Both Ian and I remember exactly what we ate on the night he proposed to me. Vegetarian sloppy joes.

The oddity of this meal is significant in the memory of that night. He proposed in a place, my house in Thoreau, NM, that we had spent very little time in and that I would move out of just a few weeks later. We don’t have that location to bring our daughters to and fondly say “this is the spot,” but we do have that simple meal to joke about. Thanks to a bit of internet searching, I can now repeat that meal all around the world.

The original sloppy joes came from a white Fantastic Foods box. Ian had stopped at the local co-op in Gallup (the grocery stores would never carry something so exotic!) on his way to spend what was perhaps one of two nights we passed in Thoreau in the year I lived there. The Fantastic Foods mix was perfect in that it took no time and only a jar of tomato paste to put together. We ate it often during our graduate school days. Of course now that we are living as expats, Fantastic Foods is impossible to come by. Sloppy joes have slipped from a common meal to a fond memory. Until this recipe. While the texture doesn’t match that of the TVP used by Fantastic Foods, the flavor is spot on. As per our tradition, we eat it on simple bread (hamburger buns are great) with mayonaise, cheese and pickles. This recipe boosts the dish from easy and filling to healthy with the use of lentils and flax seed. The jury is out on whether it is kid-friendly as our daughter threw such a fit at the table that she went to bed without eating. Due to her exhaustion, Ian and I were able to once again enjoy a favorite meal, just the two of us and the bags under our eyes.

When Juliet was born, Ian bought me a beautiful cookbook to fill some time in the hospital bed. The cookboook, Plenty from Yotam Ottolenghi, could be a coffee table book. It is full of gorgeous pictures and delicious descriptions. Both Ian and I have read nearly every recipe. While Ottolenghi is not a vegetarian chef, the cookbook is vegetarian. The book is arranged into chapters based on vegetable types. The recipes showoff their ingredients while including subtle seasonings. While reading through them, I have encountered ingredients I have never used before as well as cooking processes I am unfamiliar with.

The first couple meals I cooked overwhelmed me and took far more time than I was ready to commit, and I was worried I would need to resign the book to just a coffee table book because of it’s complexity. However, after repeating a few recipes I am beginning to understand how Ottolenghi’s drawn out processes contribute to the flavor of each dish, and have grown to appreciate them. Fortunately as I have repeated a couple of dishes I find they become much easier each time. This week I cooked a recipe (ratatouille) that, once again, overwhelmed me while cooking, but ended up so delicious that I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

I have posted Ottolenghi’s recipe for Tamara’s Ratatouille. Keep in mind that the dish is absolutely worth every step and every minute. The vegetables meld together perfectly in terms of both flavor and texture. The eggplant and zucchini both melt in your mouth, and the potatoes and butternut squash are simultaneously tender and chewy. On a mellow, rainy early fall day, give it a try- it is fantastic!