Quinoa with Roasted Chanterelles, Apples, and Squash

I have never tried chanterelle mushrooms before, so I thought this pretty quinoa bowl would be a great time to have them.  (Let's please ignore the price tag on these mushrooms - I don't even want to talk about it.)  All the ingredients appealed to me - I don't eat quinoa often enough, and winter squash, apples, and red onions are all super tasty.  Unfortunately, I found this to be just a little bit bland.  I used what I felt was a ton of thyme and just a splash more sherry vinegar than instructed, but it could have used a strong flavor that ties it all together.  If I make (something similar to but less pricey than) this again, I think I'll include some sherry vinegar when roasting the squash and apples.  A squeeze of lemon juice might also elevate the dish a bit.  This has inspired me to try to make up my own quinoa bowls to get more of that protein-packed "grain" into my diet.  If I feel the urge to buy chanterelles again, I want to try the Chanterelle Tacos from Super Natural Every Day.

Lemon Quinoa with Currants, Dill, and Zucchini

When I first heard about the new book Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, I was pretty stoked about it.  I ordered it not too long after I heard about it and as I flipped through, I was really excited to try some of the unique recipes.

Before I had a chance to make anything, Heidi featured this quinoa recipe on her blog, 101 Cookbooks.

A few days later I gave it a shot.  Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed.  I only had a bite.  It was not appealing to me at all beyond that.  I think it was the dill - I don't think I like dill - and the over-lemon flavor.  I had actually had doubts about putting in that much lemon juice, but I talked myself out of it and did it anyway.  Heidi halved the amount of currants, which sounded like a really good idea AFTER I had already made it, and she also added feta, which was kind of a "duh" moment for me... how did I not think of that?  It was on the recipe page as a suggested variation!

I also tried Heidi's suggestion of making quinoa patties with the leftovers.  I only had a bite of these as well.  I burned most of them (yay!) and they were pretty dry and needed some kind of sauce BUT I liked the mix much better in patty form than I did originally.  Unfortunately, I doubt I will be making this again.  If I do attempt it, I will be trying a variation that does not include dill or so much lemon juice.  But I have a feeling that some of the other recipes in the book will make up for this.

Banana Crunch Muffins

Did I intend to make yet another muffin?  I certainly did not.  Yet somehow things always seem to fall into place in such a way that muffin recipes just come out of the woodwork when I happen to have a key ingredient that wants to be used up.  Such is life.  And so, here is a banana muffin recipe, with millet and red quinoa seeds for some crunch.  It makes me think of confetti and happier times.  I'm renaming them Banana Crunch Muffins, since I didn't use the ingredient named in the original recipe (I swapped that sour cream for yogurt).

If you like the Millet Muffins, and bananas, I think you will like this too.

Sweet Dumpling Squash with Orange-Scented Quinoa Stuffing

I have a growing collection of cookbooks, and these have been getting me through this year: helping me use our CSA share, feed myself and sometimes others, and get better at cooking.  When I'm not sure what to do with something, I scan my shelf and pick someone I think will be able to help me.  When I started getting a ton of winter squash I turned to several sources - Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (look out for the Winter Squash Soup with Lemongrass and Coconut Milk) and Terry Walters' Clean Food in particular.  Clean Food is full of unusual ingredients, which is sometimes exactly what I'm looking for.  A search for "sweet dumpling squash" in that super natural recipe search on my sidebar yields no results (at least that was the case last time I checked).  Clean Food has a recipe, though.

My mom went to Florida with her friend a few weeks ago.  I wanted to make dinner on the day she came home - she got in while I was chopping up stuff in her kitchen and immediately started to help me.  It was as if she had just gone out to the post office or something, not to Florida for a whole week.  It was very nice to have some company in the kitchen and to have a delicious, healthy dinner with my family.  I chose to make the Sweet Dumpling Squash with Orange-Scented Quinoa Stuffing.  Surprisingly, it was a big hit.  My family are not the most open to the type of natural, nourishing food that I love.  (I was just asked by both my sisters, on the same day but at different times, "Can we have normal food for Thanksgiving this year?")  But everyone loved this.  Even my super picky dad ate it, although I was barely able to convince him to even try the squash.  My mom was thrilled with it and picked out sweet dumpling squash the next time we got our CSA share.

