Pressure-Cooked Quinoa Salad with Cauliflower

In addition to setting a resolution to use my pressure cooker more this year, I also vowed to spend more time with my collection of cookbooks, like Modernist Cuisine at Home, Nathan Myhrvold's beautiful work that applies molecular gastronomy techniques to recipes for home cooks (it's the much shorter, simpler partner to the professionals' Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking).

You won't get very far with Modernist Cuisine at Home unless you have either a pressure cooker or a sous vide machine (or both). When I got the book, I had neither. I made the macaroni & cheese, but after that realized I needed a pressure cooker if I was going to make many of the other recipes.

This recipe for quinoa salad with cauliflower is one of the book's most accessible dishes. There's really only two "tricks" employed here: grate the cauliflower so it resembles couscous and cook the quinoa in the pressure cooker.

Quinoa cooks in a pressure cooker in the fraction of the time to boil or simmer it in a saucepan.

Why cook the quinoa this way? It saves time. It took about 10 minutes to boil the quinoa in Ginger-Hoisin Salmon with Quinoa Pilaf, not counting the time to boil the water, and about 35 minutes total cooking time to soak, boil and simmer the quinoa for Roasted Parsnip-Quinoa Salad. In this recipe, once up to pressure, the quinoa cooks in 4 minutes.

Use a mandolin to slice off just the tips of the cauliflower florets, creating a pile of couscous-like bits.

Otherwise, the rest of this dish is typical salad ingredients--diced apple, toasted pine nuts, parsley, currants--and a tangy vinaigrette dressing. The recipe calls for honey vinegar and macadamia nut oil for the dressing. Finding neither at the grocery store, I substituted white balsamic vinegar as suggested, along with walnut oil (if you can't find white balsamic vinegar, I imagine white wine vinegar or even apple cider vinegar would also be good).

Be careful with the mandolin as you prepare the cauliflower, since you can't use the safety guard to perform the task of shaving the tips of the cauliflower into a pile of little crumbs.

Pressure-Cooked Quinoa Salad with Cauliflower
Adapted from Modernist Cuisine at Home, by Nathan Myhrvold

3 cups water
1 3/4 cups white quinoa
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 head cauliflower, cut into large florets
1 green apple, peeled and diced
1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley
1/4 cup diced celery (about 2 ribs)
1/4 cup dried currants
2 1/2 tbsp. white balsamic vinegar (original recipe called for honey vinegar, which I couldn't find, but said white balsamic could be substituted)
2 1/2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp. walnut oil (original recipe called for macadamia nut oil)
Salt, to taste
Lemon juice, to taste (I used fresh juice from 1/2 lemon)

1. Place a baking sheet in the freezer to chill for at least 15 minutes.

2. Combine water and quinoa in a pressure cooker. Seal the pressure cooker, set desired pressure to "high" and bring to pressure over medium-high heat. Once high pressure is achieved, reduce heat to medium-low and cook for 4 minutes, maintaining high pressure. Depressurize the pressure cooker by running cold water over the lid. Transfer the quinoa to the chilled baking sheet to cool quickly.

3. Toast the pine nuts in a small nonstick frying pan over medium-low heat until fragrant and lightly browned, about 3 to 5 minutes. Set aside.

4. Using a mandoline on its smallest setting (1/16-inch on mine), carefully shave off just the tips of the cauliflower, yielding about 1 3/4 to 2 cups of couscous-like cauliflower shavings.

5. Combine the cooked quinoa, toasted pine nuts, shaved cauliflower, apple, parsley, celery and currants in a large bowl. Add the vinegar, oils, salt and lemon juice and toss to combine.

Cocktail: A Rye Smile

Grapefruit is good and cheap in the winter, making it an ideal fruit flavor for winter cocktails. Here I've paired rye whiskey with grapefruit, Cynar (a artichoke liqueur) and a homemade rosemary-brown sugar syrup. It's a nicely balanced drink, a bit tart and a bit herbal.

