That avocado-quinoa thing

Last week in Austin I had the pleasure of dining at Lambert's BBQ with a couple of fellow Drupalists. We ordered a fleet of tasty dishes, but made particular note of an avocado/quinoa confabulation that lay beneath a trout: Cold Smoked Rainbow Trout, Avocado Quinoa, Bella Verde Cilantro, Tomato & Serrano Vinaigrette. The quinoa adhered to the little blocks of avocado and added subtle crunch to each bite, while also imparting significant flavor for two typically understated ingredients. Must've been _some_ vinaigrette. So, I decided to try to create something similar. And got a little distracted, so it's completely different, but not bad.

Avocado and Quinoa salad-thing

1 cup quinoa, any variety (the restaurant used plain, I used tricolor)
1 tbl olive oil, salt
~2 cups water

Toast the quinoa in the olive oil and salt until it begins to smell nutty. Add the water, bring to a boil, then simmer until the water is absorbed and the quinoa is the desired texture. Let cool.

1 small cucumber
1 small onion (red)

Meanwhile, dice cucumber and onion (I had a spring onion, but red would probably be better). Toss together in a bowl.

2 limes
2 avocados

Squeeze a couple of limes and reserve the juice (debatably, lemon might've been better). Dice two avocados (peel then slice) and toss with lime juice.

handful of cilantro
couple sprigs dill
salt and pepper

Chop herbs, add to cucumber and onion along with avocado and lime juice. Salt and pepper to taste and careful fold everything together with the quinoa. Let sit in the fridge for a bit for the flavors to relax, then serve at room temperature or chilled.

Suggestions welcome!

Photos of phood (now with vastly improved imaging capabilities)

Apparently Mondays are good for making something different. The last time I did tortellini was at least a year ago, but this week I had nabbed a butternut squash at market and have enough eggs to burn on pasta. The squash wasn't terribly flavorful, so wrapping it in pasta seemed like a good plan. The photo shows some unrolled pasta circles, a bit of filling (squash + whatever herbs were lying around) and a few of the finished tortellinis. Cheese is really fantastic in these, but squash is a heckuva lot cheaper. They come out pretty big because I can only roll the pasta so thin with a rolling pin, and any less filling isn't sufficient.

I wont write out the entire process, but the pasta recipe is basically: for each egg, use a bit less than 100g of flour. I used 5 eggs and maybe 450g flour to start, a bit more for rolling, which makes for a very soft pasta dough, but is so much easier to work with.

The method: make a pile of flour with a well, put eggs in the middle, slowly stir flour in from edges until everything is integrated enough to knead (and not run off the counter). Knead. Let rest, covered. Divide, roll out to 1/4" thick slabs. Rest covered. Roll out as thin as you like, dry on a rack to slightly leathery feel. Cut. Dry some more if just doing noodles or stuff with stuff and let dry a bit. Freeze if not using right away, drop (fresh or frozen) in boiling water for ~5 min (mine, as I said, are very thick). Tada.

And because I had these photos of pretty chocolates from the Sugar Cube in Oldtown lying around, here are some pretty chocolates. They also tasted good, of course, very smooth, nice Autumn flavors.

These Are My Confessions

Well, really just the one: I kind of, maybe, just a little, but only in some respects, like Martha Stewart. Not like-like, and not like, want-to-be-"BFFs" -like, but one really has to admire the woman. If spending time in jail doesn't cause your massive domestic empire to fold up and hide in a corner, and you pretty much built all that yourself, well.. would that I may someday be so successful (sans the imprisonment thing).

I've been hunting for the book that started it all (according to Amazon, anyway): Entertaining, the 1982 guide to all things party, from hiring help to setting the table and making a bazillion dishes for the guests. For some reason none of the used bookstores I've scoured (a significant number, both in Brattleboro, Vermont and Washington, DC. The links are to my favourites) have it in stock. I think everyone else wants to hang on to it as well. For one thing, it's an emblem of a bygone era, the 1980s. In hindsight (and I'll grant you, I wasn't alive for most of that decade) everything was bright and hopeful, exuberant and jubilant and full of optimism. Nostalgia aside, the book brings that back to us, and gives denizens of this decade and century an opportunity to modify and modernize some very classy parties to fit our own characterless era.

