From the jaws of defeat
This morning, I had one of those ideas that sounded really good on paper, but that I might have reconsidered if I had done some online research (I haven't done any research, so I can't say for sure if I'd have had second thoughts).
It started innocuously enough with some dried lobster mushrooms reconstituting in about 1½ cups of hot chicken stock. While those soaked, I chopped up the ½ of a red onion I had in the fridge and a clove of garlic. It looked like it needed something more, so I grabbed some of my smoked chicken from the basement freezer and cubed about the same quantity of that as I had of onion. I grabbed about the same amount of frozen peas and set them aside too.
I debated leading off with olive oil, but I didn't want to be in danger of making breakfast too healthy, so I reached for the butter instead and started sauteeing the onions over medium heat. When they were just starting to turn translucent, I dumped in the chicken and fished the mushrooms out of the stock. They were not quite done yet, but I knew they would have time to finish in the quinoa. I tossed them in with the chicken and onions, let them mingle a bit before finally adding the garlic and a bit more butter.
When the garlic was smelling pretty good, I poured ½ cup of red quinoa into the pan and set myself on a course of impending failure. I sprinkled in some chipotle pepper and a good dash of chilli powder, along with a bit of kosher salt. I added a tiny bit more butter and stirred things about until the quinoa started to stick, and a fond started building up on the bottom of the pan. I dumped in the frozen peas to tame things a bit and then deglazed the pan with about ¼ cup of sherry.
Once that had cooked off, I started adding the warm chicken stock a bit at a time, adding more as it cooked down. Because I'd got the idea in my stupid head that I was going to make risotto-style quinoa. I'd purposely made more stock than I would normally need if I had cooked quinoa the proper way, but as I neared the end of the stock, and the quinoa was still pebbly-hard, it dawned on me that I had miscalculated somewhere along the way.
Also, it didn't taste especially good. It had a slightly unpleasant bitterness to it. I added a bit more chipotle and chilli to cover that, and then in an act of desperation, I tossed in a bit of nutmeg. Why nutmeg? I guess I've been watching too many 18th-century cooking shows, and nutmeg seemed to go into everything back then. I figured that at best, it would offset the bitterness, and at worst it couldn't hurt too much.
Once I ran out of stock, I started adding the leftover hot water from the kettle I'd heated for coffee, and then I covered it with a lid to see if I could coax the crunchy quinoa into absorbing some of the liquid. It took a couple more additions of water and another ten minutes, but it eventually cooked down to a pleasing al dente.
I scraped the mixture into a bowl (the peas were all but mush by this point), cleaned the pan, and cracked a couple of eggs into another bit of butter. I hit them with a dash of salt and chipotle pepper and then cooked them covered until they were set up as a good sunny-side-up consistency. I slid them out onto the quinoa and resolved that I was going to eat every last bit of this miserable failure.
This was the best quinoa bowl I've had to date. I credit the nutmeg - it was really astonishing how well it harmonized with the other ingredients. All hints of the earlier bitterness were gone. I give it two begrudging thumbs up because it had no business tasting so good.
It started innocuously enough with some dried lobster mushrooms reconstituting in about 1½ cups of hot chicken stock. While those soaked, I chopped up the ½ of a red onion I had in the fridge and a clove of garlic. It looked like it needed something more, so I grabbed some of my smoked chicken from the basement freezer and cubed about the same quantity of that as I had of onion. I grabbed about the same amount of frozen peas and set them aside too.
I debated leading off with olive oil, but I didn't want to be in danger of making breakfast too healthy, so I reached for the butter instead and started sauteeing the onions over medium heat. When they were just starting to turn translucent, I dumped in the chicken and fished the mushrooms out of the stock. They were not quite done yet, but I knew they would have time to finish in the quinoa. I tossed them in with the chicken and onions, let them mingle a bit before finally adding the garlic and a bit more butter.
When the garlic was smelling pretty good, I poured ½ cup of red quinoa into the pan and set myself on a course of impending failure. I sprinkled in some chipotle pepper and a good dash of chilli powder, along with a bit of kosher salt. I added a tiny bit more butter and stirred things about until the quinoa started to stick, and a fond started building up on the bottom of the pan. I dumped in the frozen peas to tame things a bit and then deglazed the pan with about ¼ cup of sherry.
Once that had cooked off, I started adding the warm chicken stock a bit at a time, adding more as it cooked down. Because I'd got the idea in my stupid head that I was going to make risotto-style quinoa. I'd purposely made more stock than I would normally need if I had cooked quinoa the proper way, but as I neared the end of the stock, and the quinoa was still pebbly-hard, it dawned on me that I had miscalculated somewhere along the way.
Also, it didn't taste especially good. It had a slightly unpleasant bitterness to it. I added a bit more chipotle and chilli to cover that, and then in an act of desperation, I tossed in a bit of nutmeg. Why nutmeg? I guess I've been watching too many 18th-century cooking shows, and nutmeg seemed to go into everything back then. I figured that at best, it would offset the bitterness, and at worst it couldn't hurt too much.
Once I ran out of stock, I started adding the leftover hot water from the kettle I'd heated for coffee, and then I covered it with a lid to see if I could coax the crunchy quinoa into absorbing some of the liquid. It took a couple more additions of water and another ten minutes, but it eventually cooked down to a pleasing al dente.
I scraped the mixture into a bowl (the peas were all but mush by this point), cleaned the pan, and cracked a couple of eggs into another bit of butter. I hit them with a dash of salt and chipotle pepper and then cooked them covered until they were set up as a good sunny-side-up consistency. I slid them out onto the quinoa and resolved that I was going to eat every last bit of this miserable failure.
This was the best quinoa bowl I've had to date. I credit the nutmeg - it was really astonishing how well it harmonized with the other ingredients. All hints of the earlier bitterness were gone. I give it two begrudging thumbs up because it had no business tasting so good.