Lentils and Quinoa and vegetables

Yesterday my cousins presented me a fairly easy challenge - gluten-free vegan dish that serves 8 people.  This is what came out.  It was delicious and well-received, but still, I have enough leftovers for the rest of the week.  Which is fine by me (and possibly also my co-workers).

Susan had asked me if I wanted to make dinner togethe

I do think that over the last year or two, my palate has been refined for a mostly-fresh-vegetable fairly vegan diet.  I enjoy the vegetables that flavor this dish, not the seasoning thaf flavors in this dish.  I can taste the cauliflower and lentils and cabbage and parsley.  There is no overwhelming cumin or vinegar or sesame flavor, just quiet, subtle hints that build upon the flavor of the whole ingredients.

Anyway.  Here's how it went:

-at about 11 am I called Peter in response to his text message about dinner, stating that Quinoa as a gluten-free main dish was probably adequate, and that I would put some beans in the slow-cooker so that we could add them for additional/complete proteins.  Then, at 2 pm, I realized I had never put beans in the slow-cooker and was out of time to cook them properly.  So I went to look for some nice French green lentils I thought I had - which are perfect for pilafs like this because they are very firm, and don't mush up into dal quickly (like a red lentil) or eventually (like a brown lentil.)  I proceeded to only find brown and red lentils, and settled on brown.  I put them in the slow cooker, turned it on, and forgot about it until the smell reached me on the couch about an hour later.  This actually proved my theory: the moment something smells done, it is done.  I immediately worried I'd over cook the lentils, removed them the heat, rinsed them in cold water to stop the cooking, and then stored them in the freezer for good measure.  They were cooked perfectly.

The rest of the meal was cooked at my cousins' house.  We chopped up a whole cabbage (Mariann used the Vitamix for this), a whole head of cauliflower, two leeks, and rainbow chard.  I meant to use garlic but forgot.  In the end, there were so many vegetables that I couldn't saute them as planned, I simply put them in the huge cast iron frying pan and added some water and steamed them - they all cooked perfectly.  I also cooked an entire bag of quinoa, and stemmed a bunch of parsley.  Then it was time to mix.  And Season.  This was the challenging part.  It ended up being about a teaspoon of cumin, a few tablespoons of Ume Plum Vinegar (which isn't very acidic and is very salty), a few tablespoons of sesame oil, and a little salt.  I was adding the salt probably too slowly for that side of the family.

There will be pictures after I run off to swim - I left my phone in the car.

The leftovers are prettier because the red chard bled into the rest of the dish, providing a little more color.