Scheherazade Casserole

I apologize for my lack of updates recently ... school is swallowing me whole with the homework and the typing and the headaches and the mechanical pencils.  Thankfully, tomorrow is the last day of summer quarter! I will be back to my regular bloggity bloggin' schedule with lots of delicious Moosewood dishes to share!  I am very excited!

Today, as a distraction from a giant social studies unit I am putting together, I made Scheherazade Casserole. I have no idea how to pronounce this casserole, but I do know how to eat it: in a bowl, with a spoon!  I made a few adjustments because I didn't have any bulgur AND I got the wrong kind of soybeans, but this recipe still turned out delicious.  Like, lick the serving spoon delicious.

Instead of using the aforementioned bulgur, I substituted quinoa. I think this worked well, considering that both are grains and fairly chewy.

Quinoa is so rad. I need to eat it more often. I also need to convert Charlie into a quinoa eater. But I digress ....

I don't have any photos of the process, but here's what happened: I cooked onion and red bell pepper on the stove with salt, cumin, basil, cayenne, and black pepper. This was a highly seasoned dish and you can make it very spicy with the cayenne! I cooked soybeans (I used edamame ... it was great!) in a separate pot. In a large bowl I combined the cooked quinoa, edamame, seasoned onion/bell pepper mixture, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, and feta cheese. Everything smelled so spicy and tomatoey!  Ohhh baby!  I sprinkled the tops with a little more feta and baked the casseroles in the oven.  They came out golden and bubbly and scented my apartment wildly.

I served the casserole hot with some super delicious gala apple slices. The tomato paste added a great deal of flavor to the dish and the cayenne made it perfectly spicy. A high protein, high flavor dish I look forward to making again!