Spicy Quinoa Salad

How convenient to find inspiration in August's Food & Wine, an idea for using garbanzo beans and quinoa! These two staples seem to have reproduced in my fridge this week. (That, and zucchini...want any?)

A mixture of smoked paprika, turmeric, and cumin are behind the "spicy" in this salad...not so much a "hot" spicy, but a wonderful, flavorful spicy that stands on its own, or livens up a more mellow entree. We enjoyed it with a few slices of grilled steak over salad greens.

Spicy Quinoa Salad
serves 6 - 8

4 cups cooked quinoa (see Amy's Kitchen Coach Tips below)

1 cup garbanzo beans (preferably home cooked, see Hummus from 8/21/08)
2 zucchini, quartered lengthwise, grilled then chopped
2 scallions, finely diced
a few cilantro leaves, if you like them and if you have them

3 tablespoons olive oil
Juice from ½ lemon
1 teaspoon each of the following (sea salt, tumeric, smokey paprika, cumin)

1. Lightly coat the zucchini stalks with olive oil and grill or broil until softened a bit. Let cool until you can handle them, then chop into pieces.

2. Stir together cooked quinoa, garbanzo beans, zucchini, scallions, and cilantro.

3. Sprinkle the spices over the quinoa mixture and stir to combine. Drizzle the olive oil and lemon juice over the quinoa mixture and stir to combine.

Amy's Kitchen Coach Tips

• Cook quinoa just like rice-- in a rice cooker!
• Be sure to rinse quinoa with water a few times before you start cooking. The seeds have a soapy coating to deter pests; harmless to us, but not very tasty. Just put the quinoa in a bowl of water, swish, and pour off the water, two or three times.

Hummus, Mellow on the Garlic

I haven't been able to find my favorite, mellow-on-the-garlic hummus at the grocery the last several weeks, so I finally decided to make some myself. Starting with those hard little garbanzo bean nuggets from the bins takes a little advance planning, but wow! Are they ever delicious! You have not tasted a garbanzo bean until it soaks, cooks and plumps under your own control. They have a wonderful fresh taste and texture you just can't get out of a nasty old can.

Hummus
makes about 3 cups

3 cups garbanzo beans (preferably home cooked)
½ cup water
¼ cup tahini or cashew butter
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, finely minced or pressed through garlic press
1 teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground cumin

1. Put garbanzos, tahini or cashew butter, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt and cumin in the workbowl of a food processor and puree. With motor running, slowly drizzle in the ½ cup water until you get a smooth consistency. (You may not use all the water, or you may need a couple more tablespoons – see what you like.)

Store tightly sealed in the refrigerator. Keeps a couple weeks.

Amy's Kitchen Coach Tips

• If you haven’t yet cooked beans for yourself, garbanzos are a very satisfying first experience. You’ll find the dry garbanzos in the bulk area of your grocery. Buy about 2 cups of dry beans (approximately 1 pound). Recipe for preparing them follows. Just be warned. It will be very difficult to return to the canned ones once you’ve tasted home cooked.
  
  
• Serve with toasted pita bread and olives (the bright green Castelvetranos I’ve been finding at Whole Foods are delicious – very rich and buttery) and a few of your remaining whole garbanzos.
  
  
• Cooking beans. Choose one of the following soaking methods:
  

• Overnight Soak

Set the bean bowl in the fridge overnight. The next day, dump the beans into a colander and discard the soaking liquid. Beans are ready to cook.

• Quick Soak

Put the beans into a large stockpot and fill the pot with water to cover the beans by 4 – 5 inches. Over medium high heat, boil the beans for 3 minutes then turn off the heat, cover the pot and let beans sit for at least 1 hour, ideally 4 – 12 hours (I know, that’s not exactly “quick”, but beans are a zen food…enjoy the pace!

• Cook the beans. (This method assumes you are using 1 pound of dry beans, which will yield 4 – 6 cups cooked beans. If you want to make more, just increase the salt accordingly.)

1. Rinse beans, discarding soaking water.
2. Slowcooker: Place beans in slow cooker and add fresh water to cover beans by an inch or two. Stir in 2 teaspoons of salt. Cook on low heat setting for 8 hours.
   Stovetop: Place beans in dutch oven or large stockpot. Add fresh water to cover beans by an inch or two and boil gently until tender, usually 1 – 1 ½ hours.
3. Once tender, drain and discard any remaining water. Beans will keep in refrigerator for several days, or freeze part of them for another time.

Present Fish

If you've never had a roll of parchment paper in your kitchen, now's the time. There is no easier way to prepare fish at home. Easy on the front end and, most importantly, easy on the clean up. So now, when you see that super fresh fish for sale at your farmers market, you know what to do with it!

This preparation, inspired by something I found in my Food & Wine archives, is delicious. It even improves with a brief sit after coming out of the oven -- so no need to rush, rush, rush to the table the second it comes out of the oven. (Sorry, Paul...missed this step the time I made it for you guys!) When you are assembling the parchment packages, it is easy to make simple customizations for your diners...no olives here, kid sized portion there...simply write your code with pencil on the outside so everyone gets their personal present come dinner time.

