We were invited to a pot luck party at our friends' house last weekend. The theme was "Southern" (American), so I made my interpretation of Southern-style spicy black bean and rice salad, with the double-lid donabe rice cooker, "Kamado-san".
I wanted to make something really healthy and tasty at any temperature, so I test-kitchened a few times to get to the final recipe. Well...I was so happy with this final version! I like to cook the rice with the stock (chicken or vegetable stock) before tossing it with the vinaigrette for the extra layer of flavor. The rice is cooked slightly firm, so that it's nicely fluffy after soaking the moisture from the vinaigrette and other ingredients. Minced red onion, bell peppers, and roasted almond add the nice texture variation as well as the flavors, too. You can find the recipe on toiro's website, so please check it out. This donabe salad is so wonderful that you can keep the leftover in the fridge (in a tight-sealed container) and it still tastes so nice cold right out of the fridge on the next day.
On the day of the pot luck, I increased the recipe by cooking 3 rice cups of brown rice. Then, I also made about 1 rice cup amount of millet and quinoa. All the other ingredients were doubled from the original recipe amount, and everything was tossed in a large bowl. I also added some chopped Slow-roasted Umami Tomato to the salad. It came out fantastic! It was a complete vegan version (I cooked the brown rice with the vegetable stock) multi-grain salad, and I was so happy to see everybody enjoyed it, too.
Other dishes at the party were all delicious, too.
With the live band music, we had a blast until the very late hour.
