Saturday, November 13, 2010
warm rice salad with a touch of corn relish
The minute I laid eyes on this photo I knew I had to make this salad. It had all the elements of a really good meal: artichokes, avocado, tomatoes, red rice and yummy vinaigrette. Mmmm thinking about it makes me want to make it again tonight. I initially made this recipe as at Meatless Monday option and loved it so much that I did it again for my big family Thanksgiving. It was a nice balance to the spread of turkey, yam fries, brussel sprouts with pancetta. I also threw in the corn relish from the book. Let's just get the corn relish covered first. I wasn't a huge fan, but my mom and aunt loved it. I could not find the champagne vinegar so I used the white wine vinegar instead and I don't love boozy flavours. As with all their recipes there were a lot of flavours, but this time I think there was too much (corn, apricot, peppers, white wine vinegar). Although the roasted peppers were delicious and I roasted peppers for the first time (super easy!). I think I need to try it with the chicken recipe in order to give it an accurate grade.
Also on my list of firsts was fresh artichokes. Thank goodness The Chef covers them off in the book. It took a lot time and work and added a nice element of freshness but I don't know if I'd do it again. I switched in jarred artichokes for Thanksgiving which gave it a nice added touch of salt and acid. Hopefully Gluten Free Girl will forgive me for such a blasphemous switch out.
The book asks for red rice, so I hopped over to my local Bulk Barn and picked it up. It was nuttier than regular rice and I was happy to find something new to add to my grain repertoire (brown rice and brown pasta can get a little stale). I grew up with parboiled short grain white rice and I hated eating it everyday. It had to no flavour and was sooooo boring. I longed for pasta so much so my mom thought I should have been born Italian. As we got older my dad started switching up the white rice (he wouldn't touch brown rice with a ten foot pole), who knew there was so many kinds! Then I switched to brown rice because it was healthier and now have white rice as an occasional yummy indulgence. Even though I have grown to love white rice I still am leery of the perfectly formed rice bowl that comes from Chinese restaurants and only eat the rounded top. My sister and I use to fight over it because we felt that you would have to eat less rice. Now that I'm older I realize it was visually deceiving, although I still eat the top of the rice bowl and make J eat the rest.
Overall it was so much easier to do than the trout and quinoa and left you with a healthy serving of leftovers. J didn't even notice there was no meat in it as well. A+
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