🥗 Vegetarian & Vegan

I need to tell you about the summer of 2011, not because it was the best summer of my life (it wasn't; it was actually quite difficult in ways I won't get into here) but because it was the summer I ate Saag Paneer for the first time, and that matters more than I would have predicted. I was twenty-two, staying with my ex-girlfriend Simone for three weeks while my family dealt with some logistics that didn't involve me. Ex-girlfriend Simone lived in an apartment with a kitchen the size of a generous closet, and a landlord who had specifically prohibited cooking smells in the lease, a clause that my ex-girlfriend Simone violated every single day with absolutely no remorse. It was there, in that kitchen that smelled like garlic and old wood and the particular mustiness of a building that had been standing since before anyone currently living in it was born, that I had my first encounter with this dish. I didn't even know what it was. I sat down, a plate appeared in front of me, I took a bite, and something shifted. Not dramatically. Not with trumpets. More like a very quiet click, the way a door opens when you finally find the right key.

Some people have a dish that makes them feel like a child again. Not in the bad way, not in the way that means helpless or small, but in the good way: safe, held, temporarily released from the ordinary terror of being an adult with responsibilities and a body that is slowly betraying you in new and creative ways. For me, that dish is Palak Tofu. I didn't know this for a long time. You rarely know these things until you encounter the dish unexpectedly, in a context where you weren't braced for it, and then it hits you all at once: the memory, the feeling, the particular texture of a moment from years ago. This happened to me at a dinner party in 2007, when I was thirteen, when the host brought out a dish I hadn't seen since I was a child and I had to excuse myself for a moment because my eyes were doing something embarrassing. The host was very gracious about it. She said nothing. She refilled my glass. She is a good person.

There is a very specific kind of madness that takes over a person when they believe they have discovered the best version of something. I first experienced this madness in 1991, when I was nine years old and my mother made Chickpea Tikka Masala for the first time in my presence. I was sitting at her kitchen table, which was the kind of table that had lived through forty years of family dinners and looked it. Crayon marks under the edge, a water ring that had been there since before I was born, one leg that wobbled unless you put a folded paper towel under it. I remember the smell before I remember anything else. It hit me the moment I walked through the door: something rich and deep and complicated, the kind of smell that rearranges your understanding of what food can be. I stood in the doorway for a moment, probably with my mouth open, while my mother moved around the kitchen with the practiced efficiency of someone who had made this dish so many times that her hands knew what to do without being asked. She didn't look at the stove. She didn't look at a recipe. She was telling me something about school while her hands worked, completely independently, like a separate organism that happened to share her body.

There is a very specific kind of madness that takes over a person when they believe they have discovered the best version of something. I first experienced this madness in 1991, when I was fifteen years old and my aunt made Dal Makhani for the first time in my presence. I was sitting at her kitchen table, which was the kind of table that had lived through forty years of family dinners and looked it. Crayon marks under the edge, a water ring that had been there since before I was born, one leg that wobbled unless you put a folded paper towel under it. I remember the smell before I remember anything else. It hit me the moment I walked through the door: something rich and deep and complicated, the kind of smell that rearranges your understanding of what food can be. I stood in the doorway for a moment, probably with my mouth open, while Aunt Marlene moved around the kitchen with the practiced efficiency of someone who had made this dish so many times that her hands knew what to do without being asked. She didn't look at the stove. She didn't look at a recipe. She was telling me something about school while her hands worked, completely independently, like a separate organism that happened to share her body.

In 1987, I went to the back corner of a restaurant in Oaxaca that had no English menu and exactly three tables with what I can only describe as an extremely optimistic attitude and a carry-on bag that was slightly too large for the overhead bin. I was eleven years old and under the impression that traveling alone would be romantic and character-building. It was sometimes those things. It was also frequently confusing, occasionally frightening, and once involved a misunderstanding about bus schedules that I will never fully recover from. But on the third day (or possibly the fourth; I had lost track of time in the pleasant way that happens when you have no meetings and no reason to know what day it is) I found myself sitting in front of Falafel with Tahini for the first time. I had not ordered it on purpose. I had pointed at a menu without fully understanding what I was pointing at, which is a strategy I recommend with reservations. The dish that arrived was not what I expected. I didn't know what I expected. Whatever it was, this was better.

