and things went downhill from there

This morning, I had one of those ideas that sounded really good on paper, but that I might have reconsidered if I had done some online research (I haven't done any research, so I can't say for sure if I'd have had second thoughts).

It started innocuously enough with some dried lobster mushrooms reconstituting in about 1½ cups of hot chicken stock. While those soaked, I chopped up the ½ of a red onion I had in the fridge and a clove of garlic. It looked like it needed something more, so I grabbed some of my smoked chicken from the basement freezer and cubed about the same quantity of that as I had of onion. I grabbed about the same amount of frozen peas and set them aside too.

I debated leading off with olive oil, but I didn't want to be in danger of making breakfast too healthy, so I reached for the butter instead and started sauteeing the onions over medium heat. When they were just starting to turn translucent, I dumped in the chicken and fished the mushrooms out of the stock. They were not quite done yet, but I knew they would have time to finish in the quinoa. I tossed them in with the chicken and onions, let them mingle a bit before finally adding the garlic and a bit more butter.

When the garlic was smelling pretty good, I poured ½ cup of red quinoa into the pan and set myself on a course of impending failure. I sprinkled in some chipotle pepper and a good dash of chilli powder, along with a bit of kosher salt. I added a tiny bit more butter and stirred things about until the quinoa started to stick, and a fond started building up on the bottom of the pan. I dumped in the frozen peas to tame things a bit and then deglazed the pan with about ¼ cup of sherry.

Once that had cooked off, I started adding the warm chicken stock a bit at a time, adding more as it cooked down. Because I'd got the idea in my stupid head that I was going to make risotto-style quinoa. I'd purposely made more stock than I would normally need if I had cooked quinoa the proper way, but as I neared the end of the stock, and the quinoa was still pebbly-hard, it dawned on me that I had miscalculated somewhere along the way.

Also, it didn't taste especially good. It had a slightly unpleasant bitterness to it. I added a bit more chipotle and chilli to cover that, and then in an act of desperation, I tossed in a bit of nutmeg. Why nutmeg? I guess I've been watching too many 18th-century cooking shows, and nutmeg seemed to go into everything back then. I figured that at best, it would offset the bitterness, and at worst it couldn't hurt too much.

Once I ran out of stock, I started adding the leftover hot water from the kettle I'd heated for coffee, and then I covered it with a lid to see if I could coax the crunchy quinoa into absorbing some of the liquid. It took a couple more additions of water and another ten minutes, but it eventually cooked down to a pleasing al dente.

I scraped the mixture into a bowl (the peas were all but mush by this point), cleaned the pan, and cracked a couple of eggs into another bit of butter. I hit them with a dash of salt and chipotle pepper and then cooked them covered until they were set up as a good sunny-side-up consistency. I slid them out onto the quinoa and resolved that I was going to eat every last bit of this miserable failure.

This was the best quinoa bowl I've had to date. I credit the nutmeg - it was really astonishing how well it harmonized with the other ingredients. All hints of the earlier bitterness were gone. I give it two begrudging thumbs up because it had no business tasting so good.

This morning on "Cooking With plonq":

We have some ancient quinoa in the back of the cupboard that I decided to dust off for breakfast. It's long expired, but I thought it might still be good. When I gave it the taste/smell test last night it seemed good, but cooking it in this quantity revealed that it's got a slight off-taste. I'll toss the rest and add some to our next grocery order.

I started by throwing a few dried porcini mushrooms into a cup of warm water and letting them soak while I had my first cup of coffee. When they were reconstituted enough, I cut them into quarters. I stirred a bit of chicken bouillon into the mushroom water and then added that to a pot with ½ cup of quinoa, the mushrooms, a minced clove of garlic, and one of the jalapeño peppers from my garden (from the batch I froze a couple of years ago).

I set that on the heat and then thawed some frozen lima beans, frozen kale, and frozen avocado and set them aside. When all of the water had cooked off the quinoa, I covered it and set it aside. While it rested, I spread a couple drops of canola oil into a pan and cracked in an egg. By the time that was done the quinoa was also ready, so I killed the heat and served it all.

I layered it as shown. I was going to finish it with a sprinkle of smoked paprika, but at the last moment I grabbed the chipotle pepper I bought last week and dusted it with that instead.

While I'd have preferred edamame, the lima beans actually worked really well. Since we have them on hand, I'll just use them again the next time I make this. Other than the quinoa being a tiny bit off, this was delicious, and probably a bit healthier than the breakfasts I usually tend to make.

I will definitely do this again.