This was a very filling, delicious meal.  The bites of squash and stuffing together are the key to success.  For someone who can feel complete without a meat product, this is a satisfying meal - the quinoa provides all the protein you need - but of course my family needed sausage and pork chops alongside.  This could be made into a side dish for many if you cut the squash into wedges and pile some of the stuffing on top.  I also did not (obviously, from the picture) use an entire squash per person as the recipe called for - half was more than enough for all of us and there was less waste too.  We had a ton of stuffing left over, though!  I would probably make this again someday.

Wild Rice Medley with Braised Chicken in Balsamic-Fig Sauce

It's time to get back to cooking real meals.  There have been times when I could plan an ambitious week-long menu stuffed with recipes to try.  I never got to all of them.  Now, I can barely think of something for tonight's dinner, let alone lunch and dinner for any other day this week.  I've taken to making brief shopping trips almost every day to pick up just what I need.

This one was planned.  In an effort to get back to making dinners, I have been flipping through some of my books.  In the same book where I found my project, teff waffles, I found this lovely recipe for a wild rice medley with chicken and a delicious-sounding sauce.  I planned to make it on a day when I had a lot of time (Friday), because a quick glance at the cooking times showed me that it was going to take a while (which it did - I was working on this for about 1.5 hours).

It was worth the work.  I put a lot of time and effort into this and was rewarded with something delicious.  I have never braised anything and it came out fine.  We had a nice dinner out on the balcony :)

Ottolenghi Red Rice and Quinoa

Recently I picked up a LOT of grains at Whole Foods and I like to pick up interesting looking stuff to try out, even if I don't have something exactly in mind for it at the time. One of my acquisitions was Bhutanese red rice, and I remembered a recipe a few days later from my favorite recipe site. The recipe comes from a cookbook by the owners of a restaurant in the UK called Ottolenghi. It is something like a grain salad, served at room temperature. The dish is called Ottolenghi Red Rice and Quinoa, but the name doesn't even express the deliciousness!

At first when I was making this, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed. You cook the red rice and quinoa in two separate pots, then spread them (separately) on a sheet pan to cool to room temperature. At the same time, you slice and sautee white onion in olive oil. At the same time, you toast pistachios in the oven before chopping them up. And at the same time, you have to slice and dice and zest and juice and more with all the other ingredients. That is a lot to do all at once. I don't think it would be too much of a problem if you had the quinoa and red rice already made and let them warm to room temperature, or toasted and chopped the pistachios in advance, or did a lot of the chopping and zesting in advance. This would probably be another good picnic salad since it is intended to be served at room temperature. In smaller portions, it would also be a great salad course.

I halved the amount of grains knowing that the recipes on 101 Cookbooks usually produce way too much food for us as two people, and I estimated how much I would need for the other ingredients, whether using the quantities for the full recipe or halving them. This is really a matter of personal taste. I used the juice of a whole lemon and a whole Valencia orange because I like the citrus taste. I also love the orange zest - I like how zest kind of melts or dissolves into whatever the dish is, so I really love using it in almost anything. I also used a little more pistachios and apricots than the recipe calls for. The chopped dried apricots are so great in this dish - they add a fantastic sweetness against the arugula and grains, and they really complement the citrus flavor too.

In the end everything turned out all right. I ended up cooking the rice a little longer than the suggested time and having to add more water. The quinoa is easy to get right - when their little tails come out they are all done! You can always strain off any extra water if you overestimated or measured wrong. I got everything chopped and mixed together. Rather than putting a small bit of arugula on top as the picture shows, I served the grain mix on top of it and used quite a bit more. I think the peppery bite of the arugula goes really well with the citrusy grain mix. I am finding that I love citrus-dressed grains so I will probably be looking for more recipes that incorporate that, especially now that I have a huge stock of whole grains!

Quinoa Corn Muffins

Today I spent the day grocery shopping/cooking with my big, Montana. In the morning I went to pick up everything we needed at the farmers' market. I also stopped at Stop & Shop and got 9 boxes of pasta for $2.90. (I will probably go back to get more!)

We decided that I would make a quick light lunch, then we would make a baked pasta dish and a muffin. (All will be posted here!) All were some funky kitchen experiments that I have been plotting for weeks. The most experimental were the Quinoa Corn Muffins (you can see the recipe here).

The recipe calls for sprouted quinoa. This was strange. You just rinse the raw quinoa seeds, then soak them overnight, and they sprout. As in, they start to grow into a plant. As you can imagine this was a very new concept to me, although apparently it is very common among people who only eat raw foods. But I decided to try it anyway because the recipe suggested that they would be easier to puree for the recipe if they were sprouted, which turned out to be true. I also tried using agave nectar as my sweetener. I didn't really notice anything in the muffins, but they turned out to not be too sweet anyway and I used 2 Tbsp of agave nectar.

