Recipe #8 - Quinoa and Parsnip Rosti

Tonight was Recipe #8, again from Mark Bittman's book.


Here's the nice cookbook holder Andrew gave me for my birthday:

This is the second time I've tried to put a picture of the cookbook holder on the blog, and the blog deleted it again. Luckily, my SD card is still in the computer. I wonder what the blog has against this holder?

Anyway, tonight's recipe was Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa, in case you, like me, am new to the world of quinoa) and Parsnip Rosti.

I am not exaggerating when I say to you that the only word in that recipe name I was familiar with three weeks ago was "and." The produce bin had parsnips in it last delivery, so I looked for a recipe that told me what to do with these things that looked like albino carrots. I had read about quinoa in Vegetarian Times, so I decided to go with this recipe.

Plus, it looked like a giant latke, and latkes are good.

Trader Joe's was out of plain quinoa, so I went with a blend of red quinoa, Israeli-style couscous, baby edamame beans, etc.*

Some things I learned:

a) When the recipe tells you not to peel the parsnips until after they've been boiled, there is, perhaps, a reason for it. It would behoove you to trust the cookbook author, who, you should note, gets paid to write recipes and probably knows a bit more about what he's doing than you do. You, after all, thought parsnips were albino carrots.

b) If you choose to ignore this, you should at least listen to the portion of the recipe that says, "Allow parsnips to cool." Trying to grate hot parsnips is not fun.

c) There's something in Trader Joe's Harvest Grains that gets very hard in this preparation. Chew carefully lest you break a molar.

Besides those tiny hiccups, I really was impressed with the resulting dish:

After cooking the grains and parsnips, grating the parsnips, and mixing the two together with some salt and pepper, you squish the whole thing into a big skillet on top of some melted butter. Whether the lid goes on remains a point of debate in my house, but you let it cook for 20-25 minutes** and then do a magic flipping thing and cook the other side for about 10 minutes.

Mine didn't hold together perfectly, but it was pretty tasty and a fun adventure. I think I may try again with shredded carrots and straight up quinoa. And maybe cumin. 'Cause cumin makes everything yummy.

* Basically, I bought the bag of Harvest Grains and used half of that. It sounds much fancier if I list what was in the bag of Harvest Grains, but I realize that's not very accurate.

**Mark Bittman says you'll know when it's ready. He overestimates my abilities.