Category Archives: Gluten-free

Iron Chef

Posted on by
Reply

Some years ago, my friend A. suggested I host an Iron Chef party.  We were taking suggestions for themes, and among others she offered this one.  I was intrigued.  How would it work?  Who would choose the ingredients?  Who, most importantly, would win?  I must admit to harboring some jealous desire to be the victor, should such an event take place.  I like to cook, and I like to feed people, and I’m a bit of a hostess-who-wants-to-be-the-mostest, so it seemed like a competition in which I would not only excel, but feel extreme competition.

Then school happened and I put it aside for a while.  Long enough, in fact, that A. moved away and years passed.  It was not until last Saturday that this long awaited, long anticipated event actually took place.  Through a public poll, secret ingredients were chosen.  They were revealed in the invitations: the Iron Chef Potluck 2011 would feature potatoes and Parmesan cheese.

Fortunately for me, in need not only of potato and cheese inspiration but also multiple dishes (gotta make sure everyone’s fed and happy!), I had Bittman.  I chose two intriguing potato-based party dishes.

“48. Cut sweet potatoes into wedges; boil until tender.  Drain and toss with olive oil.  Wrap each with a prosciutto slice and a sage leaf, then roast until browned.”

This sounded outrageous.  Outrageous easy, outrageous good.  I used:

2 large sweet potatoes, halved lengthwise and sliced into wedges

2 packages of prosciutto (basically you just need a piece for each potato wedge, so it depends how many wedges you have)

1 package of sage leaves (same thing here)

Olive oil spray

Additional directions are not really needed here – Bittman’s original text tells you exactly what to do.  I boiled the sweet potatoes for 10 minutes or so until they were tender but not falling apart.  When they were completely cool I sprayed them and the baking pan with olive oil spray, pressed a sage leaf against the flesh of the sweet potato wedge, and wrapped it up with prosciutto.

I preheated the oven to 400F and roasted these little packets for almost half an hour.  At this point, the prosciutto was getting crispy and, truth be told, I needed the oven for other items.  The sweet potato spears never got browned, and I suspect the oven temperature was too low.  When you bake French fries the oven has to be up really high, so the next time I make these I will set the temperature at least to 450F.  I suspect only then will the kind of caramelization Bittman hints at take place on the sweet potato.

Regardless of browning, these were good.  The sage packs a punchy flavor, so if you’re not a fan of that sharp autumnal herbiness, skip it or use something less pungent.  The prosciutto-potato pairing was genius.  Salty and crispy paired with mild tender sweetness, all in a two-bite package.  Perfect party food.  I could have stood leaning over the counter with a bowl of these beside me for the whole afternoon.

But no.  The time of the party was approaching.  I had to move on with only a sampling.

“Autumn Rolls: Shred sweet potatoes or carrots and Brussels sprouts or cabbage.  Roll them up with fresh sage or mint and some sprouts in rice paper.  (Add sliced shrimp if you like.)  Make a dipping sauce of soy, garlic, grated or minced ginger and honey.”

I had never thought about serving sweet potatoes raw (though Bittman does suggest this in multiple dishes), but I was drawn to it because it seemed in keeping with the Iron Chef project: in a challenge like this, using the ingredient in every one of its forms seems logical.  If you can boil it, roast it, mash it, bake it, why not shred it up and use it still crunchy?

Regardless, I decided some extra preparation was necessary.  I used the following:

½ large sweet potato, shredded and soaked in cold water for ten minutes to remove starchiness.

½ small head of cabbage, very finely sliced

30-40 mint leaves

1 cup sprouts (I used clover)

Rice paper wrappers

½ cup soy sauce (I used gluten-free)

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

½ inch knob of fresh ginger, grated

2 TB honey or to taste

After soaking the sweet potato in a cold water bath and changing the water once to drain away as much starchiness as possible, I decided the shreds seemed pleasantly crisp without leaving a “raw potato” residue on my tongue.  I tossed them together with the cabbage and about a tablespoon of soy sauce.  I put this with the rest of the ingredients (through rice paper) in an assembly line and executed my rolls.

These are not difficult, once you get the hang of them, but they are time consuming.  It takes me at least half an hour to roll up a batch of these, and I’ve made them many, many times.

Soak a wrapper in warm water until it is very pliable.  This takes 45 seconds or so.  When it is the consistency of wet tissue, spread it on a paper towel or kitchen towel and then flip over and spread again.  This gets excess water off so you don’t have a soggy roll.  At this point I usually put the next one into the water so it’s ready by the time I’m done rolling.   Since I took pictures of almost every step, let’s do this Pioneer Woman style.

