Rice, Vegetables, and Chickpeas

Three posts in a day! This is a pretty average dinner, honestly. Well, as "average" as our dinners get. I try to mix it up as much as I can, but some kind of starch + some mix of vegetables +/- some kind of meat product or other protein source = basically supper. Sometimes, it's pasta with veggies and chicken, sometimes it's rice with veggies and soy sauce, tonight it was rice with veggies and chickpeas.

So, the cast of characters in tonight's dining experience:
1c rice, uncooked (white or brown is fine, but brown will cook a LOT longer)
1/4 large onion
1 fatty carrot, or 2 small carrots
2 spears of celery
2 cloves garlic (I used 3 because these are tiny)
6 large spears asparagus
1/2c frozen peas
1 can chickpeas
1tsp consommé or 1 cup of stock for the rice
1T awesome sauce (more on that later) (No, it is not drugs)
some olive oil
a dash of stock for the vegetables
salt
pepper

First, get the rice started. Get a little bit of olive oil the pan on medium heat--only a teaspoon or so--and coat the rice with it. Add 1tsp of consommé and coat the rice with that. Jack your heat up to high, add 1 and 3/4c water. If you're not using consommé, cook it with a cup a stock and 3/4 cup of water. You don't want an overpowering stock flavor in your rice, so aim for about half water, half flavoring. Once the liquid is boiling, turn the heat to a simmer, lid it, and let it go.

Get your vegetables prepped. Everything gets diced, except the asparagus. Save that for after you get the other stuff into the pan.

Get some olive oil into a skillet on medium heat and get your soffritto/mirepoix vegetables in to cook. Let those hang out and prep the asparagus.

I wanted slightly longer asparagus pieces. I guess for something different. Since asparagus cooks a lot faster than the other vegetables in the pan, put these in when you put in the frozen peas and the awesome sauce (I'll get to that, next paragraph, I promise!). So just cut the spears in half and then cut into thirds. Nothing too exciting, but something super delicious!

Now, for the awesome sauce. I don't really have any other name for it. It's this blend I made when I made Porky-Pine meatballs for Justin. I took 8oz of mushrooms, one red bell pepper (seeds removed), a couple of cloves of garlic, and a few tablespoons of mushroom stock and beef stock with salt and pepper and ran it through the food processor. See, I really like the flavor of both mushrooms and bell peppers, but I don't actually like eating them. It's a texture thing. So, I figured I could make this awesome sauce (see? See?) and it would have tons of delicious flavor and I could just use a little bit at a time, if I kept it in the freezer! So, that's what I do. I have a tub of it in the freezer and every now and then, I hack at it with a knife (next time I'll make ice cubes...) until I have as much as I want, and then I cook it into stuff. It makes pan sauces sing like angels, it enlivens blander grinds of meat, and it helps to bind and add moisture to any number of dishes. It's awesome sauce. You should make some. Anyway, I chipped out about a tablespoon of it and stuck it in a bowl with some peas.

When the rice was about done and the veggies were almost ready to eat, but not quite completely, I added a shot of stock (I had beef on hand, but anything will do), the awesome sauce, the asparagus, and the peas. I let it cook for another couple of minutes and had this:

Oh, yeah. That meal's looking FINE! I drained and rinsed a can of chickpeas and added them to the vegetables like so:

Gave it a few good stirs to let the chickpeas heat through and it was done! I tasted to adjust salt and pepper (always, always use pepper. It's not the King of Spices for nothing) The rice was fluffy and delicious, the vegetables soft but with a little bit of bite, and the chickpeas were creamy and delightful.

Plated up (well, bowled over would probably be the slightly more appropriate term) it was very nice and very, very tasty:

I added some pre-shredded Asiago cheese and some freshly grated Parmesan to the top and it was perfect. It was mild, but flavorful, and the awesome sauce adds so much with so little. There's a great blend of sweet and bitter with the carrots, peas, and asparagus, the onion and celery adds some heartiness to the dish, and the chickpeas have a nice creamy, slightly nutty flavor that is well balanced with the cheese. The rice adds a bit of a stick-to-your ribs quality and has a little shot of strong stock flavor from having been cooked in it. Best of all? It's a super, super easy meal. Fifteen or twenty minutes in the kitchen and you've got supper. Not a bad deal, I think.

P.S. Here's the frozen, chipped-out chunk of awesome sauce. It's really, really amazingly good. Trust me! But yeah... Definitely doing ice cubes next time...