Sometimes I get very engrossed in my cooking and I forget to take pictures. Sorry! The final result was interesting. This recipe did not taste like a corn muffin at all. It had its own flavor. Not bad, but not a corn muffin, and not sweet at all - more like a bread you would eat with some kind of soup, maybe. We tried them with a little almond butter, which dominated over the flavor of the muffin, and we also concluded that it would be good with a fruit spread, or if you added cranberries when baking (very Thanksgiving-ish). I might try making these again, but if I do I will probably use about half as much quinoa and twice as much cornmeal. One benefit, though, is that the quinoa is a complete protein, so this is a good vegetarian source of protein if that's what you're looking for. I think this might be a little too natural-foods for me, and I will need to adjust the recipe if I make it again. I might also add a little more sweetener! Also, judging by how little the muffins rose I think it's time for new baking powder...

Quinoa and Pine Nut Pilaf with Light Tilapia

Last time I went to Whole Foods, I picked up some quinoa. I have been reading a lot about whole grains and other fun stuff and today I decided to try it. I made a Quinoa and Pine Nut Pilaf from the Food Network website, with a little modification based on what I had on hand. Although quinoa itself is a complete protein, I decided to also make a light tilapia to go along with it.

Quinoa (pronounced "keen-wah") is actually a seed. As I said, it is a complete protein, which means it gives us a balanced set of essential amino acids, and this makes it a great choice for vegetarians and vegans. NASA is considering it as a crop for long-term space flights because of its nutritional value. This was my first time trying quinoa, but I liked it because it just looked so... cute! A way to tell if your quinoa is cooked is to look for little white fibery threads wrapped around each seed.

This pilaf recipe was a real test for me. I have never cooked with quinoa before, and I don't generally do well with doing multiple things at once. First I had to rinse the quinoa. It has a natural protective layer on it, which isn't really yummy to eat. The recipe says to put 1 cup of rinsed quinoa with 2 cups of chicken stock in a pot, bring it to a boil, and then cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes. I used one can of stock, which is 14.5 ounces -- less than 2 cups. I am also not very familiar with what boiling looks like when it's not water alone. I turned the heat down a little too late. Luckily, I checked the quinoa after about ten minutes. Perfect timing! Meanwhile, I cut 1/2 of an onion and cooked it in olive oil after toasting 1/4 cup of pine nuts. I mixed both in when my quinoa had finished cooking. The recipe also calls for fresh parsley. I didn't have that, so I thought I would use dried. For some strange reason, we don't have any. I put in some oregano instead, since I would be using it with the tilapia. I was nervous about how much to add and it ended up very underseasoned, despite the salt and pepper I also added. I liked the quinoa itself, but I would also like to try cooking it with water to see what it tastes like without the chicken broth flavor. I also ended up with way too much quinoa pilaf left over. The recipe says 6 servings, and the quinoa box says 2. I think it was closer to six.

My "light tilapia" comes from a recipe I found online a long time ago (but can't find now). I have made it several times in the past because it is so easy. The only difference between my version and the official recipe is that the recipe has amounts and measurements, and I use estimates and sprinkles. I get tilapia filets frozen and individually wrapped. I use hot water to defrost them just enough that they are flexible enough to work with. I know that's the wrong way to defrost things, but it works really well for last-minute meals, especially with these individually frozen fish. I put aluminum foil on a baking sheet, rinse the fish and pat dry, and lay it on the foil. I press 1 or 2 cloves of garlic and spread them on the fish as evenly as possible. Next, I sprinkle on some dried oregano, and a little less dried basil. I top it off with grated parmesan and a sprinkle of kosher salt. Put it in the oven for 8 minutes at 400 degrees. That time and temperature are exactly perfect to cook tilapia. It always comes out wonderful that way.

I needed a vegetable, so I heated up some frozen green beans in the microwave. I like to keep frozen vegetables on hand because you never know when you will need to add a veggie (like today), and they also are awesome for quick last-minute stir fry.

The meal as a whole was pretty good. Since the quinoa was so underseasoned, I took bites with the green beans and with the tilapia, which made it tastier. I will definitely be cooking quinoa again. Unfortunately I was not able to take many pictures this time, since I constantly had my hands full!