This recipe is a real blast from the past for us. A standby from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (the original recipe is called Szechwan Tofu Triangles in Triple Pepper Sauce), Jon used to cook this for me when we were going out in college. We stopped making it for a long time, then suddenly felt the urge to try it again. It may not be very authentic, but it’s really pretty tasty. The “triple pepper” refers to the inclusion of bell pepper, hot red pepper, and black pepper, although in our latest version we added a fourth – Sichuan pepper. It adds that peculiar mouth-numbing quality that some of us go for in our stir-fries.

Any sort of sweet pepper will do here, but if you have a mix of colors it makes it particularly pretty.

We always use silken tofu these days – we both prefer the texture, and it’s easy to keep a supply on the shelf without worrying it’s going to go nasty. I find it’s easy to get a good crisp surface on tofu with relatively little oil, as long as you cut the pieces fairly thin and use a wide nonstick pan. The damp tofu spatters like all get-out in the hot oil, though, so a spatter screen is helpful. You’ll probably need to clean the stove afterwards in any case.

Triple-Pepper Tofu

Adapted from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen

• 1 or 2 cakes silken tofu
• peanut oil
• 2 bell peppers, any color – red and yellow are nice
• 4 scallions
• 1/3 cup dry sherry
• tamari
• 1 ½ cups water
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 ½ tsp dry mustard
• ½ tsp crushed dried red pepper
• ¼ tsp ground black pepper
• Sichuan pepper to taste (maybe 1/2 tsp?)
• 2 Tbsp cornstarch

Put some rice on, you’ll want it done by the time you’re stir-frying. We like brown rice with this.

Cut the tofu into medium triangles or squares. Coat the bottom of a large nonstick pan with peanut oil and put over high heat. When it’s very hot, add the pieces of tofu in a single layer (if they don’t fit, use another pan or do it in batches). Leave them until they turn golden and crisp, then turn and cook the other side. Drain on paper towels and set aside.

Cut the peppers into strips and chop the scallions finely.

Pour the sherry into a measuring cup and top it up with tamari until it reaches the 1/2 cup mark. Combine this mixture with the water, garlic, mustard and various dry peppers. Measure the cornstarch into a separate bowl and whisk the liquid into it.

Heat a spoonful of oil in a wok. Add the peppers and scallions and cook 3-4 minutes, then pour in the sauce and cook 5-8 more minutes until it thickens. Gently stir in the tofu and serve over rice.

Here’s a lovely sauce to make you feel like it’s summer again, even though it may be more than a little snowy outside. Oven-roasted tomatoes and peppers, pureed with chipotles and spices, then simmered with onion until thick, make for a spicy rich sauce redolent of the flavors of late summer. Using the sauce to braise country-style pork ribs makes for some fabulous winter tacos.

We’ve just started to get into the half pig we bought recently. The chops we started with were fantastic, pan-seared and coated with a cider reduction. More recently I tried braising some blade steaks in a sauce of vinegar, mustard and beer, which was eye-rollingly good but one of the ugliest plates I’ve ever produced (the braised green cabbage on the side didn’t help matters). These ribs came somewhere in between, and while I didn’t get any pictures of the shredded pork tacos, trust me that they were extremely successful as well. However, don’t feel that you need to use this sauce with pork – it would be great used for enchiladas, or on eggs, or stirred into a pot of beans, or anywhere that could use a shot of spicy tomato goodness.

Roasted tomato-pepper sauce with chipotles

from (guess where?) All About Braising by Molly Stevens

• 3/4 lb tomatoes
• 1 red bell pepper
• 3 cloves garlic (we left this out of this batch, due to a friend’s allergy)
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 1/2 Tbsp cider vinegar
• 2 or 3 chipotles in adobo
• salt
• 1 tsp sugar (optional)
• 1 onion, diced

Turn on the broiler and set a rack about four inches below the heat. Place the tomatoes, pepper and garlic on a baking sheet and position under the flame. Broil, turning occasionally (and removing any vegetables that seem done) until everything is bubbly and slightly charred on all sides. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Core the tomatoes and peel off the skin, peel the garlic, and peel and seed the bell pepper. Drop them in a food processor.  Add the dried spices, vinegar, chipotles (with some of their sauce), and some salt, and process to a coarse puree. Taste, add salt and/or sugar as needed.

Fry the onion in olive oil until soft, then pour in the puree and simmer for about ten minutes. Use it for anything you like.

If braising pork in the sauce: take 2 or 3 pounds of  country-style ribs, season them with salt and pepper and sear them in batches in a skillet. When browned all over, lay them in a gratin dish and pour the sauce all over. Cover tightly with foil and put in the oven for an hour or so at 300°. Take off the foil and roast another 30 minutes at 350°. Serve as is, or take the meat out of the sauce to cool and shred it by hand, then combine it with the sauce again.

For the last six months or so there has been a recipe (a clipping from Bon Appetit or some such publication) stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. I guess I somehow thought that if it was out in plain sight I would actually make it – sort of a triumph of optimism over experience. Turns out that staring at something every day doesn’t necessarily inspire you to do something about it…

I did make it, finally, for a middle-eastern themed dinner party we gave recently. Sort of a miracle, really. The recipe was for muhammara, a Syrian puree of roasted red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses, and it seemed so completely up my alley that I can’t believe how long I waited to try it. I’m usually such a sucker for anything with pomegranate molasses. As it turned out, though, I decided not to use the clipping, which called for jarred peppers and panko crumbs. I went with a recipe from Cooking with Amy instead, just tweaking it slightly. Like many dips, this is a very forgiving recipe, so you could adjust it however you wanted.

By the way, this is how I usually roast peppers. I know you get a better flavor by holding them over an open flame and blistering them black, but it’s simpler and more hands-off to cut them in half and put them in a hot oven until the skin blisters. It loses a little of the juice, but you get a more even application of heat. Then it’s easy to rub the skin off.

The only real issue I had making the muhammara was that I was rapidly running out of olive oil (we were using it in everything), so I went a little sparing on it, leading to a dip a bit thicker in texture than I would have liked. Also, I used two red peppers and one orange, which looked beautiful at the market but produced a slightly drab-colored blend – all red is definitely the way to go.

For our dinner party I put this dip out with a bowl of blue corn chips, some toasted pita wedges and a bowl of semolina crackers from the Breadfarm. The slightly sweet, crispy crackers were the winner with the muhammara. Thin baguette slices would also be lovely, I think.

I also found a great-sounding idea in Greg Malouf’s book on Lebanese and Syrian cooking, Saha - it calls for stirring together muhammara and labneh (yogurt cheese). I’ll have to make myself a note to try that sometime, I might get around to it in the next year…

Muhammara

• 3 red bell peppers
• 1 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 Tbsp pomegranate molasses
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp cumin
• hefty pinch red chile flakes, or a fresh hot red chile, chopped
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup olive oil

Roast the peppers and peel them, saving the juices. Lightly toast the walnuts in a skillet and let them cool.

Combine everything but the oil in a food processor. Once it’s blended to a paste, keep the motor running and add the oil in a thin stream. Scrape into a bowl and serve.