Cheap, Lazy, Picky Cooks

Our first recipe from Donna Klein’s The Gluten-Free Vegetarian Kitchen is a great success! We stuck very closely to the recipe as printed… because it already looked awesome and fit our needs.

Southwestern-Style Corn Spaghetti with Chili Beans

1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 (16-oz) can gluten-free chili beans, sauce included
1 (14.5-oz) can stewed tomatoes, juice included
1/2 cup salsa
1/4 cup canned chopped green chilis (I used a full 4.5 oz can, drained)
1 tbsp gf chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
8 ounces corn spaghetti
optional: gf shredded cheddar cheese and/or gf sour cream

1. Prepare a pot of water and set to boil. When ready, cook pasta according to package directions.
2. While that’s boiling, heat oil in another pan over medium heat. Add onions and saute until soft. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer over med-high heat. Cover, reduce heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. When pasta is cooked, drain and add to the bean mixture. Stir thoroughly and enjoy immediately with toppings of your choice!

What intrigued me about this dish was how well the flavors would blend. One of the transitions to make in gluten-free cooking is around the issue of pasta. Traditional pasta sauces were built to be served with traditional pasta, so using straight marinara on rice or corn pasta often doesn’t blend flavors as well as I would like. Building the Mexican-influenced sauce here to go with the mildly corn-flavored spaghetti made for a delightful dish.

This is a dual-purpose post.

First, I want to pass on how the veggie sausage (see last post) worked in leftovers. When we ate the first meal of it, we kept the sausage separate and placed it in our bowls first. Our jambalaya recipe got spooned on top of it, and the sausage held its shape nicely, crumbling a bit in a very sausage-y way. We packaged leftovers the same way — we put a layer of sausage on the bottom of the plastic leftover dish and spooned the rice on top. It kept its original texture nicely for the first two days or so. We made a LOT and froze some, and ate on it over a week. After the first few days, the sausage soaked up more moisture and got a bit soggier than it was, though still a bit chewy, and with the same great taste. I was not slowed down in my nomming.

Second, I’m intrigued by a new organization I’ve found online, and specifically their Vegetarian Food Pyramid. It looks like a great guideline to use on a daily basis, and I love having an image to replace all the food groups and pyramids I grew up with (several of which were thinly-veiled advertisements for the beef and dairy industries). Let me know what you think.