Miso quinoa pilaf with grilled cucumber, eggplant, and soy dressing
Pilaf
Armenian cuisine
Grill
Last summer I experimented with toasting grains and then cooking them in milk. This gave the grains a pronounced nutty fragrance and flavor that I loved. Last week, with soy on the brain, as I was browning butter for a batch of fiveandspice’s Simply Raspberry Muffins, it occurred to me that if I toasted grains in butter, added miso and then cooked them in milk, the nutty quotient might increase. Increase it does, with a peanut buttery aroma and richness from the miso, creating a quinoa pilaf ready to be dressed. But how to dress it? Inspired by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s Spicy Cucumber Salad, a recent Genius pick, which has you bruise the cucumbers, I decided to try grilling cucumbers. They are surprisingly delicious! Grilled cucumbers maintain their crunch, and to my palate, the flavor brings them closer to their squash counterparts, zucchini. I added eggplant for textural and flavor contrast and a salty, tangy soy dressing to tie it all together. It is equally delicious warm, room temperature or cold the next day.
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