about it, just order it. recently, they had a black kale caesar salad that i devoured and can't stop thinking about. the kale was crunchy enough to stand up to the creamy caesar, and it didn't hurt that the whole salad was hidden under a cloud of shaved parm. i loved that salad so much i ate every last bite and have been recreating it  at home for the last few weeks, playing with the perfect ratios of anchovy, garlic, lemon and olive oil. for my dinner on sunday, i wanted to lighten things up so instead of adding an egg and lot of olive oil, i used a vegan mayo sub, nutritional yeast (which is good for a cheesy flavor), and apple cider vinegar. i kept the anchovy in, but if you want to make it full blown vegan, i think the dressing would still be great without it. here's my recipe for a lightened up caesar dressing:

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

4 cloves of raw garlic

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tbsp brown mustard

3 tbsp vegan mayo (any kind is fine)

3-4 anchovies (depending on preference)

a few dashes of salt & pepper (to taste)

put everything in a food processor and go to creamy town.

it came out great and i think i preferred it to the dressing at franks because it wasn't as heavy, so i didn't feel bad eating a ton of it. i don't like to use too much when i toss the kale, because black kale (also called lacinato or tuscan) is so delicious it doesn't need to be drowned. i had a good amount of dressing leftover so i decided to make some artichokes and use the caesar as a drizzle. i steamed the artichokes as i normally do, but as soon as they were cooked i cut them in half, scooped out the furry and spiky inedible inside parts and charred them on a skillet until they were nice and blackened. once charred, i drizzled the dressing into the scooped out middle, which also worked nicely a a vessel for dipping the leaves. ahh artichokes, so functional yet so delicious. i'll miss you so much come winter.

but on to the next bounty; pumpkin, brussel sprouts, butternut squash, yams... oh yes. bring it, fall.

a tribute

we were just children, really.

wide eyed, open-hearted, ready for serious play. 

excited to be living, eating, sleeping, breathing in such close quarters with members of the opposite sex.

most of us newly liberated from the constraints of living at home and even from the academic rigors of our respective colleges and universities.

we were 18-22. we had chosen to sacrifice the conveniences of modern technology and shopping malls in exchange for a few months of isolation with nothing but each other, our imaginations, the heroic authors of our plays, and some of the most gifted teachers of theater we would ever have have the pleasure of working with. 

we lived near the ocean and woke early every morning to breathe in the salty air.

we had only been there a few days before the world shook with the collapse of its own heart. 

we barely knew each other's names but we were each other's family now.

i had stolen a few precious moments of sleep after breakfast when i heard voices outside my window speaking of a plane crash. we were all gathered. there was no internet, no cnn to turn to. our cell phone service was patchy at best. there were a few new yorkers in the group. they needed answers.

they told us what they knew, which wasn't much. it sounded unlikely to be true. too horrific. too cinematic, even. we were scheduled to make masks that day, so we did. there we were, dipping strips of newspaper into paper mache, creating characters for ourselves, imposing personalities unto these new faces we had devised. 

that next night we performed scenes from the book, nights at the circus, by angela carter. we had worked spontaneously and hurriedly, with little structure and organization.  the leaders stepped forward and tried to dictate the process. we became lions, tigers, trapeze artists, and ring masters. we performed for each other for the first time. we were all in awe of one another. i watched my new peers transform themselves and i was humbled to know that these would be my fellow collaborators for the next few months.

someone said we had created the first theater since 9/11. we relished the thought; we felt we had contributed something to the collective consciousness of the country. the nation's psyche was suffering and we had just made art from its ashes. it was an exhilirating idea. maybe we had.

the next day they sent us a psychiatrist to talk about our feelings. no, we didn't want to discuss our feelings, we wanted answers! we were hungry for facts, statistics, concrete information, please. we had no talking heads to rely upon. we had been mercifully sheltered from images of bodies jumping from windows, like falling stars dropping from an ashen sky.

he told us what he knew. he knew a lot. we were shocked. we were insatiable. we COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. we lived by the long island sound. all we knew was the peaceful lapping of the water and our own voices.

a week later we left for england to spend two weeks studying with the royal shakespeare company. there, abroad, we were treated like heroes. we had done nothing to deserve the accolades, but we accepted them all the same. somehow, just by being ourselves, we had become survivors.  we had never been prouder to be who we were.

we were returned to a country that was devastated by something so horrific it was really impossible for us to conceive of without the aid of visuals. we continued to live peacefully, but we were stronger, closer, irreparably bonded. we made theater every day. in the shadows of inconceivable suffering, we found each other's light and made something new.