Faux Phad Thai

So, I've been experimenting more and more with various vegetables this past summer. A wide variety of veggies isn't really something that I had growing up. Dad was very much a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and he did the bulk of the cooking because of mom's work schedule. So, my usual "vegetables" were actually starches and I was unaware of just how awesome fresh produce is. Something that I've discovered is a love of summer squash. Squash and I have had a shaky relationship thus far--I'm very particular about textures and winter squash is not a texture that I like very much. However, I read a lot of intriguing things about spaghetti squash and decided to give it a shot.

Spaghetti squash is interesting because it has the form of noodles when it's cooked and picked apart, but it doesn't have the texture of noodles. Spaghetti squash is not spaghetti, no matter how you try to slice it. However, that being said, it has a sweet and very mild flavor that supports and compliments stronger flavors quite nicely, so it's a good replacement for noodle dishes that have a spicy and flavorful sauce. The firm texture is also nice for some dishes, especially where there aren't a lot of other textures at play.

I figured that Phad Thai would be an ideal use for the "noodles" of spaghetti squash. So, I got a squash, stabbed it a few times with a knife to let the steam inside seep out during cooking, and I roasted it for an hour at 375 degrees.

I then proceeded to cut it exactly the wrong way. It should be cut along the middle short side, not along end to end. My "noodles" were consequently a little shorter than I'd have liked. However, they worked out perfectly fine and soon I had a heaping bowlful of delicious spaghetti squash strands!

Of course I saved the pulp, picked out the seeds, and gave them a thorough rinse. I'll be salting and roasting them later.

While the squash was in the last few minutes of its roast, I dug out my Phad Thai sauces and some chicken stock. Justin and I have been trying to find the perfect Phad Thai sauce and got two jars from Uwajimaya to experiment. We got a sweet and sour brown sauce (more peanut based) and a spicy red sauce (more... Everything except peanut based). The brown sauce is the clear winner of the two, but needs to be diluted with liquid to coat the food. So, I heated up about 1/4 of a cup of stock to mix the sauces into. Three tablespoons of brown and about a tablespoon of red. Then, I just let it hang out to get the peanuts ready.

I just gave them a quick crush with my mortar and pestle. I got a little shy of 1/4 c of peanuts, crushed when I decided I was done. Feel free to use a processor to crush yours--I just like them a little chunkier, and it's honestly easier to give them a few crushes with my pestle than to fiddle with grinders and blenders and stuff.

When the squash was done and the strands scraped out, the peanuts were crushed, the sauce was deliciously hanging out, and all was right with the world, I heated up some sesame oil in a pan and added some onion. It was a huge fatty onion, and I used about half of it. I cut it into quarters and sliced it rather thickly to make half-rings and into the oil they went, at medium heat, to become soft and delicious.

While they were softening up, I made some other fake noodles. Justin and I picked up a couple of bundles of some really intense asparagus, so I pulled out about six spears of it, cut off the tough ends, and sliced each spear into quarters.

Into the pan they went with the onions to become soft and delicious. I am usually a very strong proponent of the tender-crisp school of vegetable cooking, but since the goal with these was to get them rather noodle-like, I opted to cook them until they were quite soft and pliable.

During this cooking time, I beat three eggs together in a bowl. I don't have a photo of the egg-cooking process, since my sister called right then and she's going through a divorce and her ex is being kind of a butt and and and. I also don't have any pictures of the squash and sauce adding process, but here's pretty much how it went down:

I took the veggies out onto a plate and jacked the heat up to med-high. I added the eggs. I let them get about half firmed up in a thin layer on the bottom of the pan before I started sweeping them around. I shoved them to one side and added the squash. The sauce went on top. Turns out, the sauce was kind of thin, so I added another shot of chicken stock and another tablespoon of brown Phad Thai sauce. That worked pretty well. The veggies went back in for a final stir through. I let the squash soften juuuuuuuuuuuust a smidge in the sauce. I'm talking a smidge here. You don't want it to get mushy and gross. Despite still being on the phone, I didn't let it become inedible.

I also forgot the green onions. And didn't have any bean sprouts. This is about as faux as Phad Thai can get, but still so delicious! The squash was PERFECT and the asparagus added just a hint of flavor without overpowering the Phad Thai sauce. I think I might add more peanuts next time... The peanuts add a really necessary texture and extra shot of flavor.

So there you have it! Some stuff covered in Phad Thai sauce and made totally delicious. :D