Quinoa + Chickpea Fritters

Crapballs. I've been trying to keep up with this blog, really I have. If any of you follow me on IG, or came here from my last blog, or know me from here (is that a blast from the past, or what?!), you probably know that we've struggled with Cheech's bedtime since, I don't know, BIRTH. After almost two years of scratching our heads, trying to figure out why we had the only kid who could never manage to fall asleep before 8:30 pm, we gave up at succumbed to a 10-10:30 bedtime. This was challenging, but fine and it was manageable for us. In the past couple months, however, her bedtime has slowly been pushed back, and she wan't asleep until around midnight on most nights. This is all just to say that I've become incredibly unproductive as a result and, sadly, the first thing to suffer was this blog. Without getting too into it, we're trying to phase out naps now. She was sound asleep by 7:30 this evening, so if this can continue, I'll definitely be working on this space more often. Fingers crossed!

Anyhoo... Cheech is currently big on chickpeas, and whenever I see that my kid is obsessed with a healthy food, I try my best to add it to as many dishes as I possibly can. She's happy just eating them plain with maybe a little bit of salt sprinkled on, but that can get a little B-O-R-I-N-G for me. After using them in soups and pasta recipes, I wanted to try something new, and I remembered attempting to make gluten-free quinoa fritters for a gluten-free friend of ours a couple years back. The result was a complete failure. Without gluten to hold everything together, the fritters ended up totally falling apart as soon as they hit the hot oil in my pan. 

That experience was such a disaster, that I've spent the last two years steering clear of any type of gluten-free fritter. But then a lightbulb went off in my head. Perhaps the starchiness of a bean could do the trick! Maybe some mashed chickpeas could help bind my fritters. Well, I was wrong. Very, very wrong. I quickly realized that I was going to end up with the same fiasco on my hands, so I resorted to adding some panko to remedy the situation. It all ended up working out, but I need to give these another go because now I'm determined to make them gluten-free.

Don't get me wrong, these fritters were legit. I just wish this problem was a little easier to solve. I considered omitting the egg, but I fear they might end up too dry if I do that. I suppose I could simply consult the world wide web for the best solution, but I'm the kind of person who likes to assemble IKEA furniture without the handy directions included in the box, so I'll let you come to your own conclusions when it comes to my moronic tendencies. On that note, if any of you happen to know how to fix this dilemma, please feel free to share. 

Quinoa + Chickpea Fritters

olive oil

1/2 medium-large yellow onion, chopped

1 1/2 c. of chopped mushrooms (I used cremini/use whatever you happen to have)

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 large handfuls of baby spinach, roughly chopped

2 c. of cooked quinoa*

2 c. of cooked and drained chickpeas

1/2 c. of grated parmesan cheese

1 egg

1 tbsp. of chopped chives

1 tbsp. of chopped parsley

panko bread crumbs, roughly 1 c.**

salt + pepper

oil for medium-heat frying (I used walnut oil)

*I really like to toast my quinoa before cooking it. This is the absolute best quinoa-cooking tutorial, IMHO.

**Like I mentioned, I added the panko at the end to fix the recipe, so I didn't exactly measure. I'm assuming it was around 1 cup. It could have been a little more, or a little less. Once your mixture is a good consistency for forming patties that hold together, then you're good to go. 

Saute your chopped onion and mushrooms in some olive oil on medium-low heat until they start to caramelize. Add your spinach and garlic, and stir and cook until the spinach is wilted. Take your pan off of the heat, and let it cool. Using a food processor or potato masher (the latter will just take longer), grind your chickpeas into a thick and chunky paste. In a large mixing bowl, combine the quinoa, mashed chickpeas, parmesan, cooled mushroom and spinach mixture, chopped herbs, a generous amount of salt +pepper, and your egg. Bring it all together with your hands, and add the panko to help bind it. Form your mixture into little patties that are a touch smaller than your palm (I was able to get 17 total). Heat your frying oil in a shallow frying pan on medium heat. The oil is ready for frying once the fritters start to sizzle as soon as they hit the pan. Fry until golden, then flip to fry them on the other side. Make sure not to crowd your pan with fritters because it will make them harder to flip (these are delicate little guys). If you feel like they're browning too quickly, just lower your heat. Line them up on paper towels immediately after cooking to drain any excess oil. They're great served with a side salad, or just on their own with a dipping sauce of your choice. 