Present Fish
serves 4, easily scalable for more (or less)

fresh fish fillets approximately 5 ounces per serving
(I've used Alaskan halibut, black cod and orange roughy with success, but I now learn that orange roughy is a no no -- check the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch for a sustainable choice)
1 or 2 large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (use a mandoline if you have one, this one by Benriner is good), you want about 12 slices for 4 servings
1 lemon, washed and thinly sliced into rounds
1/4 cup pitted Niçoise or Kalamata olives, sliced if large
fresh oregano leaves, from about 4 sprigs
sea salt
olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Set out four large squares of parchment (4, 12 – 15 inch long pieces from your roll) on your counter, one for each portion. Rinse and pat dry the fish fillets.

2. In a small bowl, toss potato slices with a tablespoon of olive oil, the oregano leaves and about ½ teaspoon salt. Arrange the potato slices just off center on each square of parchment, using 3 – 4 slices for each, overlapping them slightly to make a thin bed for the fish. Place a piece of fish on top of the potato slices. Top with two slices of lemon, a few olives, a few flakes of sea salt then drizzle with a little (about ½ teaspoon) olive oil. Sprinkle on any remaining oregano leaves from the potato bowl.

3. Seal the packages. Start by folding over one side of the parchment to make a rectangle. With scissors, roughly trim the parchment to a semi-circle shape. Now, fold along the edge of your semi circle approximate 1 inch overlapping folds (creasing hard by pressing with your fingernail against your work surface) all the way around, finishing at the other end with a twist of the paper. (Write name on outside with pencil, if you have custom orders.)

Like this:

4. Place the packages on a sheet pan and place in oven. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit 10 minutes before serving. Serve packages directly on plates so each person can cut theirs open at the table.

Amy’s Kitchen Coach Tips

• Make a parchment package of side veggies to serve with the fish – thinly sliced fennel on top of any remaining potato slices is quite tasty.

• Packages can be assembled up to 4 hours ahead of baking. Store in refrigerator.

Lasagne

Sauce, noodles, cheese...sauce, noodles, cheese...sauce, noodles, cheese. Making lasagne is really that easy. No pre-boiling the noodles. No sauce making. Just have the few ingredients on hand and layer away. If you're feeling guilty with the ease, go ahead and cook a few nuggets of mild Italian sausage to nestle between the layers. There. You actually did have to do some work.

Lasagne
makes one 8x8x2 inch pan, serves 4 - 6

8 lasagne noodles (Rustichella D'abruzzo is my current favorite)
1 24 - 26 oz. jar of tasty pasta sauce (Dave's Gourmet Organic Red Heirloom has me liking store bought pasta sauce for the first time. Try it, it is fantastic! Trader Joe's has a few good ones too -- try Rustico.)
2 links of Italian sausage, crumbled and cooked through (optional)
1 16 oz. container of ricotta (preferably organic, preferably full fat, but do what you have to do)
8 oz. mozzarella cheese, shredded
8 oz. frozen spinach, let sit at room temperature to thaw while you are preparing the other ingredients, then squeeze out excess water
2 oz. Parmigiano Reggiano, grated

1/2 cup boiling water

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Put a few tablespoons of sauce on bottom of glass baking pan then layer noodles (breaking to fit 3 across), ricotta, sausage (if using), mozzarella, spinach, parmesan, and sauce leaving a little space around all sides (about ¼ inch). Repeat layering until you have used up all of your supplies – aim to end with cheese then sauce on top.

2. Slowly pour the boiling water around all 4 sides of the lasagne, then cover tightly with foil. Place on the middle rack in your oven with a sheet pan on a rack below to catch any drips. Bake for an hour, remove the foil and bake 10 more minutes. Remove from oven and let sit for 10 – 30 minutes before serving.

Berry Season

When you've got great berries, you don't even need the cream. This was the case last night, as we sat down for dessert with a little selection of berries that survived the trip home from Nancy Skall's Middleton Farm up in Healdsburg. Delicious simplicity. Get yourself some berries from your farmers market this week -- they'll be gone before you know it.

Birthday Cake for Mom!

Snow white, lemon scented cake with summer fruit preserves, buttercream spiked with lemon juice, all sprinkled in coconut. What a beauty! (Thank you again, Dorie Greenspan!) This cake was super fun to make and I was able to light it up in person with the birthday girl. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Perfect Party Cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours, p. 250

This book is worth its price for this recipe alone. The cake is not fussy to make and is absolutely beautiful in texture and taste. The buttercream recipe is also the easiest method I've tried -- egg whites and regular granulated sugar heated so the sugar dissolves then whisked up into a meringue -- no boiling the sugar to "soft-ball stage" and other technicalities. What a relief! Dorie teaches us that classic technique can be fluid and easy.

I baked my layers in 6 inch pans, trying to go for that small, but tall Miette look. My 2 layers baked for 45 minutes then I cooled and split them each in half. I stacked all four when filling and assembling the cake and learned why Miette uses 3 layers...very difficult to cut and serve when the cake is a sky-high 4 layers. But we managed. :)