I did find my own copy of Hors d'Oeuvres, which is equally sumptuous and dreamy. I think juxtaposing that style of opulence in decor and food presentation with a contemporary minimalism could be very gratifying. The best part of this book is not that Martha presents themed party menus or very tasty and precise recipes, but that everything is a bit mix and match. Because my guests are so often vegetarian or vegan, I need to be on my toes with modifications. Miniature tarts and sandwiches, small bites of fruit and cheese, roasted tortellini (the pictures in Hors d'Oeuvres inspired me to make my first tortellini from scratch) are all conveniently alterable. There's usually two parts to a recipe: the filling and the base. If, for example, I really like the salmon mousse tartlets, but can't serve salmon, I can replace it with herb mayonnaise and cucumbers, a sprig of dill on top. The first menu even begins with highly interchangeable tea sandwiches (p. 19).

This is also the book that led me to discover how few people in the States know what a pain de mie pan is. I even made a bet with a friend that Sur La Table wouldn't have one, or know what it was. Someone still owes me a cookie.

All of this is actually leading up to the fact that I made a recipe from Martha Stewart Living (May 2009) for dinner last night and it was very tasty. It did, however, fulfill my butter limit for the week, so I guess I'll be having dry toast for a while. The recipe was Brioche French Toast with Roasted Asparagus and Orange Beurre Blanc (image and recipe from MarthaStewart.com). As usual, I had about half the required ingredients, but I think it came out just as well anyway. I substituted smaller amounts of vermouth, soymilk, blood orange juice and onions for dry white wine, heavy cream (which I also left out of the beurre blanc altogether), more orange juice and shallots. And I made the brioche from scratch that morning, from a recipe in my new Beard's Bread Book for brioche loaf (not to be confused with little brioche buns). Very tasty bread, and it adds to the egginess of the dish without oversoaking the slices. Plus it smelled great in the pan as it was cooking. And I like asparagus.

Tuesday Night Dinner, part III

I'm not actually sure where this recipe came from. I think it was clipped from a Better Homes and Gardens magazine by Wortklauberlein. It was originally for bread crumb, spinach and feta burgers, but I had only one of those ingredients, so some modifications were made. Because I was making it up a bit as I went along, I changed all the original measurements and uhm... it's a whole different recipe now.

Veggie Burgers

~1-2 cups cooked black eyed peas
1 cup spinach (frozen or fresh)
2 eggs
2 tbl olive oil
2 tsp dill (fresh always better)
1 tsp oregano
a pinch or two of sage
Salt and pepper to taste, and any other herbs/spices

1. Mush up the black eyed peas to rough texture.
2. Mix everything else in, makes sure there's enough egg to coat the ingredients and hold them together. Hold back on the spinach or peas if it seems like a stretch.
3. Heat up a cast iron pan with some oil, use the same pan the sweet potatoes were done in, if using in the same meal.
4. Drop large spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan and let cook. Flatten a bit with the back of a spatula to make sure all the egg is cooked and turn over once they hold together. They're never going to be very solid, but they do hold together.
5. Serve with Asparagus Pesto.

I added the black eyed peas not just because I didn't have any bread crumbs handy, but because they're protein, and the meal needed some. I just moved the starch aspect over to the sweet potatoes instead. I suspect that other beans could be substituted. When in doubt, try something different.

Tuesday Night Dinner, part II

For the main course, I made asparagus pesto over some veggie burgers. The pesto, first:

This recipe came from the New York Times, very timely, just as I was considering what to do with some overly aged asparagus in the refrigerator drawer. As usual, I modified it to fit what I had around, and it was drastically different from the original. It turned out a little damp at first, but reabsorbed the liquid as it cooled and behaved very well on the burgers.

Asparagus Pesto
Some asparagus, perhaps a bunch
2-3 tbl olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon (or to taste)
Fresh ground pepper
"21 seasoning salute"
Few pinches salt, to taste.

1. Wash and cut the asparagus into small inch long pieces. Boil a pot of water and drop the pieces in, cooking until they are bright green, no longer. Drain and rinse in cool water, then add to the container of a food processor.

2. Add the lemon juice, pepper, 21 seasoning salute, if you have it, or other spices. The 21 seasoning salute is a Trader Joe's mix that's especially tasty on popcorn, but can easily be replaced with fresh garlic and whatever else strikes your fancy. I used it purely for the garlic, as I was otherwise fresh out. Salt, too, then blend.

3. That's it! Set aside for later use, reheat it in a saucepan or microwave if you need to. Serve on pretty much anything.


