Main Course

• quinoa
• 18 roasted almonds, sliced
• garlic, diced
• 1 yellow tomato, sliced
• 5 crimini mushrooms, sliced
• 1 red plum, cubed
• 1/2 lemon, flesh cut up
• urfa biber spice from World Spice

Salad

• salad mix
• five fingerling potatoes
• one halved canned pear
• salad dressing (pansy and violet vinegar, roasted walnut oil, sweet red pepper and melange classique spice from World Spice)

Start with roasting the fingerlings at 400 for 40 minutes. Cut up all ingredients. With about 20 minutes to spare until you are ready to serve, put quinoa and water at a 1:1.5 ratio and bring to a boil, then cover and simmer until water is soaked up. Saute the garlic, onions, almonds, and spices together until onions become slightly translucent on the edges. Add mushrooms, lemon, tomato and plum and saute for a few more minutes. You want all your vegetables to remain al dente, to borrow the pasta expression.

By now the potatoes should be done, so take them out, slice them, and toss them into the salad mix with the cubed pear half and the dressing.

There’s little I love more than fancy salads. Growing up, a salad was a pile of iceberg lettuce drowning in ranch dressing… then I discovered the nut/fruit/vinaigrettes combination and learned to make my own salad dressings. I’ve never gone back (though I do use many premade dressings, if they’re fancy enough). In Toronto, I had a salad with sweet potato and goat cheese. It was stunning, so here’s a version using squash instead.

• Roast butternut squash
• butter lettuce
• spicy pecans
• dried cherries
• marscapone on sides (would have been much better with goat cheese)
• raspberry vinaigrette