Wild rice and Israeli couscous salad

This is a concoction that will get you will points with the 'rents, or, if it's too late for that, an invitation to come back to the family reunion next year (in spite of what you said while in your cups this time around).

There will be no recipe, only a list of ingredients. Why, picnic breath, you ask? 'Cause I measured only the rice and couscous and nothing else. When you make your dressing, keep tasting it. When it tastes right to you, it IS right. Add more or less of the ancillary (aka canned) ingredients. It won't matter except to you and those you are feeding. Knock yourself out.

One last word: this batch, which I catered for a dinner for 20, got me re-engaged the same night for a picnic for over 30 two weeks later. So no sneezing at this. I sneezed all the way to the bank.

Wild rice and Israeli couscous salad
3 cups chicken broth
a 4 oz box of wild rice (don't get that wild and long grain rice mix - just don't do it)
1 cup Israeli couscous
scallions, chopped
garlic, chopped
hearts of palm
bamboo shoots
water chestnuts
small jar of marinated artichoke hearts, chopped
some of the liquid from the artichokes
salt and pepper to taste

Bring the broth to a boil. Add wild rice and simmer 50-55 min. Drain, reserving liquid. Cook the couscous in the same liquid for 10 min., drain and rinse with cool water to stop cooking.

Add the other ingredients more or less to your taste.

Here's my approximate dressing:
olive oil
lemon zest
rice wine vinegar
sesame oil
garlic
red pepper flakes
SunnyD
fish sauce
salt and pepper

Put these together and taste, taste, taste until you like it. Pour it over the salad when it's time to serve.

Vindaloo shrimp with couscous and caramelized broccoli

Vindaloo…who knew? An Indian spice, it can pack a punch depending on the amount of curry you incorporate. We have Savory Spice Shop here in Denver, a source for practically anything you can imagine. They make dozens of custom blends, including vindaloo. It has 13 ingredients – all contributing in the end to a warm and fuzzy flavor. It was a little hot when made into a paste, but I didn’t use all that much and on the shrimp it was fabulous.

I bought a packaged “instant” couscous at Whole Foods yesterday. Sounded like a good idea – so so in the end. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to give a recipe, I just followed what the box said.

Vindaloo shrimp with couscous and caramelized broccoli
vindaloo paste*
10 oz. shrimp, peeled and de-veined
small crown of broccoli, trimmed and cut into smallish pieces.
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
salt and pepper

*Combine equal amounts vindaloo powder, water and oil. Stir into a paste. For this amount of shrimp I found that 1 ½ tsp of each was perfect.

Heat 2 saute pans with 1 tbsp each of butter and oil. The one for the broccoli should be on medium high heat, for the shrimp, medium heat.

A word about the broccoli: I always use the stem; cut off the outside skin and cut the core into ½” pieces.
When the pan is hot drop in the broccoli. Sprinkle with some salt and pepper (to taste). Toss often with tongs until the broccoli begins to brown. Reduce heat to medium and cook for a couple of minutes. Take the pan off the heat and set aside.

Cook the shrimp simultaneously with the broccoli. Sprinkle them with a little salt and pepper right when you put them in the pan. When the bottom half has turned opaque, turn the shrimp and stir in the vindaloo paste. When the second side is near complete opacity, remove the shrimp from the heat. The length of time it takes to cook shrimp is entirely dependent on their size. Just eyeball them, turn them promptly when the time comes, and snatch them off the stove the instant the second side is done.

Pastiche of the day

For 3 days, while Peter was out of town, I ate a monotonously delicious diet. His last night home I made turkey Milanese, cutlets dredged in flour, dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, and lightly fried. I had brined the cutlets in salt and sugar water for several hours and they were practically falling apart even before cooking. I fried them in 1/8" of vegetable oil for exactly 2 minutes per side and they were wonderful.

I cooked only what we were going to eat that evening and stored the rest under plastic in the fridge. The next night I cooked what was left and had enough for two dinners. My lunches were gravlax (made last weekend) on toast. I was in culinary heaven.

Last night Peter was back home and I wanted to make something special. In fact, I made 2 somethings special: eggplant puree and what I must call a pastiche. ‘Splain that to me, Lucy.

First of all the eggplant puree recipe came from an internet recipe. It stewed gently on the stove for about 3 hours until a little judicious mashing with a potato masher turned it into a soft and delicious puree – a little spicy, but not past our point of tolerance. If such a dish interests you, go that google thing. You'll find dozens of different possibilities.

The pastiche is an object lesson in what to do without having to go shopping. We all have various and sundry things in the pantry, sometimes for so long we don’t even remember buying them. Here’s what I found: Israeli couscous, homemade chicken stock, celery, ½ a yellow bell pepper, ½ an onion, and 2 brat sausages I bought thinking I would eat them while Peter was away.

Pastiche of the day

Chop a stalk of celery. Chop the bell pepper. Chop the onion. So far pretty easy, say what?

Chop up the brats – no need to remove the casings. Put all of the above in a sauté pan with a bit of olive oil and a nice fat clove of garlic and cook until the sausage is no more than slightly pink.

Add 2 cups of chicken stock to the pan and bring to a boil. Add the couscous and simmer uncovered until it’s tender, about 6-8 minutes (I wasn’t watching the clock). Season with salt and pepper to taste. If the concoction is too wet (mine was), strain off the excess liquid and save it.

That’s all there was to it. The result was extremely satisfying. There’s enough of it, and enough eggplant, to provide a lunch today.

If I seem pedantic and didactic, it’s because I am. The whole purpose of my blog postings is to inspire the home cook to get busy and creative. The eggplant dish could certainly be made a day ahead. I was making it on a Sunday, so available time was no issue. My pastiche took 30 minutes including both prep and cooking time. If you don’t have 30 minutes to devote to a delicious and nutritious dinner, do carry-out.

For a free excerpt of my book, “A Year of Food,” in which I opine, report, cook, muse and philosophize about everything that passed my lips for an entire year, write to me at: scrout1944@msn.com.