Sunday dinner: Pollock frolic

Pan-fried pollock on quinoa with kale.

Here's a D4SA take on fish-and-chips quinoa.  The pollock was dredged in flour before shallow-frying, and since pollock is related to cod, it had that familiar firm but flaky texture.

Monday: Match made in heaven

Sweet potatoes in curried coconut sauce over kale, served with quinoa.

In this very unique recipe from Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, the sweet potatoes are chopped and then simmered in water with some ginger, garlic, and curry powder. Coconut milk is added toward the end of the cooking time. Sweet potato and coconut milk actually make a lot of sense together flavor-wise, but you don't see many recipes containing both, since they're a geographically strange combination.

Monday: How sweet the onion

Roasted beet salad with pickled onion and feta, served over quinoa.

In this recipe, the shallots (here, onions since we were out of shallots) are simmered in a sugar-vinegar mixture. The end result is something like a quick, sweet pickle. They contrasted perfectly with the earthiness of the beets, and cut the dense creaminess of the feta. This salad could probably be served on its own or on a bed of greens, but we actually liked it on top of quinoa, which made it more like a grain salad.

Tuesday: And now for something completely different

Lemongrass-quinoa pilaf with Italian cabbage and tofu.

You can probably tell from the above description that this meal was...a little random.

This dish came about because we were looking for recipes which could incorporate the lemongrass we had picked up at the market. We found a suitable lemongrass-flavored quinoa pilaf in Didi Emmons's Vegetarian Planet, and decided to substitute our mystery-varietal cabbage for the broccoli it called for. Hey, they're both crucifers, right? As it turns out, the much stronger flavor of cabbage probably didn't meld quite as well with the lemongrass as broccoli would have, even though it went well enough with the tofu and quinoa elements. In any case, the dish was certainly interesting and wholesome.

The cabbage was too pretty not to show you - the farmer we bought it from specializes in Italian vegetables, and he told us it would be similar in taste and texture to "cavolo nero," also known as dinosaur or Tuscan kale ("black cabbage" in Italian).


Feed me, Seymourrrr...feed me all night looong...

Saturday dinner: Roasted Root Vegetables

Quinoa with roasted root vegetables: sweet potato, white Tokyo turnips, and red carrots.

Roasted root vegetables are an extremely easy winter meal. Basically any combination of veggies like turnips or rutabaga, potatoes and sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beets, etc, can be tossed in olive oil (with sage, rosemary, thyme or other mint-family spices if you have them) and spread onto a baking sheet for roasting. This is done at 425F for about 45 minutes to an hour - but the only assistance you need to give it is an occasional stir. Add a couple cloves unpeeled garlic for the last half hour so that it doesn't get too burnt.

Wednesday: Weekday standard

Arctic char with quinoa and ginger/sesame Brussels sprouts.

The sprouts were blanched, then sauteed briefly with some ginger and doused with dark roasted sesame oil for flavor before serving.

Thursday: Birthday dinner

Very simple late-night birthday dinner: roasted acorn squash with melted cheese, served with broccoli and quinoa.

We know, we know...not too exciting, but law school respects no birthday, and Giselle wanted an easy dinner after her court visit, client interview, and evening class. More exciting birthday activities will follow.

Wednesday: Almond joy

Yellow cauliflower with roasted almonds and cranberry beans, served with quinoa.

We adapted this recipe from a Chinese one in Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East, substituting cranberry beans for lima beans (which Giselle has refused to eat since infancy). It's a very quick preparation, in which pre-cooked cauliflower and beans are stirred in oil with a little garlic and ginger, and then sherry is added in. But what really makes the dish is the first step, in which you fry almonds in the oil you will use to cook the vegetables. Who knew almonds could taste like that??

Incidentally, if you're wondering why those little purple beans are named "cranberry," you should check out how they look before being cooked:



Last year a farm came to the market which sold several other types of shell beans (beans sold fresh in their inedible pod), and we got to try a couple, but unfortunately this year cranberries are all we can find. If anybody knows where in New York you can score a couple other types of shell beans, please let us know.

Saturday: Unattractive but delicious dinner

Mashed purple potatoes and "lentil loaf."

Ok, this dinner is, in fact, ugly. (Nykki saw it, looked concerned, and inquired whether I was eating play-doh.) But we've really been struggling with incorporating mashed potatoes into our mostly-vegetarian diet. Mashed potatoes go well with steak, fried chicken, pork chops...name a meat and they make a good side. But if you're not eating a chunk of protein, what to pair it with?

Our latest attempt at a complement was this vegetarian "meatloaf" substitute, which incorporated brown lentils, red quinoa, grated carrot and ginger, bread crumbs, and a little tomato paste. The recipe is linked to above, though as you can see we made a few substitutions. The result was one of the denser foodstuffs we've ever encountered, but honestly I think it might be superior to the food it was replacing...and it did go well with the potatoes.

Thursday: A variation on a favorite

Raw tomato-cilantro sauce on quinoa.

We had thought of doing our usual raw pasta sauce (another good meal for a busy weeknight), but then realized we had no basil. Fail. Luckily, we found a bit of cilantro in the depths of our crowded produce drawers, and decided it could substitute well as the dominant herb in this dish. This was simple, but quinoa has a nice complex flavor, so it came out well - it's hard to go wrong with any tomato dish when you start with amazing tomatoes.

Monday fish meal

Here you see the Anglo-Saxon cooking style in all its glory: three neatly separated piles of protein (Arctic char), starch (quinoa), and vegetable (Spigariello broccoli).

Ok, actually quinoa is not really a grain, as we may have mentioned before. It's actually a seed, which means it's very high in protein. It's easy to cook: first rinse the quinoa in running water (a fine mesh strainer works well for this) to remove the natural bitter saponins on its surface. Then mix one part quinoa to two parts water, add salt and pepper to taste, and bring to a boil; simmer covered for about fifteen minutes.

As for the other stuff, the fish is just coated with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and then broiled for about five to ten minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillet. The broccoli was basically cooked like kale: chopped up and then boiled for ten minutes or so.

Monday: Stuffed Squash

Cousa squash stuffed with a mix of squash innards, quinoa, millet, chickpeas, dill, paprika, and Parmesan cheese. (Cousa is a Middle Eastern variety of summer squash.)

Thursday summer squash

Mixed summer squash sauteed with garlic scapes and dill with red quinoa and assorted cheeses (not pictured).

Dinners this week

Pardon the prolonged absence, faithful readers. We've been too busy cooking up a storm to actually... update the blog about our cooking. Here's what we've cooked in the past week:


Monday, 7-6-09: White bean croquettes with mashed purple heirloom potatoes




Tuesday 7-7-09: Fresh fava beans sauteed with thyme and sardine-caper toast




Wednesday 7-8-09: Hake with red chard and couscous


Thursday 7-9-09: Curry of golden beet, red cabbage and adzuki beans




Friday 7-10-09: Garlic scape omelettes with a purslane, arugula, and chickpea salad




Saturday 7-11-09: White bean salad with red quinoa and sauteed field mustard greens




Other miscellaneous cooking: a purslane frittata, a blackcurrant cake (sort of a coffee-cake style recipe, using no leavening), and a green gooseberry crumble. Lots of baked goods lately for all of the sour berries that are in season - we have been using local stone-milled pastry flour from Wild Hive Farm.