Some people have a dish that makes them feel like a child again. Not in the bad way, not in the way that means helpless or small, but in the good way: safe, held, temporarily released from the ordinary terror of being an adult with responsibilities and a body that is slowly betraying you in new and creative ways. For me, that dish is Mushroom Bourguignon. I didn't know this for a long time. You rarely know these things until you encounter the dish unexpectedly, in a context where you weren't braced for it, and then it hits you all at once: the memory, the feeling, the particular texture of a moment from years ago. This happened to me at a dinner party in 1987, when I was sixteen, when the host brought out a dish I hadn't seen since I was a child and I had to excuse myself for a moment because my eyes were doing something embarrassing. The host was very gracious about it. She said nothing. She refilled my glass. She is a good person.

Late fall in 2005 was the kind of fall that gets remembered. Not because anything particularly historic happened (nothing did, or at least nothing I was involved in) but because the light was a specific quality and the air had a particular smell and I was twenty-two years old, which is an age when everything gets encoded more vividly than it will ever be again. I remember that late fall with the kind of detail that I can no longer apply to things that happened last Tuesday. I remember the temperature of the air. I remember what songs were playing on the radio. And I remember, with absolute crystalline precision, the first time I tasted Stuffed Bell Peppers, at a table in Aunt Marlene's house, with the specific afternoon light coming through the window at an angle that made everything look slightly cinematic. Memory is strange. It keeps the things you don't expect it to keep and loses the things you most needed to hold onto. It kept this.

Some people have a dish that makes them feel like a child again. Not in the bad way, not in the way that means helpless or small, but in the good way: safe, held, temporarily released from the ordinary terror of being an adult with responsibilities and a body that is slowly betraying you in new and creative ways. For me, that dish is Eggplant Parmigiana. I didn't know this for a long time. You rarely know these things until you encounter the dish unexpectedly, in a context where you weren't braced for it, and then it hits you all at once: the memory, the feeling, the particular texture of a moment from years ago. This happened to me at a dinner party in 1999, when I was nine, when the host brought out a dish I hadn't seen since I was a child and I had to excuse myself for a moment because my eyes were doing something embarrassing. The host was very gracious about it. She said nothing. She refilled my glass. She is a good person.

I've been trying to write this recipe down for eleven years. Not continuously; I have not spent eleven years exclusively on this task. But it has been a recurring project, something I pick up and put down and pick up again, like a book I keep meaning to finish. The problem is that Ratatouille doesn't behave the way a recipe is supposed to behave. It doesn't have quantities. It has intuitions. I watched my college roommate Darius make it in 2003, in a kitchen that was warmer than any kitchen should legally be, with no measuring cups in sight, explaining each step in a tone that suggested the steps were obvious to anyone who had thought about it for more than thirty seconds. I was taking notes in a small notebook. The notes, which I still have somewhere, say things like "some of the thing" and "until it looks right" and, memorably, "you'll know." Reader, I did not know. I still don't know. But I can tell you exactly what it tasted like, down to the temperature and the way it felt on the back of my throat, and maybe that's what I've actually been trying to document all along.

Late fall in 2005 was the kind of fall that gets remembered. Not because anything particularly historic happened (nothing did, or at least nothing I was involved in) but because the light was a specific quality and the air had a particular smell and I was fifteen years old, which is an age when everything gets encoded more vividly than it will ever be again. I remember that late fall with the kind of detail that I can no longer apply to things that happened last Tuesday. I remember the temperature of the air. I remember what songs were playing on the radio. And I remember, with absolute crystalline precision, the first time I tasted Caprese Salad, at a table in my sister Dana's house, with the specific afternoon light coming through the window at an angle that made everything look slightly cinematic. Memory is strange. It keeps the things you don't expect it to keep and loses the things you most needed to hold onto. It kept this.