Place a few mint leaves all over the wrapper.

Add a tablespoon or two of the sweet potato and cabbage mixture.

Add the sprouts.

Fold in the sides until they overlap across the toppings.

Now fold over the side closest to you and then roll the whole thing into a tiny burrito.

Line them all up like little soldiers and you’re ready to go!  I usually slice them in half on an angle.  I do this for two reasons: 1.) it looks really pretty, and 2.) they aren’t huge and overwhelming looking as finger food.  It’s also nice because it allows your guests to get a peek at what’s inside. 

While I was rolling, I put the sauce ingredients in a very small saucepan and turned the heat on low.  With minimal stirring to be sure the honey wasn’t burning on the bottom, I had a slightly thickened dipping sauce in 10 or 15 minutes.

These were delightfully fresh.  The cabbage and sweet potato gave nice crunch, the sprouts were an interesting, almost tickly feel against your tongue, and the sauce was ridiculously tasty.  Again, with the salty-sweet theme I unconsciously adopted, the honey and the soy sauce played excellently against each other, and it got just thick enough, and with just enough bite from the aromatics I added, that it complemented the fresh rawness of the rolls very well.

Both these offerings were delicious, and despite the competitive gnawing I sometimes feel inside, neither of them took the ultimate prize.  We allowed everyone up to three votes: one for best representative of potatoes, one for best representative of Parmesan cheese, and one for best incorporation of both.  The ultimate honor went to the cheese.

Take a gander:

This is a parmesan crisp topped with a slice of salami, a slice of quince paste, and a twist of caramelized onion.  Talk about salty-sweet!  When I asked the winner for permission to post his dish, he agreed and, delightfully, offered the following specifics:

Parmesan Crisps can be found at: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2007/05/09/lacy-parmesan-wafers/
I used only 1 Tsp of cheese because I wanted a smaller diameter crisp. 
topped with smoked salami (1/8in thick slice)
slice of quince paste (1/8in thick)
sauteed onions (~1/2tsp) (one sweet onion, olive oil, pinch of sea salt, 1 tsp sugar, 2 tsp butter) .
serve at room temperature.

Congrats, Iron Chef 2011!

Kale and coconut

Posted on by
2

Kale is a recent love for me, at least relatively speaking.  I had seen the curly leaves used as edging – a kind of metaphorical hedge between dishes in fancy hotel breakfast buffets or salad bars; a hefty big brother to curls of parsley left quasi-artistically on the side of a plate – but I had never eaten it.  Sometimes it didn’t even look edible, but more like a plastic plant trapped somewhere in the realm of land kelp.

Last year I began experimenting with kale, mostly thanks to bloggers like Shauna at Gluten-Free Girl and Elana at Elana’s Pantry.  N. and I have chomped our way through kale in lasagna, pesto, braised with soy sauce and mushrooms, and of course coated in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and paprika and roasted into chips.  Its robust, almost waxen toughness seemed to require aggressive cooking techniques.  I never believed the recipes I read suggesting raw consumption could be tasty.  And yet Bittman advocated for this as well!

“74. Trim and chop kale; salt and squeeze and knead until wilted and reduced in volume, about 5 minutes.  Rinse, dry and toss with olive oil, lemon juice, chopped dried apples and toasted pine nuts.”

With my yen for freshness and greenery escalating, I decided it was worth a try.  The cast of characters consisted of:

1 large bunch Italian or lacinato kale

1 tsp. salt, plus more to taste, if desired

2 TB olive oil, or to coat

Juice of half a lemon

½ chopped dried apples

¼ cup toasted pine nuts

Doubtful, I tore the beautiful emerald lobed leaves from the tough central stalks, then roughly chopped the huge pile of leafy scraps into smaller pieces.  I sprinkled salt over my heap of salad and began to knead.  To my utter amazement, in under a minute the leaves had started to change in texture and consistency.  They became more like spinach, then more like cooked greens, and I decided to knead only for two or three minutes, fearing from the drastic reduction in volume already that I would end up with less than two servings.  When I stopped kneading, I flopped the wilted clumps into a salad spinner to rinse, de-salt, and spin dry.

I tossed the kale with olive oil and lemon juice in a large salad bowl, then added the pine nuts and apples.  A quick taste led me to add a miniscule sprinkle of salt, and then it was ready to serve!

