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Quinoa, Arugula, and Roasted Beet Salad with Ginger Sesame Dressing

1 Mar

One of the least exciting aspects of my eating habits is my propensity to want to eat salad for every meal.  Not with every meal, for every meal.  I find this desire of mine to be no less normal than the desires of those who insist on eating meat with every meal, only, when I admit to people that, in my mind, salad is no less important than meat, I tend to be the recipient of a lot of quizzical looks.

Sometimes I wonder if this response is based on a very demure idea of what constitutes a salad.  To be honest, I am not entirely sure myself what magically transforms a mixture of several ingredients into something that one could call a salad.  To me, a salad is a bunch of fresh vegetables—some cooked, some not—a bit of protein, a lot of texture, and some sort of dressing or citrus drizzled over the top.  Or, rather, those are the qualities I look for in a salad of my own (not to totally exclude those salads that might boast a creamy dressing, a ton of protein, and perhaps even no vegetables—see how confusing this can get?).

If I were to choose a salad to eat every day, perhaps even at every meal, it would be this one.  Nutty quinoa piled on top of crunchy, spicy arugula, earthy roasted beets, a handful of toasted nuts with just a hint of sweetness, and a kicky, citrusy dressing, all together on one plate.  This is my favorite whole-meal salad.  Unfortunately, it is also the salad that contains every single ingredient that my son finds absolutely repellant (save for the sweetened walnuts), so it is a salad that I tend to consume only when I know that I will be eating alone, and thus in charge of pleasing only myself.  It is my hope that my son will one day discover the joys of beets and quinoa (or, shall I say, rediscover, since that kid ate both of those things when he was a baby, but won’t go within five feet of them now, of course—not that I am trying to make him feel guilty or bad or…where was I going with this?), but if he does not, maybe that’s not entirely awful since, of course, less salad for him logically means more salad for me.

Quinoa, Arugula, and Roasted Beet Salad with Ginger Sesame Dressing

These ingredients, as listed, will make two large, whole-meal salads.  If you wish, you can also make four smaller side salads with this amount of ingredients.

2 beets, trimmed, with leafy tops removed and reserved for another use

1/3 cup walnuts

½ teaspoon granulated sugar

2 cups cooked quinoa (tip: quinoa is most delicious when cooked in a 50/50 mixture of vegetable stock and water), warm or at room temperature

2 or 3 large handfuls of arugula

Dressing:

¼ teaspoon finely grated or mashed garlic

1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon lemon juice

½ teaspoon toasted sesame oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Wrap beets tightly in foil.  Roast beets for 40 minutes, until cooked completely through.  Remove from oven and carefully unwrap to allow steam to escape, then leave beets—still in foil—to cool.  When beets have cooled enough to touch (about 15 minutes) rub the beets in their foil wrapper to remove skins.  Voila—you have just avoided staining your hands with the diabolically stubborn juice of your beets.

While the beets are roasting, place the walnuts in a pan set over medium heat.  Toast the walnuts for 2 or 3 minutes, until they just begin to emit a nutty aroma.  Sprinkle the sugar around the walnuts, allowing as much of the sugar as possible to sit on the bottom of the pan.  Watch the sugar carefully as it begins to melt, then just begins to turn amber.  Stir the nuts and sugar together, then immediately remove from heat and pour onto a plate to cool.

To make dressing, combine all ingredients in a small bowl and whisk together until thick and emulsified.  Taste for seasoning, and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

Place a large handful of arugula on a plate.  Place 1 cup of cooked quinoa on one side of the arugula.  Slice the beets into rounds and place beet slices on the other side of the arugula.  If desired, generously pepper the beets (this is what I always do, because I like the beets extra peppery).  Drizzle the dressing over the arugula, quinoa, and beets.  Top with toasted walnuts.  If desired, sprinkle with a bit of sea salt.

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Dal with Coconut Milk

16 Feb

When I was in India, I ate lentils everyday.  Actually, that’s not true.  At first I ate lentils everyday, but towards the end of my trip I started to revolt against the lentils.  I don’t know if it was the fact that eating dal at every meal—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—was starting to make me crazy, or the fact that by that point I hadn’t had a decent cup of coffee in a month and, pleasant attributes of tea aside, when you are a coffee fan who is deprived of coffee for weeks at a time, life starts to fray around the edges a little.

Now, back in America for many years, I can’t seem to get enough of dal.  We don’t eat Indian food in our house as much as I would like to (see: five year-old child who can’t handle spicy food), but when we do, I like to make the meal a real occasion by not just making a standard main dish and side dish, but also making naan or parathas, a few condiments, some pickles, and, most of the time, a different dal, depending on my mood.  Madhur Jaffrey has several fantastic dal variations that involve yellow split peas, sautéed cabbage, and sometimes just a few chiles and a bit of garlic oil, and for years I faithfully made any one of those dals whenever I was in the mood for some pulses to accompany my Indian meals.