I've been trying to write this recipe down for eleven years. Not continuously; I have not spent eleven years exclusively on this task. But it has been a recurring project, something I pick up and put down and pick up again, like a book I keep meaning to finish. The problem is that Baba Ganoush doesn't behave the way a recipe is supposed to behave. It doesn't have quantities. It has intuitions. I watched my childhood best friend Mike make it in 2011, in a kitchen that was warmer than any kitchen should legally be, with no measuring cups in sight, explaining each step in a tone that suggested the steps were obvious to anyone who had thought about it for more than thirty seconds. I was taking notes in a small notebook. The notes, which I still have somewhere, say things like "some of the thing" and "until it looks right" and, memorably, "you'll know." Reader, I did not know. I still don't know. But I can tell you exactly what it tasted like, down to the temperature and the way it felt on the back of my throat, and maybe that's what I've actually been trying to document all along.

Some people have a dish that makes them feel like a child again. Not in the bad way, not in the way that means helpless or small, but in the good way: safe, held, temporarily released from the ordinary terror of being an adult with responsibilities and a body that is slowly betraying you in new and creative ways. For me, that dish is Fattoush Salad. I didn't know this for a long time. You rarely know these things until you encounter the dish unexpectedly, in a context where you weren't braced for it, and then it hits you all at once: the memory, the feeling, the particular texture of a moment from years ago. This happened to me at a dinner party in 1987, when I was sixteen, when the host brought out a dish I hadn't seen since I was a child and I had to excuse myself for a moment because my eyes were doing something embarrassing. The host was very gracious about it. She said nothing. She refilled my glass. She is a good person.

My great-aunt never wrote anything down. I want to be clear about this upfront, because it is the central tragedy of this entire essay and I think you deserve to know that before we get emotionally invested. Great-Aunt Vera cooked the way some people drive: entirely from feel, with no regard for written instructions, occasionally terrifying, but somehow always arriving at the destination intact. Shakshuka (Vegan) was her signature. Not in the way people sometimes use that word, not just "a dish she made," but truly, fundamentally, the thing that most people who knew her thought of when they thought of her cooking. At every birthday, every holiday, every Sunday dinner that mattered, there it was. The smell of it walking into her house was so synonymous with safety and comfort that I once, at the age of nine, started crying at a restaurant when I smelled something similar coming from the kitchen, because for a moment my brain genuinely thought she was there. She was not there. It was a chain restaurant in a strip mall. I tipped very well and did not explain.

Early spring in 1996 was the kind of spring that gets remembered. Not because anything particularly historic happened (nothing did, or at least nothing I was involved in) but because the light was a specific quality and the air had a particular smell and I was sixteen years old, which is an age when everything gets encoded more vividly than it will ever be again. I remember that early spring with the kind of detail that I can no longer apply to things that happened last Tuesday. I remember the temperature of the air. I remember what songs were playing on the radio. And I remember, with absolute crystalline precision, the first time I tasted Lentil Walnut Tacos, at a table in my mother's house, with the specific afternoon light coming through the window at an angle that made everything look slightly cinematic. Memory is strange. It keeps the things you don't expect it to keep and loses the things you most needed to hold onto. It kept this.

The thing about Jackfruit Carnitas is that it shouldn't work as well as it does. I've thought about this a lot, probably too much if I'm being honest, which I am being, because this is a food blog and honesty about food is the only kind that matters. The first time I encountered it, I was genuinely skeptical. I was nine, at my mother's house for late fall in 1991, and I was the kind of nine-year-old who had very strong opinions about what I would and wouldn't eat, most of which were wrong. I sat down at the table with the specific energy of someone who has already decided they won't like something, which is the worst possible way to sit down at any table, and especially at my mother's table, where the food was always trying to teach you something about being wrong. I looked at the plate. I looked at my mother. She looked back at me with an expression that said, very clearly, that she had made this dish for forty years and was not concerned about the opinions of someone who had existed for nine of them.

