Bowl Filled with Super Good Stuff (Grains with Roasted Veggies and Curry Yogurt Edition)
the first of many things to do with your fall squash bounty
things you’ll need: quinoa (rice or lentils or faro or whatever grain you are into), squash (delicata) and whatever combo of veggies (carrots, chickpeas, red onion, and spinach or whatever you are into), yogurt, your favorite yellow curry powder, oil, lemon (or lime), salt and pepper.
this is the recipe that got me drooling and planning, by David Tamarkin at Epicurious
incidentally vegetarian and gluten-free, vegan if you use a vegan sour cream or coconut yogurt or maybe eff-around with this cashew cream recipe that I have been eyeing
Chapter 180
Today you woke up and immediately put on socks because guess what? It’s fall! Time to unpack your hoodies and blarfs (that’s a scarf that big enough to use as a lap blanket).
The grocery store and all the marketing professionals have pushed this change of season upon us for weeks with their pumpkin spiced harbingers. However, if you live in more temperate regions, then it’s not fall until the cooling systems turn off, all new allergies set in, and great piles of beautiful squashes began to appear everywhere you look.
As previously extolled in the archive of squash recipes passed, these hard-rind fruits are spectacular to hoard as flexible, inexpensive, and nutritious ingredients that will feed you well over the next blustery months. Purees! Soups! Mashes! Casseroles! More soup! Curries! Sauces! Probably more soup! Stews! And also soup!
You love a flexible recipe that you can make many times, swapping different veggies in and out for variety and seasonal appropriateness, so this recipe from David Tamarkin at Epicurious has you looking in your pantry and crisper with abject meal-planning zeal.
The best part about all of these bowls filled with super good stuff is that they are served in bowls. Other great things include simplicity and versatility. Also, you can put squash in all of them. This bowl relies on whipping up a curried yogurt.
Curry is a very complicated food word. You know that not all things labeled “curry” taste the same. These spice blends, in Indian cooking, are technically called a Masala, of which Garam Masala is probably the most well-known. Any “Yellow Curry Powder” will likely contain Tumeric, which is delicious but also just one of many spices in there. The most common “yellow curry powders” are probably Madras or Vandouvan.
Luckily, you have learned to trust your nose when choosing from the many spice blends out there. Alternately, you have learned how much of which things you like to add and call curry, so you can keep it simple with turmeric, coriander, cumin, and something of the cinnamon, coriander, and/or ginger category of warming spice.
Which is all to say, don’t stress about it, taste and smell about it. Whisk up a cup of yogurt with about ½ teaspoon of the spice blend of your choice and salt to taste. You can tweak it to your personal tastes. Don’t forget a little lemon (or lime) juice for that bright pop of acid and salt to taste. The idea is to pack flavor into the yogurt and let everything else in the bowl stand on its own because it can. You can read more about curry varieties (here, here, here, and here) if you are one of those people who can’t NOT stress about it.
If you hate the yogurt you made, you can make another one. It’s ok. Remember that it’s ok.
While you stress about your yogurt, make some quinoa, according to the package instructions. Please rinse your quinoa, unless it comes pre-rinsed because quinoa has a natural coating of Saponins, which can taste bitter (and are also used in soaps, vaccines, toothpaste, and as a foaming agent in beverages. Whaaaaaaat?!). If you don’t have quinoa, make faro or rice or lentils or whatever grain your pantry provides. Make sure to season the cooking liquid with salt or stock or bouillon.
Also, prep your squash! Delicata squash is a lovely cream-colored, thinner skinned, squash with green (occasionally orange-ish) stripes that typically comes into season before the rest of its winter squash cousins. They are easy to cut, the skins are delicate enough to eat, and the flesh is as sweet as it is silky. Wash, halve, deseed, and slice into half circles.
Got any carrot sticks leftover from your dip? Got a red onion? Maybe some mushrooms or cauliflower? What’s in your crisper that you like roasting? Cut that up too. Might as well open a can of chickpeas, drain, rinse, and use those too. Toss all the cut veggies with oil, salt, pepper, and a little something something extra just tie them all together. David’s recipe says cinnamon (which is a great choice), but maybe you went hard on the warming spice in your yogurt and would rather double down on turmeric or cumin. Maybe you just have that one spice jar, so it’s ok to toss the veggies in the same spice you used in the yogurt. Scared of doing too much and would rather keep it simple? Salt and pepper will do the job.
Spread your veggies out on a baking sheet or two and roast on 400-425 for as long as it takes. If you don’t throw in super big hunks and keep it to one layer, it’ll be 20-30 minutes. Given them a toss (and taste) at 10 minutes for more even browning.
Feel like you are missing a green? Open a box/bag of raw greens or blanch some spinach. If you want to use kale or chard, no one will yell at you. It’s your bowl. Wanna get all fancy with microgreens and pea shoots? It’s all you.
Pile on your grain, top with roasted veggies and greens. Tuck pockets of yogurt everywhere or get fancy and spoon smear it all over the bottom of the bowl before assembling. Whatever gives you easy access to the yogurt because you will want some in every bite.
Grab your fuzzy socks and cuddle up to your bowl of delicious stuff. Watch the squirrels squirreling away, thinking they’ve got the right idea. So much fall to come, so many squashes to gather.
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