Meatless Monday: Garlic-Toasted Quinoa with Vegetables

A couple of weeks ago I introduced you to a quinoa dish I like a lot. This week, I thought I'd introduce you to another quinoa dish that involves a different preparation method, the results of which produce a very different and delicious flavor. The preparation method? Toasting.


Garlic-Toasted Quinoa with Vegetables
Recipe (bottom of the page)

As with the risotto dish I highlighted here before, this is a dish that requires some attentive stirring and patience, so make sure you're in the mood for that before you embark. This is also a dish with which you need to be careful with measurements. If you use too much oil to toast your quinoa, it will never absorb all the vegetable broth when you steam it later. I learned that the hard way and had to artfully spoon excess vegetable broth out of the pot. The result was a bit more oily than it was supposed to be but still yummy.

You can also substitute the veggies they suggest for others you might prefer. For instance, they suggest you can use either spinach or baby chard. I myself swapped out broccoli for asparagus, each an equally hearty green stalk vegetable. And I'm assuming the recipe writer's choice to use shiitake mushrooms was just to keep the focus of the dish Asian. But if you're being frugal, I don't think it would hurt the recipe much to switched them out for more reasonably-priced button mushrooms.

Something I might try if I make this again will be putting a few dashes of soy sauce into the vegetable broth in which I steam the quinoa instead of seasoning it with it at the end. I think that might be an interesting way to subtly infuse the quinoa with the soy sauce flavor. Of course, the advantage of doing it at the end, as the recipe suggests, is that you can just put the bottle on the table and allow those eating to decide how much they want.

Options, options, options. The same recipe can yield so many different results with a little tweaking. Go head, be adventurous and make each recipe your own!

Got any favorite vegetarian or vegan recipes?? Please share!

Other Meatless Monday posts

Meatless Monday: Creamy Parmesan Risotto with Mushrooms

In my last Meatless Monday post, I recommended a 'recipe' for a fast and easy meal. We need those every now and then (ok, more like pretty often) to accommodate our fast-paced lives. However, sometimes something is just sooo good, it's worth the extra effort it may require to make. Case in point? Risotto. *Ohhh how I love risotto.* When made properly, the texture of the arborio rice is firm without being al dente, creamy, and just YUM.

My favorite risotto is one that I get at Galletto's in Westlake. They put porcini, shitake, and champignon mushrooms in it and put Parmesan cheese on it - or, rather, they put the risotto in the cheese. Yes, that's right, they put the risotto in the cheese. They roll out a cart with an enormous wheel of Parmesan cheese on it to your table. Then they plop the hot risotto into a hole carved out of the middle of the wheel, scrape the cheese on the sides into the risotto, mix it all around, and plate it. Sure, the table-side plating gimmick is a bit much, but I don't care - if ordering the risotto at Galletto's required I withstand listening to the waitstaff sing a version of the 'The Wheels on the Bus' with lyrics adapted to suit their enormous cheese wheel, . . . I'd still do it. Seriously, it's that good. For those of you not willing to withstand the fanfare (or who don't live near Galletto's!), here is a good recipe you can make in the privacy of your own home (enormous cheese wheel optional).

Creamy Parmesan Risotto with Mushrooms
Risotto
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1038780

(This recipe calls for chicken stock, but you can obviously substitute vegetable stock.)

Mushrooms
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1534868


Got any favorite vegetarian or vegan recipes?? Please share!

Other Meatless Monday posts