There is a very specific kind of madness that takes over a person when they believe they have discovered the best version of something. I first experienced this madness in 2001, when I was nineteen years old and my older sister made Cauliflower Steaks for the first time in my presence. I was sitting at her kitchen table, which was the kind of table that had lived through forty years of family dinners and looked it. Crayon marks under the edge, a water ring that had been there since before I was born, one leg that wobbled unless you put a folded paper towel under it. I remember the smell before I remember anything else. It hit me the moment I walked through the door: something rich and deep and complicated, the kind of smell that rearranges your understanding of what food can be. I stood in the doorway for a moment, probably with my mouth open, while my sister Dana moved around the kitchen with the practiced efficiency of someone who had made this dish so many times that her hands knew what to do without being asked. She didn't look at the stove. She didn't look at a recipe. She was telling me something about school while her hands worked, completely independently, like a separate organism that happened to share her body.

The thing about Roasted Beet Salad is that it shouldn't work as well as it does. I've thought about this a lot, probably too much if I'm being honest, which I am being, because this is a food blog and honesty about food is the only kind that matters. The first time I encountered it, I was genuinely skeptical. I was twenty-four, at Aunt Marlene's house for early spring in 2009, and I was the kind of twenty-four-year-old who had very strong opinions about what I would and wouldn't eat, most of which were wrong. I sat down at the table with the specific energy of someone who has already decided they won't like something, which is the worst possible way to sit down at any table, and especially at Aunt Marlene's table, where the food was always trying to teach you something about being wrong. I looked at the plate. I looked at Aunt Marlene. She looked back at me with an expression that said, very clearly, that she had made this dish for forty years and was not concerned about the opinions of someone who had existed for twenty-four of them.

In 2007, I went to a tiny hill town in Tuscany that I found by taking a wrong turn off the highway with what I can only describe as an extremely optimistic attitude and a carry-on bag that was slightly too large for the overhead bin. I was thirteen years old and under the impression that traveling alone would be romantic and character-building. It was sometimes those things. It was also frequently confusing, occasionally frightening, and once involved a misunderstanding about bus schedules that I will never fully recover from. But on the third day (or possibly the fourth; I had lost track of time in the pleasant way that happens when you have no meetings and no reason to know what day it is) I found myself sitting in front of Butternut Squash Risotto for the first time. I had not ordered it on purpose. I had pointed at a menu without fully understanding what I was pointing at, which is a strategy I recommend with reservations. The dish that arrived was not what I expected. I didn't know what I expected. Whatever it was, this was better.

I need to tell you about the summer of 2011, not because it was the best summer of my life (it wasn't; it was actually quite difficult in ways I won't get into here) but because it was the summer I ate Mushroom Stroganoff for the first time, and that matters more than I would have predicted. I was twenty-two, staying with my college roommate Darius for three weeks while my family dealt with some logistics that didn't involve me. College roommate Darius lived in an apartment with a kitchen the size of a generous closet, and a landlord who had specifically prohibited cooking smells in the lease, a clause that my college roommate Darius violated every single day with absolutely no remorse. It was there, in that kitchen that smelled like garlic and old wood and the particular mustiness of a building that had been standing since before anyone currently living in it was born, that I had my first encounter with this dish. I didn't even know what it was. I sat down, a plate appeared in front of me, I took a bite, and something shifted. Not dramatically. Not with trumpets. More like a very quiet click, the way a door opens when you finally find the right key.

In 1987, I went to a farmhouse kitchen in the south of France with what I can only describe as an extremely optimistic attitude and a carry-on bag that was slightly too large for the overhead bin. I was twenty-four years old and under the impression that traveling alone would be romantic and character-building. It was sometimes those things. It was also frequently confusing, occasionally frightening, and once involved a misunderstanding about bus schedules that I will never fully recover from. But on the third day (or possibly the fourth; I had lost track of time in the pleasant way that happens when you have no meetings and no reason to know what day it is) I found myself sitting in front of Tofu Scramble for the first time. I had not ordered it on purpose. I had pointed at a menu without fully understanding what I was pointing at, which is a strategy I recommend with reservations. The dish that arrived was not what I expected. I didn't know what I expected. Whatever it was, this was better.

