Peachy Keen Quinoa Salad

 

It’s summer in Texas!  And sometimes, when its super hot out, its good to have something light and cool to eat.  This summer salad fits the bill.  Lots of great color and flavor, without being heavy.  Plus, I’m sure its super good for you and other things.

We spied this recipe for a peach quinoa salad in Bon Appetit magazine, and decided we had to try it out.  We like quinoa, which is the trendy thing to do, but we hardly ever use it because we don’t have that many interesting recipes (shocking, I know).

First up is the quinoa.  Quinoa is a type of seed, but it’s typically used like a grain.  You’ll find it in the weird grain aisle with the barley, bulgar, and cous cous (and by “weird grain aisle” I mean where they keep the rice).  Anyway…this cooks much like rice in boiling water, but it takes about half as long.

When it was done cooking, we spread it out on a baking sheet.  This was just a way of cooling it down quickly. 

Next we get to pickle some red onions.  We LOVE pickled onions.  They are really easy to make, and the flavor is awesome.  First we boiled some apple cider vinegar with salt and sugar in order to get the pickling liquid.

  

Then we poured it over the onions and let it sit for about 20 minutes.  Then it’s done!  It changes from purple to a kind of neon pink color.  Kinda freaky!  It also produces a strong acidic flavor-element to the salad.

 

Now onto the peaches.  Peaches are a tricky fruit to buy at the grocery store.  When you get a good one that’s perfectly ripe, they are amazing.  But so frequently the peaches we buy are flavorless and dry when you cut into them.  Since it’s peach season in Texas, we decided to give them another try. 

Lucky for us, these peaches turned out great.  Lots of good, juicy flavor.  I will confess that I had some frozen peaches as back up just in case! 

Now it’s time to assemble!  Here we have peaches, cherry tomatoes, pickled onions, salt, pepper, chives, olive oil, and a little bit of the pickling liquid from the onions.

Next we folded in some arugula.  The dressing from the salad wilts the leaves a little bit over time.  Seriously, look at those colors.

And finally we add the cooled down quinoa.  Tastes like summer!

100: Viva Chez Venza! Vive le Blog!

 

Happy Bastille Day everyone!  We here at Chez Venza mark the passage of time through our celebration of the French Revolution.  Today we celebrate le centième (100th) blog post and 2-year anniversary.  Incroyable! 

We decided to take a break from the kitchen and go out to a fancy French restaurant. Americains, so lazy!

At least that was the plan.  Unbeknownst to us, our restaurant of choice started taking reservations, and we couldn’t get in because they were fully booked for the night.  Zut alors!    Luckily there was another French restaurant nearby that we went to instead.  Ouf, quel soulagement!

We started with a charcuterie plate.  Charcuterie is usually an assortment of cured or otherwise processed meats.  Often served with cheeses, nuts, or fruit preserves.  Along with its Italian counterpart, the antipasti, they are sometimes our favorite part of the meal!

From right to left is house-made salami, ham mousse, rabbit tourine, dijon mustard, olives and cornichons.  The ham mousse sounded really strange, but it was quite delicious. Initially we believed it was made from pigs that could fit in your hand, but then we saw the extra “s” in mousse.

The tourine was really good as well.   It’s not often we eat rabbit; its rare to eat hare!  (I know hares and rabbits are technically different animals, back off).  It was especially good with some bread and mustard and a little cornichon on the side.

Next up was a classic:  escargot.  These little guys were swimming (very slowly) in butter and garlic.  We concluded that it was good, but it needed more garlic.  Never skimp on the garlic!

Another classic:  Moules Mariniere, or mussels in a white wine sauce with garlic and shallot.  The parsley gave it a nice, bright flavor, and the sauce was light and refreshing. 

The mussels were served with frites, which are <ahem>…French fries.  They were ok, nothing special.  But good for soaking up delicious sauce!

Now we’re going to step it up a notch with duck confit with tomato rice and anchovy butter. 

Anchovy butter.  Mais, oui…

The duck was amazing…nice and crispy and full of flavor.  Seriously, best duck ever.

Confit means that the meat was salt cured, and then slowly cooked at low temperature in its own fat.  Guessing from the skin, I think they then crisped it up in a super hot oven.  The rice was quite unusual.  It was cooked in the liquid from tomatoes and had really good flavor.  I’m not sure if that is a particularly French technique, but it worked really well in this dish!

Here we have a side dish of ratatouille, which was quite extraordinary.  It’s a mixture of stewed zucchini, squash, tomatoes, and eggplant in a flavorful sauce with fresh herbs.  There was something acidic in the sauce that worked really well.  We are going to have to investigate this further and see if we can create it at home!

Last, but not least, is the crème brulee.  We followed Audrey Tautou’s lead and pretended to be Amelie, cracking open the hard shell of sugar to get to the creamy center.  You could see lots of vanilla beans swimming around in the custard, which is how you know it’s the real deal!

Oh la la! Another year, another glorious French meal.