We enjoyed the salad with chicken apple sausages – I wanted to capture the special flavor of the apples and highlight their sweetness against the tart lemon and bitter kale.  It was a very successful salad, and would be particularly good at the height of summer when you cannot bear to encounter the heat cooking requires.  Just pre-toast the pine nuts on a cooler occasion and this salad flies together.

The contrast of flavors is lovely.  It manages to hit all four of the major taste bud groups: the kale is bitter, the hint of salt gives it nice salinity, the apples are sweet, and the lemon is tartly sour.  Similarly, it satisfies a variety of textures: the kale is tender but still has some body for your tongue to play with, while the apples are chewy and the pine nuts provide a satisfying crunch.

Using kale as a salad base provides so many possibilities.  I already know I’d like to try toasting the apple rings to try and achieve a more chip-like texture and add extra crispness: apple croutons, if you will.  A more savory salad might entail replacing the apples with a good grating of sharp cheddar or Parmesan cheese.  Hard boiled eggs, walnuts, and maybe a scattering of bacon would make a more substantial salad.  The options are endless.

But the title of this post isn’t about endless kale.  It also mentions coconut, so I’d better move along.

With half a bag of sweetened, flaked coconut in my pantry and a small bevy of beauties descending on my house for a ladies’ TV night, I decided to over-achieve this week and make another Bittman selection to share with my friends.

“100. Spiced Macaroons: Mix 3 cups shredded unsweetened coconut, 1 cup sugar, ½ teaspoon ground cardamom and a pinch of salt in a bowl.  Stir in 3 lightly beaten egg whites and a teaspoon almond extract.  Drop in small spoonfuls on baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until golden on the edges.”

I must admit from the outset that my process was a considerable adaptation, spurred by a shortage or downright lack of both ingredients and time to obtain more.  I used the following:

2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

¼ tsp garam masala

Pinch of salt

2 lightly beaten egg whites

1 tsp amaretto liqueur

From there, I followed Bittman’s directions exactly.  At the point the house began to smell like a vacation, I pulled the cookies from the oven and, unable to resist, stuffed one that collapsed from its fragile form into my mouth.  Oh heaven.  It was incredible.  The coconut was still chewy, and I’m pretty good with words, but the mixture of spice and salt did something I can’t describe.  Cooks are always saying salt enhances the other flavors of the dish, and that’s what happened here.  The coconut and egg whites suggested lightness and airy tropical sweetness, while the garam masala was incense and thick dark spice, but just the barest touch: a perfumed, candle-lit temple down the road from an endless white sand beach.  Fanciful, you say?  What can I tell you… coconut is one of my favorite flavors, and when it is elevated to such heights a certain mystical religiosity is perfectly appropriate.

The cookies were quite tender, and some declined to hold together at all.  This made them easier to eat, in a way, because they were already breaking themselves for us – all but insisting upon their own sacrifice – but the next time I attempt them I want them to hold together better.  I may cook them a little longer, or perhaps beat the egg whites more vigorously.  You wouldn’t want stiff, or even soft, peaks, but perhaps an approach to peaks would help the coconut cling together.  Nevertheless, three girls in the space of an hour decimated a plate of macaroons, leaving behind only three stragglers who were so lonely that I found them a happier home the following afternoon as a reward to myself for accomplishing some much-needed reading.  I must say, the lift from an analysis of 14th century poetic aesthetics into all-but-mystical flavor vacation is about the best an afternoon snack can do. 

Mistakes can still be delicious

Posted on by
3

Though many of Bittman’s 101 Make Ahead Sides seem clearly autumnal, and some downright Thanksgiving-y, some are a bit further afield.  This week we went with one of the latter.

“40. Peel and trim pearl onions and toss them with a mixture of minced ginger, garlic, chilis and peanut oil. (A little sesame oil is good, too.) Roast until nicely caramelized, then drizzle with soy sauce.”