Fancy Wedge with Buttermilk Creme Fraîche Bleu Cheese Dressing

I'm not what you would call a salad person. Once in a great while I'll suffer through some sort of identity crisis and think that I could be a salad person, but without fail, I am always dead wrong. When people wax poetic about the large beautiful (they always refer to it as beautiful, for some reason) salad they had for lunch, I can't help but think that they are totally bullshitting me. I mean, yeah, I enjoy a well crafted salad as much as the next guy, but to have it be your entire meal just seems completely absurd to me. Maybe my appetite is off the charts, but if I were to eat a salad for lunch and only a salad, I'd be heading for some cheese and crackers within the hour. And it's not that I don't take pleasure in greens and a plethora of vegetables. Oh, I do! We eat LOTS of greens and LOTS of vegetables in this house, but I think I simply prefer them more in a supporting role.

This is not all to say that I will not be posting salads here. I will occasionally make a salad that I devour and am particularly proud of, and I'd love to share those recipes with you. Like this wedge, for example. We invited some friends over for dinner and we wanted to keep the menu from getting too complex, which can actually be challenging for us. I felt like serving a wedge salad, but also wanted something with a little more zest (after all, you have to impress folk who are coming for dinner at least a little bit), so I figured I'd take the traditional wedge just a few steps further. The result was glorious, and although I'm not convinced I would want to pull it off as a meal on its own, I will be making and serving it again, and again, and again.

Let's be honest. A wedge salad is not unlike a wolf in sheep's clothing. At some point in time, someone threw a whole bunch of really great, but possibly not great for you, ingredients on top of some iceberg lettuce and had the bravado to call it a salad. And good for that guy. Whatever you decide to add to your wedge salad, I think the key is always going to be a healthy slathering of creamy bleu cheese dressing. For supreme creaminess, you're going to want to let this dressing sit in your fridge for at least two hours, but overnight is best.

Buttermilk Creme Fraîche Bleu Cheese Dressing

1/2 c. of buttermilk

1/2 c. of creme fraîche

2 tbsp. of mayonnaise

1 tbsp. of balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp. of chopped chives

1 cup of crumbled bleu cheese

salt + pepper

Combine all of the above ingredients into a jar with a tight fitting lid, and shake the daylights out of it. Let it chill before using. Will last a good 4-5 days in your fridge if you have any extra, but I doubt you will.

Fancy Wedge

(serves 6-8)

2 heads of iceberg lettuce, quartered

2 8-minute eggs, peeled and chopped

6 slices of thick-cut bacon, fried and chopped

1 c. of halved cherry or grape tomatoes

1 tbsp. of chopped chives.

bleu cheese dressing

salt + pepper

Arrange your iceberg wedges on a platter. Top with your bleu cheese dressing. Sprinkle remaining ingredients on top of dressing and finish off with some salt and pepper.

Tapenade Quinoa Bowl with a Fried Egg

You'll soon realize that I put eggs on just about everything. They're an excellent source of protein, and I never tire of them. With the price of meat being astronomically high (especially grass-fed, pastured, organic meat), I probably only buy and cook it at home about three times a week. Eggs are an easy and affordable substitute. 

I'm not sure how I feel about this dish overall. We were low on food but too lazy to buy groceries, so I made do as best I could. Usually that plan works out quite well, though I do get the occasional dud. With a couple easy adjustments, however, I think this recipe can be turned into a winner. For one, I'd use white quinoa, which is what I typically buy. I noticed that the red quinoa at our market was about a dollar cheaper per pound in the bulk aisle, so I thought I'd give it a shot. We don't eat a ton of quinoa, and this was my first time preparing the red variety. In flavor, I thought it was excellent, but the texture killed it. Don't misunderstand me; I appreciate the natural bite that quinoa has to it, and in no way do I want it to be mushy, but this straight up felt like I was chomping down on thousands of tiny rubber bands. Maybe I did something wrong? I assumed that the cooking method would be the same, and from the Googling I've done, that does seem to be the case. Or, maybe I just bought shitty red quinoa and that was the reason for its low price point . 

The second mistake I made was adding too much tapenade. Tapenade, which is basically a combination of olives, herbs, garlic, anchovies (which I don't always use), and olive oil, is, as you can imagine, a condiment that packs a lot of punch. It's not the kind of thing you can just make a little of, so it's easiest to make a large batch, use what you need, and store the rest in the fridge. I got a little too ambitious when I added my tapenade to my quinoa, and probably put in double what I really should have. What resulted was a pot of terribly salty quinoa, so terribly salty tiny rubber bands. Had I enjoyed the red quinoa on its own, I would have saved it by quickly cooking and adding another batch to even out the flavor, but it simply wasn't worth it to me at that point. 

The recipe I have below was written with these revisions in mind. Also note, Joe claims he liked the tiny red rubber bands, so it may just be a personal issue. 