Changing up the game, however, comes this coconut milk dal from Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford.  As simple as can be, it is, once again, a perfect dish from two people who really seem to have a rock solid grasp of flavors and spices, and how one can highlight the best of both by using ingredients that nudge one another towards a grand conclusion.  The coconut milk is an unexpected treat here, and not something I usually see in dal.  Duguid credits this dish as being more prominent in Southern India—it is actually something she remembers eating quite a bit in a Tamil restaurant—which makes sense, considering the common appearance of coconut and coconut milk in the dishes of Southern India, but not so much in the cuisine found in Northern India (where my family is from).   No matter its origin, this dal is a fantastic addition to any Indian meal, large or small, elaborate or simple.  I’ve taken to eating it with this new favorite cauliflower dish, and I think it would be a wonderful pairing with this delightful chicken biryani.  Really, you could just eat it over plain old basmati rice and it would be a staggeringly good meal.  I suggest you get right on it.

Dal with Coconut Milk

From Mangoes and Curry Leaves, by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford

1 cup masoor dal (red lentils)

5 cups water

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon of minced garlic, mashed to a paste

2 tablespoons minced shallots

6 or 8 fresh or frozen curry leaves (my Asian market was all out of whole curry leaves, so I used 1 heaping teaspoon of crushed dried curry leaves instead)

2 or 3 dried red chiles

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup canned or fresh coconut milk

Put the dal in a medium pot with the water.  Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a low simmer, then cook for 20 minutes.  Keep warm over low heat.

Heat a wok or a heavy skillet over medium-high heat, then add the oil.  Toss in the garlic and shallots and stir fry for 2 minutes.  Add the curry leaves, chiles, and ground coriander.  Mix well and cook for another 2 minutes.  Stir in the salt and coconut milk, then lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the coconut milk mixture to the hot dal and simmer for a few minutes to blend the flavors.  The longer you cook the mixture, the thicker it will get.  Serve hot.

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Yard Long Beans with Chile Oil and Garlic Bits

19 Jan

There are certain elements of culinary wisdom that I find difficult to follow.  One in particular is the tenet that garlic should never, ever be allowed to brown, lest it get bitter.  I know, I know.  Bitter bits of garlic flavor-bombing a nice, mellow sauce would be a terrible thing indeed.  But what about tiny little bites of caramelized garlic resting upon a bed of fresh, crisp, slightly spicy green beans?  Sound better?  It should sound better, because it is better.  In fact, it is delicious.

I’ve been wanting to make this dish forever, which is sort of funny for two reasons.  One reason is because I think this dish took me all of ten minutes of actual work to prepare.  The other reason is because I never had a recipe for this dish, I just had a vague idea in my mind of what I wanted it to taste like.  When I found myself at Fubonn last week, standing in front of an enormous pile of yard long beans that had been fortuitously placed almost directly in front of a large bin of garlic (5 bulbs for $1!  Oh, boy!), I took it as a sign to make this idea of mine come to fruition.

Though I can’t claim that every single food-related idea I’ve ever had has turned out quite so well (like the time I tried to make cream caramels with fresh ginger, only to discover that, oops, fresh ginger combined with heated cream = one giant curdled mass of disgusting), I must admit that I am particularly fond of this combination of ingredients.  Crisp long beans get stir fried for just a couple of minutes with tiny bits of garlic that have been caramelized in a mildly spiced chile oil, making a simple, but perfect, bundle of flavor.  I loved these beans so much, I essentially ate them all by themselves for dinner.  And yet?  I was totally and completely satisfied.  Had there been any leftovers, I would have eaten them for lunch the next day, but there were no leftovers at all, not even a speck of caramelized garlic.  I suppose the only way to ensure that there is going to be a healthy serving of these beans around all the time is simply to make them all the time, which, no surprise, is just fine by me.

Yard Long Beans with Chile Oil and Garlic Bits

¼ cup olive oil

2 whole dried red chiles

2 tablespoons chopped fresh garlic (about 4 large cloves)

1 pound yard long beans, ends trimmed, then beans cut to half their length

sea salt

In a small pan set over medium heat, combine olive oil and chiles.  Gently heat the oil and chiles until they just begin to show signs of simmering, then remove from heat and set aside.  Allow chiles to steep in oil for 30 minutes to 1 hour, gently smashing the chiles with the back of a spoon every now and then to bruise the chiles and encourage them to release some of their spice.

When you are done steeping the chiles, remove the chiles from the oil and discard.  Heat a very large sauté pan or wok over high heat.  When the pan is hot, add 2 tablespoons of chile oil (reserve the rest for another use). When the oil just begins to shimmer (this should take no more than a few seconds), add the chopped garlic.  Using a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, vigorously move the garlic around in the oil for about 15 seconds.  The garlic should not yet start to brown.  Add the beans and stir fry, stirring constantly, for 3 to 4 minutes.  The garlic will turn crisp and golden, then brown, and the beans will just begin to lose their stiffness.

Immediately remove the beans from the heat, add a large pinch of sea salt, and toss to combine.  Turn out onto a large platter to serve, being sure to spoon out all of the good browned garlic bits.

Might serve 6.  In our house, it served 3 (I am not at all ashamed to admit that).

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