Dinner Bowl #63

 

This is one of those meals that doesn't look like much, but was actually amazing, the kind of thing that makes you pause and close your eyes just to ensure you're not distracted by anything while you are tasting it. All the recipes are from Cristina's Kitchen: Mediterranean vegetable pilaf, chickpea rice stuffed leeks, and dill yogurt sauce with garlic (veganized, of course, with vegan yogurt and vegan mayo).

I won't say this was perfect, in part because Cristina's stuffed leeks recipe was written in a super confusing way, and in part because I don't think this rice was as good as it could have been (although I could remedy that easily, were I to make something like this again). Also, I had frozen my Greek yogurt, and something about that made it turn super watery--I do not know what is going on with the non-dairy yogurt there, but apparently you can't freeze it. Live and learn. That's why the sauce is in a cup and not pooling prettily in the bowl, because if I had done that, it would look really soupy.

The original recipe for the leeks, for example, does not even list leeks in the ingredient list, though they are obviously implied. And it was very unclear to me whether to use raw or cooked rice in the filling, though I went with raw rice and that turned out to be perfect. I could only find Fresno peppers for the chilis, and thus I just used one. And for some reason my store only sells tomato puree in 28-ounce cans, so I used half and now I have half a can to figure out what to do with, even though I have enough of this stuff to feed an army.

But. None of that matters, because this was sort of a revelation.

I've stuffed peppers and cabbage, but leeks? I was intrigued and I had to try this. It was probably the last day until fall when I could keep the oven on at 400 degrees for as long as I needed for this, and it was the only day in two weeks when that could hope to happen. It was a bit fussy--I had to learn how to separate the leek leaves without splitting them, and there is a lot of washing one needs to do for leeks. And you have to parboil the leaves, of course, and I think I overcooked a batch that way. So I did struggle a bit to get them rolled up. They don't look super pretty, either, because I struggled to get them to hold together properly.

The rice has tons of veggies in it, so between that and the leeks I didn't feel I needed another veggie side. It was kind of gloopy, though, and nothing like any pilaf I've ever made--I'd use long grain rice next time, and veggie broth instead of water for more flavor, and possibly use less water because the veggies give so much up themselves. When I first tasted it, I was disappointed, but then I tried a leek, and I realized that it was the perfect foil for the spicy, savory leek bundles.

The yogurt sauce really sets everything off well. The leeks are very spicy and peppery, even though I only used one chili pepper, and they'd be possibly unbearable to me with two chilis. There was rather a lot of ground black pepper, too. So having a more bland rice dish was fine this time, though I can't recommend the recipe on its own, and I'd probably make my own recipe for rice pilaf and have that with some other sauteed veggies if I made stuffed leeks again.

But let's get real. Once you have bitten into that tender, savory, spicy bundle of leeks, rice, chickpeas, cilantro, onions, chili, and spices, you know you're going to make them again. You just are.

Mine is a nutty yogurt, so I didn't tag this nut free. But without the sauce, this is free of all major allergens, too.