A Rye Smile

1 oz. rye whiskey
1 oz. grapefruit juice
1/2 oz. Cynar
3/4 oz. rosemary-brown sugar syrup (see recipe below)
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Grapefruit twist

Combine whiskey, grapefruit juice, Cynar, rosemary-brown sugar syrup and bitters in a shaker with ice. Shake until cold. Strain into a rocks glass with ice. Garnish with grapefruit twist.

Rosemary-brown sugar syrup

2 tbsp. fresh rosemary, roughly chopped
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup brown sugar

Combine ingredients in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and steep for 10 minutes. Strain syrup to remove rosemary. Keep syrup in refrigerator.

Pistachio-Mustard Salmon with Wine-Braised Mustard Greens

Happy New Year! Time to set aside all those holiday treats and get back into the healthy eating (kudos to you, if your waistline didn't expand a bit during the season of indulgence). A good place to start: fish and greens.

I really liked combination of mustard and salmon in the Mustard-Broiled Salmon with Miso and Honey Braised Greens. I thought I'd try taking the mustard a step further by pairing the fish with mustard greens.

I found this recipe for Pistachio-Mustard Salmon, which I thought would be just the thing to pair with mustard greens. This dish is very flavorful, but not spicy.

If you can only find salted pistachios, consider reducing the salt mixed in with the nut coating.

Pistachio-Mustard Salmon
Adapted from Pistachio-Crusted Honey Mustard Salmon, The Shrinking Chef

3 tbsp. honey
3 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
3/4 lb. salmon fillet, skin removed, cut into two pieces
1/2 cup roasted, shelled pistachios (preferably unsalted)
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.

2. In a shallow bowl, combine the honey, mustard and lemon juice. Add the salmon fillets and turn to coat.

3. Chop the pistachios to a coarse crumb. Combine with the oregano, salt and pepper and transfer to a plate. Dip each honey-mustard pieces of salmon in the pistachios, pressing down gently to coat, and transfer the salmon piece to a baking dish. Spoon any remaining pistachios over the fillets.

4. Bake salmon until fish flakes with a fork and is the desired doneness, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Wine-Braised Mustard Greens

2 tbsp. olive oil
1 bunch mustard greens, stems removed and greens cut into 2-inch wide pieces
4 garlic cloves, minced
Seasoned salt, to taste
1/3 cup dry white wine (such as sauvignon blanc)
1 tbsp. white balsamic vinegar

1. Heat olive in a steep-sided skillet over medium-high heat. Add greens and garlic and sauté until the greens are wilted, about 5 minutes. Add the wine, stir to combine, cover and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer greens until tender, about 10 minutes.

2. Remove lid and continue to cook if there is excess moisture in the pan (greens shouldn't be completely dry, but you don't want them swimming either). Turn off the heat, add the white balsamic vinegar and stir to combine.

