For the next couple of days I’m staying with my college friend Ryan in the Chicago “gayborhood” (god I hate portmanteaux). He’s a lactose-intolerant vegetarian, which means he’s a vegan most of the time. I thought it would be nice to thank him for letting me stay at his place by trying my hand at vegan cooking. The meal was something of a disaster, though the entrée turned out quite well!
Here are some ingredient notes: If you’ve never had quinoa, it is an experience I highly recommend! In addition to being tasty (something like ever-so-slightly bitter couscous) it’s also obscenely nutritious. Tamari is a gift from god. Carménère is one of my favorite kinds of wine, and the particular label I used (Chono) is Chilean and I think the grapes are grown organically, since they serve it at Yield. The flavor notes include “roasted red peppers,” “dark chocolate,” and “leather.” So… heh. I got it for $14.99 at a nearby “under $15 per bottle” store. :q
There are obviously many variations you can make on this recipe. For example, you could use a wine other than carménère; my opinion on the “cooking wine” issue is that you should use a good wine but hey, you only need a cup and you can drink the rest! Couscous would be a worthy (yet somewhat less nutritious) substitute for the quinoa. If you can’t find nori, but have fresh sage in spades, then you can replace the nori with sage leaves fried in olive oil or browned butter (not as vegan). Finally, ignoring the vegan theme, this would be an excellent side for a roast chicken. PS I totally made the whole thing up, so if you think it’s missing something, please let me know (also, please come up with a shorter name).
[This is a fairly "easy" vegan recipe because the ingredients are widely available. It doesn't have agave syrup or arrowroot or seitan or "nutritional yeast flakes" (shudder).]
Quinoa with mushrooms, nori, pinenuts, and a carménère-tamari reduction
- 1 cup quinoa, rinsed and drained
- 2 cups water
- olive oil
- 1 shallot, finely minced
- 1 1/2 cups roughly chopped mushrooms (I used some mix of gourmet kinds from Green Giant)
- 2 sheets nori (toasted), crumbled
- 1/2 cup pinenuts (not toasted)
- 1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce, plus extra to taste
- 1/2 tablespoon white rice vinegar
- 1 cup carménère (or other spicy red wine)
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
- salt and pepper
1. Prepare the quinoa: It’s basically prepared the same way rice is prepared. You put 1 part quinoa 2 parts water into a pot, then bring it to a boil, cover it, and bring the heat down to “negligible.” Do this *while* you make the stuff that goes into it (as opposed to right before or after).
2. Sauté the shallot on medium in olive oil until translucent, then add the mushrooms, a dash of tamari, and half the crumbled nori. Sauté until the mushrooms have rendered all their liquid, then bring the heat up to medium-high to burn off said liquid and (ideally) char the shallots a little. Remove to a bowl and cover with a paper towel.
3. Wipe the saucepan from the previous step dry, but leave any traces of shallot or nori that got singed to the pan if you can (we want them in the sauce). Toast the pine nuts briefly on high heat until they’re fragrant and they’ve rendered some of their oils. Remove to a bowl.
4. Reduce heat to medium, and immediately deglaze the still-hot pan with the wine. Reduce the wine by a little less than a half, then add the rice vinegar, tamari, and brown sugar. Reduce slightly, until flavors have combined. Reduce heat to low, add the thyme, then taste and adjust for sugar, tamari, salt, and pepper.
5. Mix the mushrooms and pinenut mixtures into the quinoa (now done and hopefully still quite hot). Serve drizzled with the wine-tamari sauce and garnish with remaining nori.
I served this up with Henry/Rachel Ray’s famous roast broccoli (which came out mostly wrong because I did it wrong), and Smitten Kitchen’s strawberry-rhubarb crumble. As for the latter, I totally skipped over “butter” the first time I read the ingredients, so I ended up substituting vegetable shortening, which is less good.* Definitely a winner, though, so I’m looking forward to making it again. :v
The reason dinner was something of a failure was that I totally forgot that Ryan doesn’t really eat at all. XD So I ate most of it myself, though he sampled everything and approved. Also, he took a tylenol and could only have a touch of wine, so I ended up drinking nearly the entire bottle myself, but hey… it helped me sleep!
* By the way, Crisco has trans fats in it as does anything with “partially hydrogenated” whatever-the-fuck. They can say it contains zero grams, so long as it has less than one gram. Thanks FDA and food industry lobbyists!