My great-aunt never wrote anything down. I want to be clear about this upfront, because it is the central tragedy of this entire essay and I think you deserve to know that before we get emotionally invested. Great-Aunt Vera cooked the way some people drive: entirely from feel, with no regard for written instructions, occasionally terrifying, but somehow always arriving at the destination intact. Veggie Burger was her signature. Not in the way people sometimes use that word, not just "a dish she made," but truly, fundamentally, the thing that most people who knew her thought of when they thought of her cooking. At every birthday, every holiday, every Sunday dinner that mattered, there it was. The smell of it walking into her house was so synonymous with safety and comfort that I once, at the age of nineteen, started crying at a restaurant when I smelled something similar coming from the kitchen, because for a moment my brain genuinely thought she was there. She was not there. It was a chain restaurant in a strip mall. I tipped very well and did not explain.

There is a very specific kind of madness that takes over a person when they believe they have discovered the best version of something. I first experienced this madness in 2009, when I was eleven years old and my older sister made Black Bean Enchiladas for the first time in my presence. I was sitting at her kitchen table, which was the kind of table that had lived through forty years of family dinners and looked it. Crayon marks under the edge, a water ring that had been there since before I was born, one leg that wobbled unless you put a folded paper towel under it. I remember the smell before I remember anything else. It hit me the moment I walked through the door: something rich and deep and complicated, the kind of smell that rearranges your understanding of what food can be. I stood in the doorway for a moment, probably with my mouth open, while my sister Dana moved around the kitchen with the practiced efficiency of someone who had made this dish so many times that her hands knew what to do without being asked. She didn't look at the stove. She didn't look at a recipe. She was telling me something about school while her hands worked, completely independently, like a separate organism that happened to share her body.

I've been trying to write this recipe down for eleven years. Not continuously; I have not spent eleven years exclusively on this task. But it has been a recurring project, something I pick up and put down and pick up again, like a book I keep meaning to finish. The problem is that Vegetable Biryani doesn't behave the way a recipe is supposed to behave. It doesn't have quantities. It has intuitions. I watched my college roommate Darius make it in 2003, in a kitchen that was warmer than any kitchen should legally be, with no measuring cups in sight, explaining each step in a tone that suggested the steps were obvious to anyone who had thought about it for more than thirty seconds. I was taking notes in a small notebook. The notes, which I still have somewhere, say things like "some of the thing" and "until it looks right" and, memorably, "you'll know." Reader, I did not know. I still don't know. But I can tell you exactly what it tasted like, down to the temperature and the way it felt on the back of my throat, and maybe that's what I've actually been trying to document all along.

Some people have a dish that makes them feel like a child again. Not in the bad way, not in the way that means helpless or small, but in the good way: safe, held, temporarily released from the ordinary terror of being an adult with responsibilities and a body that is slowly betraying you in new and creative ways. For me, that dish is Greek Salad. I didn't know this for a long time. You rarely know these things until you encounter the dish unexpectedly, in a context where you weren't braced for it, and then it hits you all at once: the memory, the feeling, the particular texture of a moment from years ago. This happened to me at a dinner party in 1987, when I was sixteen, when the host brought out a dish I hadn't seen since I was a child and I had to excuse myself for a moment because my eyes were doing something embarrassing. The host was very gracious about it. She said nothing. She refilled my glass. She is a good person.

In 1999, I went to a roadside diner in rural Tennessee that I only found because my GPS gave up with what I can only describe as an extremely optimistic attitude and a carry-on bag that was slightly too large for the overhead bin. I was nine years old and under the impression that traveling alone would be romantic and character-building. It was sometimes those things. It was also frequently confusing, occasionally frightening, and once involved a misunderstanding about bus schedules that I will never fully recover from. But on the third day (or possibly the fourth; I had lost track of time in the pleasant way that happens when you have no meetings and no reason to know what day it is) I found myself sitting in front of Panzanella for the first time. I had not ordered it on purpose. I had pointed at a menu without fully understanding what I was pointing at, which is a strategy I recommend with reservations. The dish that arrived was not what I expected. I didn't know what I expected. Whatever it was, this was better.