2014 In / Out with Cook In / Dine Out

In	Out
Heirloom grains. With wheat on the outs and quinoa overplayed time to try something new. How about spelt? Or teff, the grain used to make that amazing Ethiopian bread.	Quinoa. I had this on my "out" list last year, but it just wouldn't go away. Sure it's good for you, but so are lots of other grains and it's time to give them a chance.
Korean cuisine. Japanese food is everywhere. Pok Pok and Little Serow have patrons lining up for hours to eat Thai. Mission Chinese Food is a hit. Time for an enterprising chef to bring Korean to stage center.	Sriracha. With the American producer of this popular Asian hot sauce shut down (hopefully temporarily), it's as good as time as any to give another flavor a try.
Small-batch whiskey. Small-scale distilleries that got into the game making gin are branching out, and whiskey feels like a logical place to go next. Bring on the brown cocktails!	Small-batch gin. Been to the gin shelf of a liquor store lately? That place is crowded with "American dry gin," which is now made all over the country.
Creative desserts. The cronut was just the beginning. I expect we'll see other such buzz-worthy confections in the new year.	Cronut. As I said, time for something else to obsess over and wait in line for hours to taste.
Umami. Forbes includes this on its trend list, and I have to agree. Perhaps by the end of 2014, dashi will be a household word.	Sweet. It's the flavor that's the easiest to like, but thus also the easiest to overdo. Too often dishes that don't need sugar have it. Time to ease up.
Savory cocktails. I've been thumbing through Greg Henry's book, and judging from this and the drinks I've been enjoying in bars lately, there's even more libation experimentation to be had.	19th Century cocktails. It's been a great history lesson, but there's a whole new world of flavors there. Time to look forward.
Cauliflower. You can do so much with cauliflower. Roasting it really unlocks its flavor.	Kale. Another thing I thought would cool off this year that really didn't. Aren't we all a little tired of kale salad by now?
Midwestern cuisine. It makes sense, doesn't it, that the region closest to where so much of our food is grown would have some interesting things to say about fresh and local. A lot of people are saying this is the next big thing.	BBQ. Who doesn't love a good hunk of smoky meat? Well, I suppose vegetarians, but BBQ junkies (including moi), surely got a good fix this year. Time for something else from the heartland.
Ice cream. Exciting ice cream flavors are all the rage, whether slowly churned or made instantly.	Cupcakes. Tired of the frosting nose.
Caring for your micobiome. Turns out the bacteria we each carry around in our gut is important, very important, to maintaining good health.	Fad diets. Have you lost weight with Atkins, South Beach, Paleo or any other such fad diet and later gained most or all of it back? I think Michael Pollan got it right when he said "eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Want to check out last year's In/Out list for 2013? Here it is. How'd I do? A lot of things I said would be "out" are still very much "in," although I think I got it right with gastropubs. And it's possible my declaring Scandinavian cuisine "out" foreshadowed Noma getting knocked from its "best restaurant in the world" perch last year. And saying bread courses was "in" was a good call: Le Diplomate, which opened a few months later, serves an amazing one. As does Commerce in New York's West Village.

What do you think of this year's list? Let me know in the comments.

Best of 2013: Restaurants

Without a doubt, 2013 was a hot year for new restaurants in D.C. So much so, that, given my focus on cooking over restaurants, I really couldn't even begin to keep up. New D.C. restaurants I would have loved to visit this year, but didn't get to include Rose's Luxury, Doi Moi, Etto, Ghibeilina and Thally. There's always next year! That said, we did enjoy a number of great meals this year in new and established D.C. restaurants. We also ate well during sojourns to New York City, Portland, Oregon and Rehoboth Beach, Delware. Here were our most memorable bites:

Best Starter: Corn Bread with Bacon Marmalade, Range (Washington, D.C.). The first morsel I ever tasted at Bryan Voltaggio's sprawling Friendship Heights outpost was one of my all-time favorites. The sweet and smoky bacon marmalade was sinfully delicious and unforgettable. Honorable mentions: Bread Basket, Le Diplomate (Washington, D.C.); Chilled Pea Soup, Blue Hill (New York, N.Y.).

Best Salad: Beans Salad with Sugar Snap, Green and Yellow Beans, Toasted Hazelnuts, Eataly (New York, N.Y.). On a sweltering hot summer day, a recharge lunch in Manhattan Italian food mart Eataly turned into a surprisingly delightful lunch, the highlight of which was this salad of contrasting textures. Honorable mentions: Misticanza, Casa Luca (Washington, D.C.); Salad of mixed greens with idiazábal cheese, Jaleo (Washington, D.C.).

Best Pasta: Smoked Potato Gnocchi with Duck Ragu, Casa Luca (Washington, D.C.). After having been wowed by last year's visit to Fiola, we were just as impressed with Chef Fabio Trabocchi's new casual downtown restaurant, where Chris had this incredible gnocchi. Honorable mention: Tagliolini with Porchetta and Smoked Mozzarella, Osteria Elisir (Washington, D.C.).

Best Meat Dish: Pork Chop for Two with Stuffing, Ma Peche (New York, N.Y.). Chris teased me for a long time about my interest in Momofuku. Then I took him to one of David Chang's restaurants. He doesn't tease me anymore. We were both smitten with Ma Peche and especially this amazing pork dish, which was the inspiration for what I served us on Christmas this year. Honorable mentions: Pork and Foie Gras Canelones, Jaleo (Washington, D.C.); House-Made Bratwurst, Grüner (Portland, Ore.).