This clearly called for an Asian theme, so I bought tofu and bok choy for an accompanying stir-fry.  As for the sideshow-in-the-spotlight, I went the easy route and assembled:

1 bag frozen whole peeled pearl onions, defrosted

5 cloves garlic, finely minced

2-inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled and finely minced

1 red jalapeno, seeded and diced fine

2 TB olive oil (I didn’t have peanut oil and the olive oil was right there on the counter…)

1 TB sesame oil

2 TB soy sauce

I did as Bittman instructed, with the exception that, skimming the recipe too quickly, I mixed the soy sauce in with the onions and everything rather than waiting until they were done.  This, like hastily dumping the onions into a pie plate while they were still slightly frozen, was a mistake.  This dish needs dryness to work.  Or, rather, it needs its primary moisture to come from fat, like anything you roast, and not from a water-based liquid.  It also, I suspect, needed a cookie sheet rather than a glass pie dish to roast in.  Something about the conductivity of metal plus the extra space a cookie sheet would have afforded would, I suspect, have produced better results.

Not that my results were bad!  I preheated the oven to 400F and slid the onions in for 20 minutes while I made the stirfry of tofu and greens.  I used my favorite tofu recipe, adding the bok choy in when the tofu was about halfway done.  Then I added a few tablespoons each of white wine and soy sauce to give the bok choy something to soften into, and to add a little flavorful sauciness to the dish.

When the 20 minutes I’d allotted the onions were up, I slid them out to find basically zero caramelization.  All the color you can see in this photo is from the soy sauce.  I attribute this to three things: the onions were too wet from a combination of the soy sauce and the not-quite-completed defrosting process, the pan was too crowded, and I wasn’t patient enough to leave them in longer (N. had gone on an epic 12-mile run earlier in the day and could not wait much longer for dinner).  So there was no beautiful toasty browning, but we ate them anyway.

They were mild and sweet with sharp kicks from the aromatics: a faint burn from the garlic, a forward warmth from the ginger, and the barest suggestion of spiciness from the pepper (leave the seeds in for more heat).  They were tasty, but I suspect they needed that caramelization to be really special.  I ended up tossing them in with my tofu and bok choy and eating the whole thing as a single stir-fry, as if they were supposed to be commingled.  They forgave my mistakes, coexisted, and rather than a side-act-acting as a main and a main with side features, they just became dinner. 

Here we come to a turning of the seasons…

Posted on by
Reply

With the slow and probably undependable change in weather, it is becoming harder to budget my time according to the schedule established by winter.  My days, approximately, consisted of: teach class, hold office hours, come home, work on dissertation, feel sorry for myself about the rain, cook, fall into bed.  Blog about said cooking once a week.  Now, I have replaced “feel sorry for myself about the rain” with “feel sorry for myself about allergies and the amount of time I can’t spend outside because a.) it makes my throat close up and b.) there’s that whole dissertation thing that didn’t go away just because there are radish sprouts in my garden.

The cooking-related result of this achingly slow emergence of sun and the degree by degree warming happening outside is that I long for vegetables.  And yet, because I have been spoiled by the last two years of growing fresh vegetables in our backyard, I find myself unsatisfied with the produce currently available to me.  “On-the-vine” tomatoes at the grocery store?  Insipid.  Watery.  All but flavorless.  Cucumbers?  Slightly bitter and lacking that impossible crispness I like so much.  Greens?  Acceptable, but when you cannot cut them leaf by leaf as needed from the still growing plant, they wither and waste so quickly in the refrigerator.

And yet my yen for garden fresh and mentally satisfying interpretation of “healthy” won out when choosing last week’s Bittman, our first foray into the “salads” category:

“75. Wild Rice Greek Salad: Toss cooked wild rice (or mix wild and white) with chopped tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, kalamata olives and crumbled feta.  Dress with olive oil, lemon juice, parsley and mint.” 

This sounded flavorful enough to disguise any less-than-amazing harvest I might find at the grocery store.  I decided to use brown rice instead to up the flavor and fiber content, and collected:

2 cups pre-cooked wild rice (from Trader Joe’s)

1 cup uncooked brown rice

3 medium tomatoes, chopped in large pieces

½ cucumber, halved and sliced

½ cup red onion, slices quartered

½ cup kalamata olives, halved

½ cup crumbed feta cheese

½ cup each roughly chopped Italian parsley and mint

¼ – ½ cup olive oil

Juice of half a lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

I cooked the brown rice in my rice cooker, and when it was done about 40 minutes later I mixed in the wild rice, which had been sitting at room temperature.  I figured they could meld and match each other’s temperatures while I prepped the rest of the ingredients and cooked the salmon I had decided to serve with our salad.

While the brown rice was still warm I tossed it with the olive oil, lemon juice, and a few grinds of salt and black pepper.  One of the most important lessons I have learned about grain-based salads of any kind is to dress it while the base is still warm, so the flavorful liquids can permeate the rice or pasta or quinoa and flavor the comparatively bland grain.