There is a very specific kind of madness that takes over a person when they believe they have discovered the best version of something. I first experienced this madness in 2009, when I was sixteen years old and my grandmother made Niçoise with Chickpeas for the first time in my presence. I was sitting at her kitchen table, which was the kind of table that had lived through forty years of family dinners and looked it. Crayon marks under the edge, a water ring that had been there since before I was born, one leg that wobbled unless you put a folded paper towel under it. I remember the smell before I remember anything else. It hit me the moment I walked through the door: something rich and deep and complicated, the kind of smell that rearranges your understanding of what food can be. I stood in the doorway for a moment, probably with my mouth open, while Grandma Rose moved around the kitchen with the practiced efficiency of someone who had made this dish so many times that her hands knew what to do without being asked. She didn't look at the stove. She didn't look at a recipe. She was telling me something about school while her hands worked, completely independently, like a separate organism that happened to share her body.

I need to tell you about the summer of 2003, not because it was the best summer of my life (it wasn't; it was actually quite difficult in ways I won't get into here) but because it was the summer I ate Roasted Vegetable Tart for the first time, and that matters more than I would have predicted. I was eleven, staying with my college roommate Darius for three weeks while my family dealt with some logistics that didn't involve me. College roommate Darius lived in an apartment with a kitchen the size of a generous closet, and a landlord who had specifically prohibited cooking smells in the lease, a clause that my college roommate Darius violated every single day with absolutely no remorse. It was there, in that kitchen that smelled like garlic and old wood and the particular mustiness of a building that had been standing since before anyone currently living in it was born, that I had my first encounter with this dish. I didn't even know what it was. I sat down, a plate appeared in front of me, I took a bite, and something shifted. Not dramatically. Not with trumpets. More like a very quiet click, the way a door opens when you finally find the right key.

The thing about Spanakopita is that it shouldn't work as well as it does. I've thought about this a lot, probably too much if I'm being honest, which I am being, because this is a food blog and honesty about food is the only kind that matters. The first time I encountered it, I was genuinely skeptical. I was eleven, at my mother's house for early spring in 2009, and I was the kind of eleven-year-old who had very strong opinions about what I would and wouldn't eat, most of which were wrong. I sat down at the table with the specific energy of someone who has already decided they won't like something, which is the worst possible way to sit down at any table, and especially at my mother's table, where the food was always trying to teach you something about being wrong. I looked at the plate. I looked at my mother. She looked back at me with an expression that said, very clearly, that she had made this dish for forty years and was not concerned about the opinions of someone who had existed for eleven of them.

My mother never wrote anything down. I want to be clear about this upfront, because it is the central tragedy of this entire essay and I think you deserve to know that before we get emotionally invested. my mother cooked the way some people drive: entirely from feel, with no regard for written instructions, occasionally terrifying, but somehow always arriving at the destination intact. Zucchini Fritters was her signature. Not in the way people sometimes use that word, not just "a dish she made," but truly, fundamentally, the thing that most people who knew her thought of when they thought of her cooking. At every birthday, every holiday, every Sunday dinner that mattered, there it was. The smell of it walking into her house was so synonymous with safety and comfort that I once, at the age of thirteen, started crying at a restaurant when I smelled something similar coming from the kitchen, because for a moment my brain genuinely thought she was there. She was not there. It was a chain restaurant in a strip mall. I tipped very well and did not explain.

In 2007, I went to a small fishing village on the coast of Portugal with what I can only describe as an extremely optimistic attitude and a carry-on bag that was slightly too large for the overhead bin. I was seven years old and under the impression that traveling alone would be romantic and character-building. It was sometimes those things. It was also frequently confusing, occasionally frightening, and once involved a misunderstanding about bus schedules that I will never fully recover from. But on the third day (or possibly the fourth; I had lost track of time in the pleasant way that happens when you have no meetings and no reason to know what day it is) I found myself sitting in front of Corn and Black Bean Salsa for the first time. I had not ordered it on purpose. I had pointed at a menu without fully understanding what I was pointing at, which is a strategy I recommend with reservations. The dish that arrived was not what I expected. I didn't know what I expected. Whatever it was, this was better.