Best Seafood Dish: Lobster with Heirloom Tomatoes and Eggplant Puree, a(MUSE) (Rehoboth Beach, Del.). There was a lot to love about the tasting menu we enjoyed last summer at a(MUSE), but I chose this lobster dish because I loved its artful presentation and the honey-paprika sauce that accompanied it. Honorable mention: Arctic Char with Summer Squash, Table (Washington, D.C.).

Best Pizza: Salsiccia Dolce, Posto (New York, N.Y.). We've enjoyed the pizza at Posto for years, but I didn't write about it until this summer. We've tried several pies there, but we always come back to this sausage, caramelized onion and basil pizza, which is our favorite pizza anywhere these days. Honorable mention:  Luigi (ramp pizza), Graffiato (Washington, D.C.).

Best Roast Chicken: Roasted Barbecue Chicken, Blue Duck Tavern (Washington, D.C.). Although roasted indoors, this juicy bird had all the flavor of outdoor barbecue thanks to its brine. It inspired my own experiment with Smoke-Brined Oven BBQ Chicken. Honorable mention: Peruvian Roast Chicken, Del Campo.

Best Dessert: Dark Chocolate Napoleon, Le Diplomate (Washington, D.C.). The beginning bread basket and closing dessert were the highlights of our meal at Le Diplomate. I loved this architectural wonder of a dessert, a chocoholic's dream. Le Diplomate still has this on their menu, although their pastry chef, Naomi Gallego, is now cooking at Blue Duck Tavern. Honorable mention: Coffee Mousse with Hazelnut Dacquoise, Del Campo (Washington, D.C.).

Best Cocktail: Vegetal Gin & Tonic, Jaleo (Washington, D.C.). Spanish-style gin & tonics have become very popular this year. One of the best places to enjoy them in D.C. is at the Jaleo bar, where you can watch the bartenders craft them with assorted aromatic touches. Honorable mentions: Agave Stinger, Commerce (New York, N.Y.); Playground Meltdown,  Range (Washington, D.C.); Martinez, Graffiato (Washington, D.C.).

Best Service: Del Campo (Washington, D.C.). I ate at Del Campo several times, and during each visit I was impressed with the friendly, knowledgable service from a staff that was clearly interested in what was coming out of the kitchen and made me feel right at home. Honorable mentions: Blue Hill (New York, N.Y.), Graffiato (Washington, D.C.).

Best Overall Restaurant Experience: Range (Washington, D.C.). In theory, Range shouldn't succeed. It's a giant restaurant in a shopping mall with a menu that covers every base from Italian to seafood to steak (it even has a cigar lounge). But both diners we ate at Range were remarkably good, proving the restaurant's name could aptly apply to how well it pulls off such varied dishes.  Honorable mentions: Del Campo (Washington, D.C.).a(MUSE) (Rehoboth Beach, Del.).

Best of 2013: Desserts

It might be hard to believe if you visit around the holidays, but normally, we don't eat dessert often at our house. Certainly, it's not with every meal or even every week. But every now and then, it's nice to have a really good sweet treat. Not some "light" diet-oriented dessert. Uh-uh. I'm talking something satisfying and decadent. I'd rather have dessert only every now and then and have it be incredible than have low-cal desserts all the time.

Cakes and Pies

I loved this unique Coffee Cake with Coffee Frosting from a recipe by The Pioneer Woman was the perfect winter treat, while Melissa Clarks' recipe for Strawberry Shortcake with Lemon-Pepper Syrup was just as good for summer. Another unusual but tasty cake was the Gin & Tonic Cake, inspired by my favorite cocktail. For out-and-out decadence, nothing tops this Chocolate Truffle Cake, from a recipe by Chef Naomi Pomeroy.

For Thanksgiving, I was blown away by Fine Cooking's recipe for Bourbon-Caramel Pumpkin Tart. And my Apple Custard Pie with Gingersnap Cookie Crust was my effort to combine the best of apple pie and pumpkin pie into one holiday treat.