I sliced up my onion and immersed the slices into a bowl of ice water.  This removes some of the astringency from the onion, leaving it mild and very crisp.

While the rice cooled and the onion chilled out, I turned my attention to the fish.  I used:

1 lb. wild salmon, skin on, bones removed

4 tb. butter

½ – 1 cup white wine

2 garlic cloves, finely minced

1 TB lemon zest

Half a lemon, sliced (convenient, no?)

2 TB roughly chopped Italian parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

I set the fish in a baking dish on the counter to begin coming to room temperature so it wouldn’t take so long to cook.  I preheated the oven to 400F and then, in a small saucepan, melted the butter and added the garlic, wine, and lemon zest.  I let this cook together for ten minutes or so at a very low simmer.  Then I salted and peppered the fish, poured the sauce over it, sprinkled on the parsley and placed the lemon slices over the top before stowing the whole beautiful thing in the oven for half an hour.

With moments remaining on the clock, I assembled the rest of the salad: tomatoes, cucumbers, onions (drained and de-iced, thank-you-very-much), olives, cheese, and herbs went into the dressed, seasoned rice and received a relentless toss.  Now nothing remained but to evacuate the oven, pile our plates high, and eat.

Both elements of the dinner were excellent, although I should have cooked the salmon a few minutes less.  It was fleshy and rich, with a tinge of acidity from the wine and the lemon zest, while the butter and wine had kept it moist and delectable.  It could have been flakier, but then, that was my zealous overcooking.

The salad was the freshness I’d been hoping for, though because it contained brown rice it was still nice and filling.  Here again, the lemon added the right tanginess and woke up the rice and vegetables.  Similarly, the sharp saltiness of the olives and feta cheese, mingled almost unexpectedly amidst the mild vegetation, made this salad a glorious thing to continue dipping my fork into.  I served it at room temperature, so the rice was tender and smooth to bite through, lacking that starchy crunch it sometimes has straight out of the refrigerator. 

We ended the meal feeling full but not overstuffed, cravings attended to and abated, and yet… And yet no less anxious for the seasons to truly turn.

Juxtaposition

Posted on by
3

Some food words just don’t go together.  Crunchy and soggy.  Tart and cloying.  Gooey and crisp.  Warm and salad.  And yet, warm and salad are exactly the words to describe this week’s Bittman dish.

“50.  Cook chopped onions in olive oil until soft.  Add chopped spinach and a handful of raisins – maybe a little port, too – and cook until wilted and almost dry.  Roasted pine nuts are good on top.”

I didn’t have any idea what this dish would be like when I set out to make it.  N. wasn’t sure either, and particularly when he saw that I was combining spinach, raisins, and onions he was pretty suspicious.

We had no port in the house; I don’t drink it, and we don’t eat roasts all that often, which eliminates our need for a glazing agent, I didn’t have any in the house.  So I poked around online for a while looking for substitution suggestions and then, unsatisfied with everything I found, made up my own out of balsamic vinegar, red wine, and a little sugar.  Here’s what I used:

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

¼ cup red wine

2 TB sugar

½ cup raisins

1-2 TB olive oil

½ cup red onion, diced

1 lb. baby spinach

¼ cup pine nuts, dry toasted

Salt and pepper to taste

I combined the balsamic vinegar, wine, and sugar in a small saucepan and, after swirling it gently to distribute the sugar, let it come to a simmer on medium and left it alone to reduce for ten minutes or so while I prepped my vegetables.

As I prepared to sweat the onions in my biggest saucepan, I was struck with genius.  Why not add the raisins to the “port” sauce?  I dumped them in and continued to let the liquid just barely simmer, while the raisins plumped up and took on new, more exciting flavors from the vinegar and wine.  Once genius had been attended to, and my other skillet was shimmering with its shallow pool of olive oil, I added the onions and cooked them gently for five or ten minutes until they were soft but not browned.

To my meltingly soft onions, I crammed as much spinach as the pan would hold, then tried to turn it over without dumping too much all over the stove.  In less than a minute, it had wilted enough for me to add the rest of the spinach, the raisins, and their thick, syrupy sauce, now well simmered and nicely reduced.  I tossed the whole thing together with tongs, and we scraped huge helpings onto our plates next to a big mound of (Stouffer’s, but I’m not ashamed) stuffing.