One of the most important parts of using any recipe is being able to make it do what you want, with what you have. If I ran out to the store every time I was missing an ingredient, I would never have time left to spend in the kitchen. So, it's best to substitute where possible, adjust to the amounts you have in stock, and not let yourself be too rigid in following directions.

Tuesday Night Dinner, part I

You may or may not have seen my tweet last night describing my dinner:

@ekl1773 Made strawberry whole wheat scones, cinnamon sweet potatoes, spinach and blackeyed pea burgers with asparagus pesto. Pleased with self.

The scone, burger and pesto recipes all came to me at once, opportunely. The sweet potatoes I made up on the spot to go with everything else, partially because I didn't have the "herb seasoned stuffing mix" called for in the burger recipe (and the horror of buying such a thing instead of working with a loaf... perhaps I'll post my stuffing recipe someday).

Cinnamon Sweet Potatoes

A couple small (1' diameter) sweet potatoes
Cinnamon
Cardamom
Olive Oil

1. Clean the potatoes and slice into thin slices, less than a quarter inch thick.

2. Drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil around the bottom of a cast iron pan and heat up.

3. Add potatoes to the pan and stir to coat, being careful not to break the slices. Spread them out and let cook. Sprinkle with a teaspoon or so of cinnamon and an 1/8 teaspoon of cardamom, just enough to put a dash on each slice. Stir and try to flip most of them over, sprinkle the other side as well. Add a little more olive as necessary.

4. Cook until soft, slightly browned on the edges, but not mushy. Serve immediately.

Seitan Recipe

I posted this elsewhere a while ago, but when it was difficult to find again today, I thought heck, I'll repost it here. Plus I'm making it right now, first time in the new kitchen. Eventually (soon, I hope, cause I'm hungry) it will become salad rolls.

This entire recipe is easy to change around, but here’s a starting point:
-4 cups UNBLEACHED (or whole wheat) flour (use more on your second or third try if you want, but probably not more than 6 cups)
-enough water to make your pile of flour (which didn’t need to be accurately measured at all) into a solid ball of flour dough. The ball is very important, so make sure it’s all stuck together and not too wet or dry at this stage.
-Once you’ve got a ball, fill a mixing bowl with water and begin to gently knead the ball under it, keeping it together as best you can. It does get a little too soggy sometimes and tries to come apart, but if you just keep going patiently and keep the bits together you’ll be fine. The water should be changed fairly frequently, once it becomes opaquely white. The white is the starch coming off of the gluten, which is what we want. Gluten=protein=yay.
-So you knead for about 45 min until your ball becomes a bit more solid and rubbery. The water should be a bit less opaque when you refill it now. Ideally you might want it to be clear, or quite close to that. Definitely don’t stop until it’s close or you’ll get sponge instead of seitan. I like to put a cutting board in the bottom of the sink and knead under a light flow of water for a while, sometimes picking up the ball and rubbing it or spreading it under the water to get those pesky lumps and starch out.
-Now that you have a squeaky lump of what looks like beige brains...
-Get a large frying pan with a lid, about 2” deep. Make up your simmering sauce to cook the seitan in. I think it can also be baked and other things, but I like doing this for some all-purpose seitan. Using a 2 cup measure, mix about 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/8 cup olive oil, 3 tbl (ish, really, I just dump some on) sage, some thyme, maybe a couple drops garlic oil, salt, pepper... sautee some onions first and use those, too. Again, this is pretty arbitrary and variable, so maybe start with something simple (soysauce/oliveoil/sage) and then experiment later. Pour this into the pan and fill up with some water, about an inch deep. Bring to boil.
-Cut your lump of “brains” into half inch strips. Squeeze each of these carefully over the sink to get out the last bits of water, and lay them into the hot simmering sauce (turn down to simmer now). Put on the lid and let them sit for about 10 minutes.
-At this point the seitan lumps should have puffed up and look like poofy beige blobs. They can be coloured with this sauce, too, so more soy sauce makes darker seitan, etc. After 20 mins turn the blobs over, simmer another 20. Remove from heat and lay your blobs on a cutting board to cool. The sauce can be saved for another (slightly weaker) batch later.
-The seitan can be cut up again from here and used in stir fry, spring rolls, on salads, in tomato sauce.. whatever you like. I think it lasts about a week, but it’s usually gone so fast I haven’t tested that.