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I might be a full-fledged grown up (I am finally done with school once and for all, I’m married, I have a mortgage, and this list goes on), but there’s something about the first few days of October—with their cool, crisp air and earthy aroma—that has me channeling my inner trick-or-treater.  Or, to be more accurate, my inner jack-o-latern artiste.  Carving pumpkins—-carefully selecting my gourd of choice at the pumpkin patch; rolling up my sleeves, reaching inside the deep pumpkin and scooping out the stringly middle; crafting a snaggle-toothed, triangle-eyed face on the slick orange skin; lighting a votive candle nestled inside the hollowed-out pumpkin, which promptly casts a flickery glow and warms the pumpkin’s flesh, emitting a scent that only exists in October—has always been my favorite part about Halloween.

As a kid, this autumnal ritual generally unfolded sometime during the week before the 31st, when our house was abuzz with other Halloween preparations: assembling costumes (often embarassing and always homemade); filling a behemoth, marigold-colored Tupperware with miniature candies; baking sugar cookies shaped like pumpkins, bats and witches’ hats.  Back then, the knife work—always performed with the biggest wooden-handled knife in our Chicago Cutlery knife block—was a strictly parental duty.  My sister and I stuck to scooping out the pumpkin seeds and outlining the faces with a thick black magic marker.

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Lately, I’ve taken up the cause of the humble beet. For many people, beets are right up there with head cheese, blood sausage and other culinary unmentionables. Not so long ago, I was among these people. But then—oh, then—I saw the light. All it took was giving the beet a wee little chance and I fell in love. I’ve joined the flock of those who know that beets are earthy and dense and sweet, not to mention beautiful.

So, I’ve been trying to spread the news: the beet is your friend. Call it beet evangelism. My strategy has been multi-pronged. First, there’s some damage control. I assure my target that fresh beets, cooked gently in a shallow pool of water, bear no resemblance to the jiggly canned rounds we all know from salad bars gone by. When this doesn’t work, I appeal to aesthetics: beets come in a spectrum of deep jewel tones and their centers are ringed like the inside of an old oak tree. When I’ve struck out on these two fronts, I pull out my secret weapon: cheese. Preferably feta, but goat will do in a pinch.

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I had altogether too much fun making this meal. Maybe it’s because my brain is fried from too much studying. Or perhaps my threshold for finding comedy is extremely low, after listening to legal lectures for hour after droning hour. Whatever it was, these grilled chickens were a real riot.

First, the whole project was like a Jeff Foxworthy bit, only backwards. As in: You know you’re not a red neck when you insist that your beer can chicken is organic. You know you’re not a red neck when you grill your beer can chicken on your gas Weber, which resides on your condo’s roof top deck, which affords a Chicago skyline vista. And you really, really know you’re a not a red neck when your beer can chicken requires trips to several stores because the first couple you tried don’t even sell beer in cans. So, right, I’m not a red neck, then.

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Dear reader, I’ve been keeping something from you. Do you remember the chocolate cookies I posted about earlier this week? The ones that were studded with chocolate chunks, perfect in texture and the cause of quite a breathless rhapsody by me? Well, the cookies were only the beginning.

What I neglected to tell you was that I divided the cookies into pairs and sandwiched them together with a thick smear of coffee ice cream. I can only hope you’ll forgive me for this secret-keeping. But I think it was worth two separate posts. The cookies themselves were near perfect, so let me just say that the slick of ice cream elevated them even further. They were deliriously good.

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Did you miss me? Sorry for my brief absence (I told you I couldn’t keep that pace up), but between an ethics exam in the morning yesterday and a dinner party last night, yesterday was a leetle busy. But, the ethics exam is over (!) and the dinner party was a smashing success. So, it’s back to the blog.

One of the things we made for last night’s dinner was a brisket I’ve already blogged about. More on other aspects of the dinner later this week. But, for now, I can’t resist sharing photos of what could possibly be the best leftovers ever: a brisket sandwich.

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I’m afraid I’ve been putting the cart before the proverbial horse. I’ve been going on and on about the peripheral elements of our Friday night fiesta: the drinks, the side dish and the dessert. Okay, I’m not sure that the margaritas and key lime bars qualify as peripheral, but still. All this time, the elephant in the room (while we’re using figures of speech) is the enchiladas that anchored our fiesta feast.

You can add these to the growing list of recipes on this site that involve a too-fun-for-words assembly line (see: pot stickers, lasagna, calzones …). The elements of the assembly line in this case of enchiladas are (1) a sauce (here, I used a roasted tomatillo sauce, spiked with peppers, onions, garlic and spices); (2) tortillas (I opted for corn, over flour); (3) a filling (the tomatillo sauce appeared here, too, but a thickened version of it that enveloped shredded chicken and spinach); and (4) cheese (crumbled queso fresco, here, but I’m sure that shredded Monterey Jack or white cheddar would have been delicious as well). Once you’ve got the assembly line, er, assembled, the rest is a breeze.

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Friday night’s dinner taught me something (something other than (a) strongly reconsider your desire to make your own pasta, because it just doesn’t seem meant to be and (b) never, ever use that same pasta maker insert because that ugly spaghetti is haunting my dreams). Okay, sorry about that—back to the silver lining. Friday night’s dinner taught me that a dessert can save the day.