Tapenade Quinoa Bowl with a Fried Egg

1/2 c. of dry white quinoa (or red, if you like that sort of thing)

1 c. of cauliflower florets 

3 medium carrots, chopped into sticks

1 tbsp. of tapenade (recipe below)

2 eggs

olive oil

salt + pepper

Tapenade

1 1/2 c. of pitted mixed olives

1 small clove of garlic

2 stems of fresh oregano, leaves removed and stems discarded 

1 tbsp. of fresh lemon juice

2 tbsp. of olive oil

Traditionally, tapenade is ground into a smooth paste which can easily be done by throwing all of the above ingredients into a food processor. I do also like a coarser-style tapenade, so I am happy to just throw the first three ingredients onto a butcher block and roughly chop away. Once I'm satisfied with the texture (see photo above), I toss my mixture with the lemon juice and olive oil. Tapenade will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week, especially if topped with extra olive oil. 

Toss the cauliflower and carrots with some olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast at 400º until they turn to a deep golden hue, roughly 15-20 minutes. Meanwhile, cook your quinoa according to the directions on the package. Once the quinoa is done, toss in the tapenade while it is still hot to fully incorporate the flavors. Divide your quinoa and veggies into two bowls, and top each with a fried or over easy egg.

Asparagus + Pesto Minestrone with a Poached Egg

Here's the truth: I've been staring at my screen for approximately 20 minutes with a hundred thoughts running through my head. It seems as if I've forgotten how to do this. How peculiar, considering I did it for years and it's been not even 5 months since I did it last. If you're coming from here, then you should know first and foremost that this blog has very little to do with that blog. That blog broke. It broke a very long time ago, but I was too proud?, embarrassed?, confused? to admit it to everyone, but mostly myself. It felt so incredibly good when I finally did. It was not unlike parting ways with a boyfriend or girlfriend that you should have parted ways with long, long ago. It's not easy coming to terms with the fact that you're beginning to head in different directions. But in the end, once you've ripped the bandaid off, it's nice to look back fondly on the good times and look ahead, unattached, on what could possibly be better times.

So, yes, I was over my boyfriend. Turns out though, that there's a lot I've missed. I've missed writing. I've missed the community and my friends. I've missed the discipline and forcing my brain to work (when you're the parent of a toddler, your brain literally comes to a complete halt). Truth be told, I have toyed with the idea of starting a food blog for a few years… but who needs another fucking food blog, amiright? So I bounced a few food blog-type ideas back and forth in my head for a while, and always came back to Soup Club. Of all the things I missed, for whatever reason, I REALLY missed Soup Club. And that's the story of how I ended up here. It might take some time to get my sea legs, so just bear with me. 

Let's do this! I'll be posting more than just soup here, but considering the name of the blog, not going with soup for my first post seemed plain stupid. I'm quite fond of minestrone because it seems that there is not one, single way to make it. I wouldn't be surprised if "minestrone" was Italian for "throw a whole bunch of shit in a pot". The sky truly is the limit here, so I'll always be happy making a new variation of this classic. I had some asparagus that needed to be used sooner than later, and seeing as those green spears aren't exactly cheap, I figured I'd make them stretch by adding them to a giant pot of soup. The result was a light and earthy minestrone that was perfect for a semi-warm Spring day.

Asparagus + Pesto Minestrone with a Poached Egg

1 large shallot, chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced

1/2 c. of white wine

3 c. of chicken stock
1 c. of cannellini beans, cooked and drained
1 c. of grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
5-6 asparagus spears, chopped into rounds
pesto*
4 eggs, poached (do this at the very last minute)
olive oil
salt + pepper

Saute your chopped shallot and carrots in some olive oil on medium heat until the shallots start to become translucent. Add your garlic and sauté for a minute or two more. Pour in your white wine and let it simmer until all the liquid has evaporated (see image below). Add your stock and cooked beans, and bring to a simmer. Next, throw in your halved tomatoes and chopped asparagus. Simmer until the asparagus is fork tender, but still has a bite to it. If your liquid level appears to be low, feel free to add a little more stock. Season to your liking.

Ladle soup into bowls and top with one poached egg each, and a spoonful of pesto.

*A quick note on pesto: Giving you a recipe for pesto feels a little too amateur hour for me, so I made the executive decision to skip it. At this point, even if you've never made pesto, I think it's pretty clear to most people (especially those who are reading food blogs) that pesto is comprised of basil, parmesan, garlic, either pine nuts or walnuts, and some olive oil. Maybe it makes me a jerk, but writing a pesto recipe is just too much like writing an avocado toast recipe. All I'm saying is, I know you guys are better than that.