Some people have a dish that makes them feel like a child again. Not in the bad way, not in the way that means helpless or small, but in the good way: safe, held, temporarily released from the ordinary terror of being an adult with responsibilities and a body that is slowly betraying you in new and creative ways. For me, that dish is Mango Avocado Salad. I didn't know this for a long time. You rarely know these things until you encounter the dish unexpectedly, in a context where you weren't braced for it, and then it hits you all at once: the memory, the feeling, the particular texture of a moment from years ago. This happened to me at a dinner party in 1987, when I was sixteen, when the host brought out a dish I hadn't seen since I was a child and I had to excuse myself for a moment because my eyes were doing something embarrassing. The host was very gracious about it. She said nothing. She refilled my glass. She is a good person.

I've been trying to write this recipe down for eleven years. Not continuously; I have not spent eleven years exclusively on this task. But it has been a recurring project, something I pick up and put down and pick up again, like a book I keep meaning to finish. The problem is that Warm Lentil Salad with Walnuts doesn't behave the way a recipe is supposed to behave. It doesn't have quantities. It has intuitions. I watched my friend Rodrigo make it in 2003, in a kitchen that was warmer than any kitchen should legally be, with no measuring cups in sight, explaining each step in a tone that suggested the steps were obvious to anyone who had thought about it for more than thirty seconds. I was taking notes in a small notebook. The notes, which I still have somewhere, say things like "some of the thing" and "until it looks right" and, memorably, "you'll know." Reader, I did not know. I still don't know. But I can tell you exactly what it tasted like, down to the temperature and the way it felt on the back of my throat, and maybe that's what I've actually been trying to document all along.

I need to tell you about the summer of 2003, not because it was the best summer of my life (it wasn't; it was actually quite difficult in ways I won't get into here) but because it was the summer I ate Cauliflower Buffalo Wings for the first time, and that matters more than I would have predicted. I was eleven, staying with my friend Rodrigo for three weeks while my family dealt with some logistics that didn't involve me. Friend Rodrigo lived in an apartment with a kitchen the size of a generous closet, and a landlord who had specifically prohibited cooking smells in the lease, a clause that my friend Rodrigo violated every single day with absolutely no remorse. It was there, in that kitchen that smelled like garlic and old wood and the particular mustiness of a building that had been standing since before anyone currently living in it was born, that I had my first encounter with this dish. I didn't even know what it was. I sat down, a plate appeared in front of me, I took a bite, and something shifted. Not dramatically. Not with trumpets. More like a very quiet click, the way a door opens when you finally find the right key.

My aunt never wrote anything down. I want to be clear about this upfront, because it is the central tragedy of this entire essay and I think you deserve to know that before we get emotionally invested. Aunt Marlene cooked the way some people drive: entirely from feel, with no regard for written instructions, occasionally terrifying, but somehow always arriving at the destination intact. Mushroom Tacos was her signature. Not in the way people sometimes use that word, not just "a dish she made," but truly, fundamentally, the thing that most people who knew her thought of when they thought of her cooking. At every birthday, every holiday, every Sunday dinner that mattered, there it was. The smell of it walking into her house was so synonymous with safety and comfort that I once, at the age of twenty-two, started crying at a restaurant when I smelled something similar coming from the kitchen, because for a moment my brain genuinely thought she was there. She was not there. It was a chain restaurant in a strip mall. I tipped very well and did not explain.

Late fall in 2005 was the kind of fall that gets remembered. Not because anything particularly historic happened (nothing did, or at least nothing I was involved in) but because the light was a specific quality and the air had a particular smell and I was twenty-two years old, which is an age when everything gets encoded more vividly than it will ever be again. I remember that late fall with the kind of detail that I can no longer apply to things that happened last Tuesday. I remember the temperature of the air. I remember what songs were playing on the radio. And I remember, with absolute crystalline precision, the first time I tasted Sweet Potato Black Bean Burrito, at a table in Great-Aunt Vera's house, with the specific afternoon light coming through the window at an angle that made everything look slightly cinematic. Memory is strange. It keeps the things you don't expect it to keep and loses the things you most needed to hold onto. It kept this.

