Spinach Rice

My goal with this blog is not only give recipes - the internet is already a full library of them. You can Google anything you want and there is a recipe for it. My goal is to inspire people to eat more at home, to know what they are putting inside their bodies, and also to avoid waste in a smart way.

So yesterday I went to the supermarket (Trader Joe's, I love you!). I bought a lot of things because I was out of so many things - specially some super necessary staples and vegetables that are a wild card for me.

I already knew what I was going to do for dinner. Something that tastes like my childhood: sausage and potatoes, cooked on the pressure cooker. I even called my mother to learn how to do it in the way that I liked it. But I need something else, a side. Rice? Yeah, but I already had the potato. I needed more vegetables here as well. So I opted for brown rice. I prefer the white, but sometimes I go for this option, specially when I am having potatoes. But just the brown rice wasn't enough. So I remembered this TV show that I saw once that they did a rice with broccoli. It was a green rice, the host called it "Hulk Rice". I felt in love for this idea. So I decided to do it with spinach. But not stir-frying the spinach, I did a juice, using my homemade stock.

All I need was my stock made out of the leftover bone, a cup of baby spinach, a pinch of salt and one garlic clove.

Then I decided to pass it on the strainer, I didn't want the fibers and garlic pieces, just the juice. Again: best decision I've made. I think this process made my rice light on the spinach garlic taste and very colorful.

All I can see in this image is the mess behind the juice being poured on the strainer. Sorry (not sorry)!

I did about 1 cup of rice. So of course I needed more water to cook it. Since I did not let my rice rest on water (this is the wisest thing to do - let it sit on water for about 8 hours so it will cook in about 15 minutes, with less water. Also it neutralizes phytates - which helps other nutrients to be better absorbed (check the link!).

In the last minute I decided to add some quinoa because why not, right? I actually wanted to do more food because I was thinking of the future me and future me wanted to eat this on lunch.

I added a little more salt, cumin, garlic powder and the olive oil of the garlic confit and let it cook. In the process I was thinking about doing this with carrots, for an orange rice, and beets, for a pink rice. There are a lot of possibilities, right? Not just for the colors, but flavors as well: basil, chives, olive, pepper...

I was very happy with the result, both color and flavor were amazing. To be honest my husband didn't realize that he had this for dinner - here we eat in the dim light. And he liked it. So it's an extra point for this idea/recipe.

I would like to add that yes, I had this for lunch as well. With the leftover fish and a leftover salad!

Spinach rice, Milanese tilapia (made with my homemade breadcrumbs) and cabbage salad with orange vinaigrette

Just to be clear: I don't have a spinach obsession. Yes, I usually have it on the fridge, I like to hide this veggie on my sauces, meats, juices and smoothies. It's healthy, right?

Do your own stock - with scraps

A lot of people who cooks already knows that stock adds a layer of flavor to the dish. There are a few kinds of stock and each of them is used for specific combinations: vegetables, mushroom, meat, chicken, turkey, fish...

Generally, stocks contain four essential parts:

Flavoring ingredient: meats
Liquid: mostly water, but you can also use remouillage (a kind of stock made of bones that have already been used once to make a stock - it's clearer and weaker)
Aromatics: herbs, black pepper
Mirepoix: the famous combination of carrots, celery and onion

But my focus here is to explore the stock made using food that otherwise would be wasted. I am talking about ends, tops, peels, stems, leaves, bones. Carrots, broccoli, onions, celery, mushrooms, cauliflowers, garlic, potatoes, spring onion, cilantro, parsley... These (and more) are all the ingredients that I used for my stock. Also I had some turkey bones frozen from last Thanksgiving.

My stock was a little bit dark. If you want something clear, this is not appropriate. But generally, for what I cook, this stock is really good. I used a Ziplock bag a left it in the freezer, and as I was cooking I store all my peels, stems, tops and ending on this bag. One day, when it was full, I made the stock. Put everything together on a stock pan, water until everything is covered, some black peppercorns and let it cook for about 1 hour. Then I divided into containers to be frozen and others to be used right away.

Turkey stock made with vegetables scraps.

The real deal here is that you can keep this bag frozen for six months. So you have all this time to collect food that otherwise would go to the trash. Why not repurpose everything and make something that will actually save some money? Plus it's homemade, so you know all the ingredients and everything that is going to your dish. In other words: healthy food.

Resting in my freezer right now. Waiting to become a treasure for future recipes.

Right now I have some frozen on my freezer. This recipe gave me 4 containers - about 2 liters of stock. So I have a lot of it for sure! And I already have a bag on freezer with chicken bones and vegetables scraps being filled up for the next batch.

Also, I would like to add that some of these days I bought a rib steak, with the bone. Then I used the bone to do a broth using only water. I wanted to do this way because I could use for my dog food and I was a bit lazy at the time to add carrots and celery - but this is something you could do. Since dogs can not have pepper and onion, I would skip this ingredients, but the rest is safe for them (but ask your veterinarian before giving anything to him/her, ok?).

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Breadcrumbs from leftovers

This last weekend I have attend Zero Waste Food, a conference about how we produce a lot of food and don't consume it, so we need to reimagine and repurpose all these thing that is been wasted.

I am not a fan of waste in general. In fact I started this blog because this is one of my missions: to inspire people to cook more with minimum waste. You can not imagine the amount of food that goes to trash at homes around the world. We buy, we don't plan and the it goes to landfills. We think that once it goes to the trash, is not our problem anymore. Guess what, it is. Not only because when you throw food away you are expending your money (it's like you're literally throwing your money on the trash can), but it's not sustainable.

So, yesterday I decided to clean my fridge. Of course I had to throw somethings out, unfortunately. I am not perfect and I wish I was so had everything planned for that food that went to the garbage. But I was also proud of myself. Because I did not threw a lot of things as I used to do. Some of it was already "recycled food" - when I write this I mean: food that was already transformed into another meal and consumed. It was the leftovers and they were really bad, not ok for consume. But on my freezer I found a some bread. I was planning to do croutons for soup, but guess who: spring is here and soup is not on my plans any time soon. But I could do breadcrumbs. The ready to use that I have on my pantry is almost gone and I planned to put this item on my groceries shopping list for next week. Well, now I don't need this item anymore.

Everything start with frozen breads - put them in the oven for about 20 minutes at 350F (180º C)

So today as I used the oven for our breakfast I took this opportunity to start my breadcrumbs. Just throw it on a pan, with parchment paper and let is defrost and also toast a bit. The bread must be really dry, and I wanted it to be a little bit toasted as well. I let it sit for about 20 minutes. Then waited for it to cool down outside the oven and threw it on the food processor with a bit of salt and spring onion. I didn't want to put a lot of flavor here because in the future and I want season it according to my recipe - I can do gremolata, pesto, chicken Milanese (or fish or steak), some gratin... A lot of options, and I can season it as I wish.

Put it on the food processor and let this appliance do its work!

The magic (and satisfaction) of homemade breadcrumbs.

I am so satisfied with the result!