Ice Cream

I didn't make as much ice cream this year, but when I did, I went for interesting, seasonal flavors. Last winter, I created the By the Fire Sundae with maple-bacon ice cream, a brown butter blondie, caramel and smoky whipped cream. In the spring, taking advantage of my favorite herb, I made Mint-Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. And in the summer, I discovered that sweet corn is just as great for dessert as a dinner side in Sweet Corn Ice Cream with Blackberry Sauce.

For lovers of ice cream pie, there's also this wonderfully festive Cereal Milk Ice Cream Pie with Compost Cookie Crust, an ode to the creative ideas of Momofuku Milk Bar Chef Christina Tosi (whose cookbook I got for Christmas--so look for more Momofuku treats next year).

Cookies

As usual, December featured lots of cookie recipes. My favorite were the Molasses Sandwich Cookies with lemon filling (we paired it with Almond Lace Cookies in this year's Dallas Desserts Holiday Bakeoff with Dallas Decoder). I also shared a recipe for Chocolate Saltine Bark, a longtime simple holiday favorite.

Another first this year: I attempted to create several original cookie recipes. My favorite were the Peanut Butter, Oatmeal and Chocolate Chip Cookies, which were like three great cookies rolled into one.

Best of 2013: Main Dishes

Experiments with brined roast chicken, an amazing beef stew and a host of broiled salmon entrees were among my favorite main dishes this year.

Beef and Pork

What makes Jacques Pepin's Beef Stew in Red Wine Sauce so good? Perhaps it's the combination of pearl onions, baby carrots and mushrooms with no potatoes. Or the touch of pancetta (or bacon, which I used). Or maybe that the wine cooks slowly in the oven with a whole bottle of wine. Regardless, it was my favorite beef dish this year. Truly exquisite. Other good beef dishes included the Beef Wellington with Gorgonzola, a perennial Christmas tradition in our house, and this Traditional Beef Stroganoff, which I adapted from several recipes seeking an "authentic" recipe for old-school Beef Stroganoff.

My favorite pork dish was these Sweet and Sticky Baby Back Ribs that appeared in The Washington Post, a wonderful indoor way to make flavorful summer ribs. I also enjoyed Le Pigeon (Portland) Chef Gabriel Rucker's recipe for Pan-Seared Pork Chops with Thyme and Bacon and my simple weeknight dinner recipe for Orange Pork Stir Fry with Ginger and Chard.

Chicken and Turkey

I got experimental with chicken this year. Seeking to replicate one of my favorite restaurant dishes, the roast chicken at Palena, I made Spice-Brined Roast Chicken, which turned out fairly close to what you get at the restaurant. Wanting to bring the smoky flavors of outdoor barbecue into the kitchen, another brining experiment yielded this tasty Smoked-Brined Oven BBQ Chicken. Lastly, taking advantage of seasonal sweet corn, I came up with these Roasted Corn and Chicken Enchiladas.

Apart from Thanksgiving, I didn't do much with turkey this year, although we did enjoy the Thanksgiving Leftovers Tacos I invented to use of all those great Thanksgiving dishes.

Fish

Broiled salmon is something I turn to again and again, since it's so easy to prepare quickly during the week and lends itself well to a variety of flavors. This year, I experimented more with Asian flavors, like the umami-rich Dashi-Poached Salmon, Garlic-Ginger Broiled Salmon with Miso-Braised Mustard Greens and Mustard Broiled Salmon with Miso and Honey-Braised Greens. Another salmon dish I liked served with greens was Broiled Salmon with White Bean, Kale and Bacon Ragoût. And if tacos are your thing, Salmon Tacos offered a nice variety to my usual broiled fillet.

Vegetables

Most of the pasta and grains best dishes I featured Friday are vegetarian, but there are a couple other great dishes I wanted to include here: The Vegetable Napoleons with Red Wine Sauce, which is a great dish if you want a dramatic presentation, and Yogurt Kuku, a sort of Middle Eastern frittata, that I served alongside a selection of favorite mezze dishes.