In 1999, I went to a roadside diner in rural Tennessee that I only found because my GPS gave up with what I can only describe as an extremely optimistic attitude and a carry-on bag that was slightly too large for the overhead bin. I was nine years old and under the impression that traveling alone would be romantic and character-building. It was sometimes those things. It was also frequently confusing, occasionally frightening, and once involved a misunderstanding about bus schedules that I will never fully recover from. But on the third day (or possibly the fourth; I had lost track of time in the pleasant way that happens when you have no meetings and no reason to know what day it is) I found myself sitting in front of Tempeh Stir Fry for the first time. I had not ordered it on purpose. I had pointed at a menu without fully understanding what I was pointing at, which is a strategy I recommend with reservations. The dish that arrived was not what I expected. I didn't know what I expected. Whatever it was, this was better.

Late fall in 2005 was the kind of fall that gets remembered. Not because anything particularly historic happened (nothing did, or at least nothing I was involved in) but because the light was a specific quality and the air had a particular smell and I was fifteen years old, which is an age when everything gets encoded more vividly than it will ever be again. I remember that late fall with the kind of detail that I can no longer apply to things that happened last Tuesday. I remember the temperature of the air. I remember what songs were playing on the radio. And I remember, with absolute crystalline precision, the first time I tasted Seitan Shawarma, at a table in Grandma Rose's house, with the specific afternoon light coming through the window at an angle that made everything look slightly cinematic. Memory is strange. It keeps the things you don't expect it to keep and loses the things you most needed to hold onto. It kept this.

Some people have a dish that makes them feel like a child again. Not in the bad way, not in the way that means helpless or small, but in the good way: safe, held, temporarily released from the ordinary terror of being an adult with responsibilities and a body that is slowly betraying you in new and creative ways. For me, that dish is Bibimbap (Vegan). I didn't know this for a long time. You rarely know these things until you encounter the dish unexpectedly, in a context where you weren't braced for it, and then it hits you all at once: the memory, the feeling, the particular texture of a moment from years ago. This happened to me at a dinner party in 2007, when I was thirteen, when the host brought out a dish I hadn't seen since I was a child and I had to excuse myself for a moment because my eyes were doing something embarrassing. The host was very gracious about it. She said nothing. She refilled my glass. She is a good person.

I need to tell you about the summer of 2011, not because it was the best summer of my life (it wasn't; it was actually quite difficult in ways I won't get into here) but because it was the summer I ate Thai Green Curry (Vegan) for the first time, and that matters more than I would have predicted. I was nine, staying with my coworker Priya for three weeks while my family dealt with some logistics that didn't involve me. Coworker Priya lived in an apartment with a kitchen the size of a generous closet, and a landlord who had specifically prohibited cooking smells in the lease, a clause that my coworker Priya violated every single day with absolutely no remorse. It was there, in that kitchen that smelled like garlic and old wood and the particular mustiness of a building that had been standing since before anyone currently living in it was born, that I had my first encounter with this dish. I didn't even know what it was. I sat down, a plate appeared in front of me, I took a bite, and something shifted. Not dramatically. Not with trumpets. More like a very quiet click, the way a door opens when you finally find the right key.

The thing about Tofu Katsu Curry is that it shouldn't work as well as it does. I've thought about this a lot, probably too much if I'm being honest, which I am being, because this is a food blog and honesty about food is the only kind that matters. The first time I encountered it, I was genuinely skeptical. I was thirteen, at Grandma Rose's house for the hottest August on record in 2001, and I was the kind of thirteen-year-old who had very strong opinions about what I would and wouldn't eat, most of which were wrong. I sat down at the table with the specific energy of someone who has already decided they won't like something, which is the worst possible way to sit down at any table, and especially at Grandma Rose's table, where the food was always trying to teach you something about being wrong. I looked at the plate. I looked at Grandma Rose. She looked back at me with an expression that said, very clearly, that she had made this dish for forty years and was not concerned about the opinions of someone who had existed for thirteen of them.