I’m sure this is something that many cooks already know, but—since I’m not a huge dessert fan—it’s somewhat of a revelation to me. And one that I plan to keep firmly tucked in my back pocket for all future pasta excursions or any other try-something-new meal that could end in less than ideal results.

This dessert—a pear crisp—did just that: saved dinner. And not only that, but it has a few other things going for it as well. First, it’s extremely simple and can be made ahead (which is quite helpful when you are otherwise occupied with complicated kitchen contraptions and one, two, oh yes, three different sauces). Second, I baked the crisp in individual servings (which were a touch too large, but who’s counting?). Everyone loves an individual dessert and it works especially well for a crisp—everyone gets plenty of the nutty, buttery topping (and an entire bowl’s worth of the crispy browned topping along the edge) and your cold topping of choice (we went with ice cream, but whipped cream, mascarpone, creme fraiche, etc would all work well too) melts right into the crisp, rather than running all over your plate.

I used my standard crisp method for this recipe—toss the cut fruit in a bit of flour (use more flour for juicier fruit, less for drier fruit), sugar, lemon juice and zest, and spices (I used the very standard cinnamon and nutmeg here, but the options are endless; if I’d had cardamom on hand, I would have paired that with the, um, pears). And for the topping, mix oats, chopped nuts (I used walnuts here, but I’m of the opinion that any nut will do), brown sugar and spices together and cut in chilled butter until the mixture forms little honey-bunches-of-oats-esque clusters.

And though I’ve already mentioned a number of variations—toppings, spices and nuts—there are plenty more. Feel free to spike the filling with liqueur or vanilla, for instance. And go wild with your fruit choices. This was my first pear crisp and it was a delicious winter choice. But, while it doesn’t seem like it now (for me, at least), winter will eventually end. At least I hope so. And spring, fall (to me, the official crisp season) and summer will all bring new crisp-worthy fruits—ripe for dinner saving.

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If you’re like me, you will soon be heading out of town: through the woods, to grandmother’s house you’ll go. We are headed to my parents’ house in Minnesota for Christmas on Friday. If I had it my way, I’d be spending every last moment in the kitchen before I left baking holiday treats. Not only would I bake a plethora of new selections and old favorites, but I’d package them up and send them across the country to friends and family who I won’t see over the holiday.

But since I clearly do not have time for such an endeavor—not with a First Amendment exam later today and my last exam on Friday, my time in the kitchen has been spent focusing on a far less festive and decidedly less glamorous task: emptying out the fridge.

While I’d love to share with you photos of a lovely array of cookies and candies, bars and biscotti, it’s just not happening. There’s always next year. And I can rest assured that my mom will have freshly-baked spritz cookies, my grandparents will arrive bearing addictive peanut brittle, caramel corn and “party mix” (the Chex Mix people should really call my grandma and grandpa for their recipe) and my step-father will have visited his favorite Scandinavian shops for the most delicately gorgeous krumkake.

Instead, I will have to share with you a dinner that will have you leaving for the holidays guilt-free: empty-out-your-fridge panini. I originally anticipated that this dinner, which we enjoyed last night, would involve homemade bread—ciabatta to be exact. But when I didn’t get around to looking at recipes until midday yesterday (Oh, the starter for ciabatta has to be made 24 hours in advance? Oh, some recipes call for special tiles to line your oven?), I had to abort that plan. Good thing we live near some excellent bakeries.

So, we took our fresh-from-someone else’s oven bread, slathered it with pesto and piled it high with mozzarella slices and Italian cold cuts (both left-over from a recent antipasto platter) on one half, and with roasted vegetables (cleaned out practically an entire drawer of the fridge!) on the other. A turn in the panini press later, we had ooey-gooey deliciousness. And the panini were almost as satisfying as an nearly-empty fridge.

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I’m in the middle of law school final exams.  My second-to-last set of final exams (I graduate in the spring) ever.  With a final on Thursday night and Friday morning of last week, our kitchen didn’t see a whole lot of action.  Add in a holiday party here and a night of running errands there, and the kitchen was downright neglected this week.

So, when my final was over yesterday morning, I did the only natural thing.  No, I did not head straight to a bar, to bed or back to the books, like most law students would do.  Rather, I headed into the neglected kitchen.  I was greeted by some pretty meager refrigerator contents and an intense urge to create something.  The leftover chicken carcass from our Hanukkah dinner and some veggies that were just this side of being tossed in the garbage spoke to me: chicken stock.

It was the perfect way to ease out of an intense week of studying and into the weekend (which, of course will contain more studying, but still — it’s the weekend).   I’ve skimmed enough recipes in the past to get the gist of making chicken stock—throw veggies (usually carrots and onions, but leeks, celery or parsnips can’t hurt), herbs (thyme, bay leaves, etc) and some seasoning (I always roll my eyes at the recipes that call for “20 black peppercorns”) into a gigantic pot with a chicken carcass or parts.  Fill the pot with enough water to cover the contents and set it a-simmering for four hours.  In less than a half an hour, I had put the kitchen back to use and had the house smelling savory and delicious.  Then, it was back to the books.

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