I haven't really been cooking much lately. I think it's because they raised my rent but not my wages and I can't afford food anymore. So I haven't really been eating much lately, either. Let me tell you, it's like poverty for an eater like me to live on so little food. I should stop doing anything social and just spend my money on healthy comestibles, I suppose. I reduced my grocery budget but not my weekly coffee/pastry budget. It's funny the things we choose when we have to choose, you know?
(What's actually funny is that I have an entire shelf in my cabinet full of dried pasta. But honestly, I'd rather go hungry than eat plain pasta with no sauce. And I have no sauce, so the pasta is just sitting there. Yes, it's true. I make tons of sense. I promise I'm not complaining.)
But once in awhile, a lady needs a square meal to hold her down. And I really wanted to cook something; I've been in a slump. Originally, I was going to go with risotto. But I've been out of the game for some time, now, and making risotto seemed daunting for someone hungry, devoid of energy, and out of practice. It's got the wine... and the broth... and all that stirring. Actually, just thinking about making risotto makes me want to take a nap right now.
The alternative? It's comparatively cheap and easy. Green rice. It's pretty much just finely processed vegetation into which cooked rice is stirred and heated.
And you can't have just rice, regardless of color, for dinner. Not in my home, anyway. So I sauteed some shrimp and made a really [un]healthy salad of avocados and hearts of palm with grape tomato wedges. I swear, it didn't look big on my plate. But now that I've consumed it all I happen to be one stuffed duckling.
You can have whatever you want with green rice. I've had it with panfried trout. I've had it with black beans and smoked salmon tacos. I think it actually goes pretty well with seafood. I guess maybe because the sea is green, too.
GREEN RICE
based on Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without
a bunch of cooked rice (3 cups or so), white or brown or both
4 green onions, cut into lengths of whatever handlable size you prefer
big handful each of spinach leaves, parsley leaves, cilantro leaves, and mint leaves
olive oil
2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
sea salt 'n' freshly ground pepper
chopped walnuts, pecans, or whole pine nuts
lemon wedges
1. Cook your rice however you like; unless you have some cooked on hand. If you start with 1 to 1 1/2 cups of uncooked rice, you'll end up with the right amount. I always rinse it first. I guess it removes starch and makes it less sticky after it cooks.
After you cook it, set it aside to prepare your green things.
2. Toss all your leaves and green onions in a food processor. Maybe a blender works too, but I don't know. I guess you could also spend 3 hours chopping it into miniscule pieces by hand. But I live in Arizona now, and that's not how we roll here.
Process away until it gets as fine as it will get and sticks to the sides instead of processing further.
3. Heat some olive oil in a pan over medium heat. When it gets hot enough, toss in the garlic and stir around for a little less than a minute, and then add all the green stuff.
Stir this a lot over the course of five minutes. Try to prevent it from sticking to the pan; this shouldn't be a problem because of a) all the water in the leaves, and b) the oil you've put in the pan. Or you could use a nonstick pan, if you want cancer of the body.
After five minutes, it should look pretty much the same, albeit a little drier.
4. Now is the time to add rice, and season to taste with a fat pinch of salt and some pepper. Just dump it in and stir it well enough to coat all the little rice grains with green. At first it might seem an impossible task. But plug away, o friend, and you'll be amazed at how far the green truly stretches.
If the starchy, starchy rice sticks to the pan, turn off the heat and add a little water and stir it around. This should make it possible to unstick the sticky bits. I like to cook with a wooden spatula, which makes a good firm yet unsharp scraping surface for pans. It unstuck the rice like magic with a little water.
5. Meanwhile, toast some nuts.
Shown above are chopped pecans. Pine nuts work best, but I didn't have any and they're pretty dad gum expensive. I have a bunch of pecans in my freezer, though. I thought, hey... they're fatty and soft like a pine nut. Why not? So I used them. Just toast them in a little pan for several minutes over medium low heat until they start to smell, then stir them a lot until they start to darken, and then transfer them to another container. Put some on the rice when you serve it.
6. Whip up whatever else you're having. I made a quick avocado and heart of palm salad a la My Kind of Food, except I added tomatoes. I then sauteed peeled, deveined shrimp very quickly in some olive oil and garlic, and took it out and sprinkled some sea salt and red pepper flakes on it. Don't forget the lemon wedges - one for the shrimp, and one for the rice. And there we have it, kids. A square meal for a hungry lady.
The soundtrack for the making of this meal was provided by the Jimmy Cliff station on Pandora Radio; the digesting, Paul Simon; the blogging, Alice in Chains. I am surprised I've never mentioned it before, but it's the sagest of advice of which I am currently capable:
Always cook with music.
