Quinoa Bean Stew

This was another successful cleaning-out-the-fridge stew, and also a success for cooking improvisation. I typed up the general procedure I followed, but it's very flexible to anyone else's modification. Epic win!

Quinoa Bean Stew

1. Saute lots (2 tbsp) minced garlic in ample olive oil
2. Add 2-3 c total chopped onion, carrots, celery, and potato, with a pinch of salt.
3. Add 3 roma tomatoes, chopped and 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
4. Add 3 c water
5. Add 1 c rinsed quinoa and 2 c cooked white beans and the corn cut off an ear of corn (next time I'm using more because I love corn so much)
6. Add 2 chicken bullion cubes, 1 tsp basil, 1 tsp oregano, 3/4 tsp thyme, 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1 large bay leaf
7. Simmer for a long time, blend at some point if you want. Taste and adjust spices if necessary.
8. Reheating is best done on the stove, on low heat to avoid burning things, with extra water if it gets too thick.

(Guys, seriously, this is why I need a digital SLR. Giovanni is fantastic but I really need to be able to focus things myself, cuz zoom + flash + macro mode = tearing hair out. And last I checked, hair isn't something you want in stew.)

Zebra Beans #1

The plan was to use some of the super pretty bell peppers (I bought a bunch on sale, chopped, and froze them to simplify things in the future :) ) to make zebra beans - white and black beans mixed. The first lesson was that when you soak black beans with white beans, the color that comes out of the black beans and otherwise ends up down the drain, gets adopted by the white beans and makes super ugly gray beans. The second was that (probably because of a size difference) white and black beans take different times to cook. They still made good Cuban beans, but don't ask for a picture. Since they weren't heavenly as Cuban beans usually are, I'm wondering if there's something about the white beans that doesn't work so well. Anyone can has informations?

Stay tuned for experiment take two!

Lentil Tomato Soup

it was really cool to get to see the quinoa half-cooked like this

Lentil Tomato Soup

(adapted from Italicious, who has the nerve to have prettier pictures than me...)

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a heavy soup pot or Dutch oven, and add a chopped onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes. Add the two crushed but not chopped garlic cloves, diced carrot and a diced celery stalk, and a generous pinch of salt, and continue to cook for another five minutes until tender. Add the 2 chopped tomatoes and some rosemary and a bay leaf, and cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add 1 c lentils and 1/2 c well rinsed quinoa and 5 c water. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently one hour. Taste and adjust seasonings. Stir in the parsley. Serve, garnishing each bowl with Parmesan or Gruyère. Serve with bread.

Friday Night Experiments

What are weekends for? Extra time for kitchen experiments! I'm still in search of the perfect pasta sauce. Tonight it might have happened if someone had reminded me to buy dry basil. The other reason I have to go shopping again is that somehow I bought CRAP olive oil - I tasted a small spoon of it and then a bit of another bottle's oil and the one I bought today (because it was cheaper...) tasted relatively tasteless. Very sad. Horray for more shopping! If only I were in Italy and could buy olive oil at the farmers' market tomorrow!!!

In happier news, the tomatoes were the best store-bought tomatoes I've ever had. I was skeptical at first because the package said they'd been packaged more than a week ago, and they came from Arizona. Tomatoes from Arizona? I stand corrected. They tasted like I had actually picked them off the vine in my backyard!

Experiments today involved sherry for the first time. I took a tiny spoonful of it too and found it surprisingly strong and sweet; moreover I wished I had white wine because my extreme lack of knowledge about wine says white wine would be better.

The tomato sauce ended up being very light - good for summer but disappointing (everyone else who tasted it was impressed) because of the lack of spices. There was a blending basil win, however. And I am getting better at mincing garlic :). I had to suck it up and buy a $4 pound of peeled garlic because peeling garlic requires turning off the fan (or the paper blows everywhere) and turning off the fan isn't really an option.

Recipes:

Nice light summery tomato sauce: Saute minced garlic (I think I used seven cloves) in extra virgin olive oil for a few minutes, then add half a medium-sized onion. Cook for a few minutes and then add the tomatoes. Cook for 5-10 minutes then turn off the heat, put about half the tomatoes in the blender, and add the tomato puree back to the pan. Turn the heat back on and add 1/4 tsp oregano, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, and a few turns of the black pepper grinder. I made the mistake of dumping in a bit of cooking sherry which made the sauce too sweet in my opinion (a friend said she one of the the things she liked about it was that it wasn't too sweet, so just adjust to you taste). After a few minutes of heavy boiling to reduce the sauce, I put a bunch back in the blender on a higher speed because the sauce was still too thin. (In the end it was always too thin; I think tomato paste intervention might be necessary.) During the second blending, I added five large (as in 4"!) fresh basil leaves to the tomato sauce in the blender. Next time: No onion, more garlic, loooooots more basil, no sherry, and back to the tried and true 3 tbsp. dried basil and 1 tbsp. dried oregano.

QuinoaSherryBroccoli Experiment: Saute minced garlic in extra virgin olive oil, then add small pieces of cooked (or almost cooked) broccoli florets (you get to eat the stems while you cook - don't throw them out!) and a generous unmeasured amount of cooking sherry. Watch sadly as it immediately evaporates. Add more sherry, turn off the heat, and continue talking with hungry friend while sherry soaks in. Turn heat back on, on LOW, and stir while everything gently cooks. When the voices in your head say so, add cooked quinoa. I probably used about 1.5 cups, but I didn't measure. Use however much is appropriate for the amount of broccoli you used slash however much is appropriate for the number of people you are trying to feed slash however much is appropriate for how hungry people are. Stir and cook for a few minutes to let the flavors marry and get nice and warm and happy. Feed to your hungry friend. Hungry friend will be impressed. :) Kudos to my sleepy brain for this fantastic idea. Next time: use another kind of wine. Donors, anyone?

P.S. While you cook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ige8G7qpEF8

Cuban Black Beans & Rice

Beans- Saute garlic in olive oil, then add onion and bell pepper. Cook for a few minutes, then add tomato sauce, oregano. Cook more, then add beans and bay leaves. I left it in the crock pot overnight on warm. Using three huge yellow peppers = overpowering, so they didn't taste quite normal but were still good. Had to boil off lots of water ( = lots of stove cleaning) because the crock pot doesn't let water out.

Also made quinoa to play with tomorrow. Interesting finding that quinoa is better behaved than rice when cooking (didn't try to burn like the rice did). Somehow it got splattered all over the lid and made a cute speckled pattern. Easier than I thought to pour out rinsing water; easier to use finger than another lid like when draining spaghetti.