The ingredient list, the tongs, and the sweetness of the sauce made me think of salad.  The raisins and spinach were good, but the “port” sauce was ridiculously delicious.  It was sweet and tangy, with the wine and balsamic vinegar bouncing acidity off the caramel-sweet dissolved sugar.  It had warmth and depth and would have been just as good poured over ice cream as it was over this strange salad.  The pine nuts were a perfect crunch on top and the raisins added some intriguing chewiness.  Finely diced and well fried bacon would also work well here, and make it even more like a warm spinach salad.

In poetry, juxtaposition is intended to draw the audience’s attention to a specific comparison created by placing dissonant words next to each other – an invasion of unfamiliarity that surprises, invites thought, and expands meaning.  Here, it made for a gorgeous early Spring dish that clung to our lips, warmed our bellies, and left us sweetly satisfied.

Capacity

Posted on by
Reply

It’s getting a little busy around here.  Being a PhD student is a strange “profession,” if you can call it that, because the workload hefts itself around in such varied ways.  In the past week I have been a researcher, a teacher, a session organizer (for a conference that doesn’t take place until July 2012!), a not-nearly-ready-even-though-my-flight-leaves-Thursday conference attendee, as well as a housewife, a hostess, an unprofessional baker, a very unprofessional blogger, and a dogmom.  And the craziest thing is, with only two or three exceptions that’s what I am every week.  It tends to produce feelings of insufficiency.

So this past week we picked a stuffing.  It seemed only appropriate, since I have such a full plate in the figurative sense, to match this in the literal world.

“24. Combine a little cooked wild rice with much more cooked quinoa; sauté crumbled sweet Italian sausage with onion and fresh rosemary.  Toss together.  Bake in an oiled dish or use as stuffing.”

Since I never stuff poultry, and the pork chops I would consider stuffing are on N.’s “I don’t eat that” list, I guess what we ate this week was a “dressing,” which is a term I’ve never understood.  Nevertheless, I collected ingredients, once again feeling delight at Trader Joe’s as I found a bag of pure, pre-cooked wild rice, and assembled the following:

1 cup raw quinoa, cooked according to package directions

½ cup wild rice

8 oz. Italian pork sausage

¼ cup red onion, diced

1 TB fresh rosemary, minced

Salt and pepper to taste

While the quinoa cooked, I added the sausage to a skillet with a tiny slick of oil and broke it up with a spatula so it would brown into crumbles.  When the sausage was more than halfway done, I added the onions and then the rosemary so their flavors would mingle and they would benefit from the sausage fat as a caramelizing agent.

When quinoa and sausage (and friends) were done, I stirred the meat mixture and the wild rice into the quinoa, then put it in an ovenproof casserole dish and stowed it in a 350F oven for half an hour.

In the last few minutes of baking time, I prepared our side dish: in the same pan as I had cooked the sausage, I tossed about half a bag of mixed southern greens and a few minced cloves of garlic.  As they began to cook down, I added a generous splash of red wine and a tablespoon or so of soy sauce.  This tenderized the tougher stems and flavored the leaves with tangy, salty assertiveness.

The greens were, as I already knew they would be, delicious.  We are entering the time of year when I start to crave excessive quantities of vegetables (last night I kept returning to the kitchen to snag lukewarm pieces of kale from a saucepan, and tonight’s leftover roasted broccoli didn’t even make it to the refrigerator), so the pile of slightly bitter, slightly saline roughage on my plate was the highlight for me.  The quinoa “stuffing” was also very tasty.  I don’t usually add meat to my stuffings, but here the fattiness of the sausage was a welcome foil to the nutty, healthy-feeling quinoa.  The wild rice and rosemary lent woodsy, piney flavors, making this an ideal stuffing for a wintry dinner.  I do think pork chops would receive this filling well, as would portabella mushrooms.  For us, as the wine sauce from the greens slowly bled its way across the plate into the quinoa, it was a lovely, protein packed dinner. 

But as so frequently seems to happen with these Bittman experiments, the leftovers took me by pleasant surprise.  The next day, I dressed a plate of arugula with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, then topped it with a few scoops of the quinoa mixture and popped it in the microwave for a minute.  The resulting warm salad was stupendous.  The lemon juice added just the right kick of acid, which I hadn’t realized the dish had been lacking.  Salty, crunchy, comforting and peppery all at once, it was a lunch that needed no accompaniment.  And when you are nearing your capacity from trying to be everything at once, realizing you are going to make it and you need no accompaniment is an empowering thing.