Recipes That Changed My Life: #1 – Molly Katzen’s Vegetarian Enchiladas

I didn’t really start learning how to cook until my father died.

This is not to say that in the first 22 years of my life I hadn’t prepared food before. I can vividly remember being overjoyed when my mother taught me at the age of six how to prepare scrambled eggs in the microwave. A morning person at heart even at this young age, I loved being able to get up and make breakfast by myself. In December 1999 I made an entire lasagna from scratch which, between my novice cooking skills and being distracted by the kitchen camaraderie of my childhood friends Jason and Ben, took me the better part of four hours to complete. I had survived my college years via the stereotypical preparation of many boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese.

What’s the difference between making all of these meals and “learning to cook”? I am choosing to articulate it as a conscious desire to build my culinary skills and actually improve from meal to meal, as opposed to just preparing a dish to feed myself.

My memories of day to day life in the few months immediately following my father’s death are foggy: I mostly remember going to work at the coffee shop, coming home, and either taking a nap or going to sleep very early. As this was back when Netflix could only be viewed by ordering DVDs, I also remember ordering and waiting for the first season of CSI: Las Vegas to come in the mail. This was the first time I would seek mental refuge by watching police procedural shows, a habit which I would maintain for many years. I would put on CSI: Las Vegas and lay down in bed, waiting for sleep to grant me some relief.

I grew up in a house where both of my parents cooked all the time. My parents also enjoyed trying new recipes ALL of the time, and from regions all over the world: Italian, Thai, Indian, Japanese, etc. One would think I would have picked up key culinary skills from them, but because they took cooking rather seriously, they were not willing to let my novice kitchen techniques potentially botch a new dish they were making. As such, I was only allowed to complete basic food prep tasks, such as chopping vegetables or putting salad through the salad spinner. (Why we were so damn dependent on salad spinners in the 80s and 90s, I can’t remember.)

Instead of instilling in me a love of cooking, it instead made me come to despise chopping vegetables. Green beans were my least favorite item to prep: my mother wanted the ends trimmed off fresh green beans, and I was to ensure the beans were uniform in length. And because the four of us frequently consumed outrageous portion sizes and/or invited any number of people to come by for dinner on a given evening, I was always trimming several pounds of green beans. Although I love to cook now and have come to terms with prepping ingredients, Basil long ago sensed my aversion to cutting vegetables up and is kind enough to chop them for me when I take to the kitchen to make a meal.

A few months into my grieving, my Uncle Richard sent me a stack of Molly Katzen vegetarian cookbooks (autographed editions, no less). I had always talked about cooking and food when I visited with my uncle, but I can’t remember if there was an actual email or conversation which would have prompted him to send these along. Uncle Richard had mentioned to me once he really enjoyed Katzen’s cookbooks because they are very instructional: he had a learned a lot about cooking from reading them. He likely knew my early-twenties-self could use some instruction.

I remember picking out my first recipe to cook from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest: Sweet and Sour Tofu with Cashews. At that time in my life I had what I now consider to be an absurd amount of free time, but all I had managed to do since Dad died was spend it sleeping, working, or watching TV. One of the things I immediately appreciated about preparing to make this recipe is how it helped add some additional activities to my day: I had to go to the store to get the ingredients. Then I had to bring the ingredients home and prepare them: measure, chop, grate, and plate. The bonus was that, at the end of these structured activities, I had something to eat.

My mother used to say, “If you can read a recipe, you can cook.” While this is, like most things my mother said, a gross exaggeration of how reality works, it does touch on the aspect of working from Katzen’s cookbooks that gave me comfort. I had guidance: the cookbook gave me the list of ingredients to take to the store. The cookbook told me exactly what I had to do with those ingredients once I got them home, including notes for how best to serve them. During a time in my life where I felt directionless and lost, this metaphorical hand-holding made doing something besides sleeping or working seem manageable.

Before I knew it, I started looking forward to making dinner every night. And while I had a significant learning curve when it came to the edibility of my creations, I got decent enough where my roommates asked me if I’d consider doing most of the dinner cooking if they pitched in for groceries. I loved this arrangement: even better than cooking for myself, I got to cook for people I cared about. Their feedback helped me figure out what was going well and what I needed to tweak to do better. More importantly, it led to a lot of time around the dinner table with good food and good conversation: two things I greatly value. Of course it did not “cure” my grief, but learning to cook from Katzen’s cookbooks helped me start to put one foot in front of the other and get back to living a more “normal” life. It helped me realize that despite how impossibly shitty the world seemed without Dad, there were things I could enjoy doing. I could bring people together and add some light to my dark days.

I am ending this entry with one of my favorite recipes from that period in my cooking career: Molly Katzen’s Eggplant-Almond Enchiladas. I loved making big trays of these and taking them out to the backyard to share with my housemates and friends. Paired with a batch of margaritas made from Dad’s recipe, of course.

Molly’s Note: You’ll love these slightly-different enchiladas, with their deep flavor and wonderful textural contrasts. Serve them with beans and rice and a green salad on the side.

NOTE: Make the Mexican Red Sauce ahead of time.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup minced onion
6 cups diced eggplant
1 teaspoon salt (possibly more, to taste)
Black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 medium-sized bell pepper (any color), minced
1 cup minced almonds, lightly toasted
1 packed cup grated jack cheese
12 corn tortillas
Mexican Red Sauce (recipe follows)

1. Heat the olive oil in a deep skillet or Dutch oven. Add onion, and sauté for about 5 minutes over medium heat.
2. Add eggplant, salt, and pepper, and mix well. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the eggplant is soft.
3. Add garlic and bell pepper. Stir and cook 5 minutes longer, or until the pepper is tender. Taste to correct salt.
4. Remove from heat; stir in almonds and cheese.
5. Preheat oven to 350°F. Moisten each tortilla briefly in water then place approximately 1/4 cup filling on one side and roll up. Gently place the filled enchiladas in a baking pan, and pour a full recipe of Mexican Red Sauce over the top. Bake uncovered for about 30 minutes, or until heated through. Serve hot, with beans, rice, and green salad.

Mexican Red Sauce

Adapted from: Moosewood Cookbook
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Yield: About 1 quart

1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup minced onion
1 Anaheim or poblano chili, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt (possibly more, to taste)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon chili powder
3 tablespoons minced garlic
3 cups chopped tomatoes (canned OK)
1 cup water or tomato juice
Black pepper and cayenne to taste (optional)

1. Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan. Add the onion, chili, and salt, and sauté over medium heat for 5 minutes, or until the onion becomes transparent. Add cumin, chili powder and half the garlic, and sauté for about 3 minutes longer.
2. Add the tomatoes and water or juice. Bring to a boil, partially cover, and turn the heat down as low as possible. Simmer for 30 minutes, adding the remaining garlic, and optional black pepper and cayenne to taste during the last 5 minutes or so.

NOTE: You can leave the sauce in chunky form, or smooth it out by puréeing it in a blender. (I like to use a hand-held immersion blender for this. Be careful not to splash!)