That Comfort in the Kitchen

Last Saturday I was in my kitchen, preparing lunch: beet wraps from this cookbook. (A version of the recipe using European measurement standards may be found here; translating it should not be difficult for American cooks and is worthwhile, if you don't want to buy the book. Which is a good and useful book, if, oh, just a little pretentious. Now, back to our story.) I've made the recipe a number of times before. It is not a small amount of trouble, because it has so many elements that must each be prepared individually - cook the quinoa, toast the walnuts, zest the orange, blitz the beets with the goat cheese (measuring all the while), grate the apple, slice the avocado. The resulting flavor combination is so unique, though, that I enjoy making it when I can manage to get all the ingredients together.

The prior week, I'd made a strange chilled borscht from this book, and I bought and boiled too many beets for the recipe. So I had some leftover cooked beets. I also had a whole package of unused herbed goat cheese from yet another recipe; I'd bought the right amount of bell peppers to roast, but twice as much goat cheese as I needed. This is how my kitchen often operates: I get the amounts wrong when I'm shopping, or I find when I'm on the point of making the dish that I should halve the recipe or we'll be eating weird borscht for weeks. This M.O. means that the following week I need to search my cookbooks or the internet for recipes that will use up last week's excesses. Never a dull evening.

I cannot read the caption on this and I badly want to

So I had leftover beets and leftover goat cheese, but they were in different proportions than the recipe called for. I also had herbed goat cheese instead of plain. Also also, I didn't have any walnuts, nor any raisins, so I was using pecans and just going without raisins. My common practice for cooking quinoa is to use half vegetable broth (or chicken broth, whatever's on hand) and half water to cook it in, because it makes the quinoa more flavorful. When the recommended cooking time is over, I turn off the heat, drape a doubled dishtowel over the pot, and put a lid on top. I let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes or until I need to serve. This is a trick I learned from a rice pilaf recipe years ago, and it keeps the quinoa from being either soggy or undercooked. The beet wrap recipe calls for cooking the quinoa in plain water with no after-steaming.

I was considering all these changes with amusement as I was grating the apple (half an apple, I've found, is plenty), and a lightbulb went on over my head so brightly that Matt noticed, from the living room, where he was occupied with something else. I stood perfectly still and let the light penetrate every brain cell it could, and then I noticed Matt noticing me.

"You okay, there?" he said.

"Yeah," I said. "I just figured something out."

"I can see that," he said.

Lost Week & Sickie Soup

Last weekend I caught a cold, and I spent all this week alternately on the couch and curled up in my red chair, trying like hell to keep both sides of my head reasonably clear of gunk. (Don't you hate that, when one nostril is completely stopped up and the other one is fine? Uggggh.) I got to do some reading and some movie-viewing, and I watched enough MST and Rifftrax to actually get kind of tired of Bill Corbett's voice.

No real writing got done, although I finished a small secret project and got a (pretty much expected) rejection.

I also basically lived on the soup outlined below. Several other people I know (in various places in the country) are sick right now, so I thought this might be of help. It's from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which is an indispensable book in my kitchen, but I've modified the recipe a good bit. (Hopefully enough to avoid copyright issues. I've bought three copies of this book as gifts, so...are we cool, Deb?)

It makes a big batch, way too much for two, really. I don't think it'd freeze that well, but you could try it. It's great for sick folk because it's so nutritious (quinoa is a complete protein) without being thick and heavy, and the zip from the jalapenos helps clear out clogged sinuses.

Quinoa Chowder

3/4 cup quinoa, rinsed well in a fine sieve
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cups broth or stock of your choice
     (I use vegetable broth, the kind in cartons)
2 tsp chopped garlic or 2 cloves garlic
2 jalapeno chiles, seeded and finely diced
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 pound potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes*
1 bunch scallions/green onions, including
     an inch of the greens, thinly sliced into rounds
3 cups roughly chopped spinach (eyeball this - a few handfuls)
4 oz cubed feta cheese
1-2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
chopped cilantro (optional)
salt and pepper

Put the quinoa and 2 quarts water in a soup pot, bring to a boil, and then lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Drain, reserving the liquid. Set aside 4 cups of the cooking water.

Wipe out the pot carefully and heat the oil in it over medium. Add the garlic and jalapenos and cook for about 30 seconds. Add the cumin, 1 tsp salt, and the potatoes and cook for a few minutes, stirring. Brown the stuff if you like, but don't let it over-brown or burn. Add the 4 cups of quinoa water, 2 cups of broth, and half the scallions. Simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.

Add the quinoa, spinach, and the rest of the scallions and simmer until the quinoa is completely cooked and the spinach is cooked but has not lost its bright green, 3-5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, season with pepper, and stir in the feta. Add 1/3 cup cilantro if desired; if you have someone in your household who does not like cilantro, buy the stuff in a tube and add a little squirt of it to your bowl after serving. You won't be sorry. Add chopped egg to each bowl as desired.

*The recipe calls for boiling potatoes, but they don't sell those individually at my grocery store, so I used russet, or the standard baking potato. It was fine. The average russet potato is a pound, so, half a potato.

Note: if you're not familiar with quinoa, do NOT skip the rinsing step! Quinoa has a bitter coating and if you cook it without rinsing it, blecch.