Hi, I'm Scott Samuel here at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa Valley.
Today, I'm going to show you how to make a kidney bean and brown rice salad with roasted red
peppers, Fuji apples, and a sherry vinaigrette. It's one of my favorite combinations of flavors,
because I'm using things that are fresh and in the garden. I have cucumbers, I have some roasted
red peppers, some Italian parsley, and I'm gonna make a simple vinaigrette using sherry vinegar.
We could also use a store-bought Italian dressing, but I think this is something you'll like.
Let's take a look at the ingredients....
For our kidney bean and brown rice salad, this is the body of the salad, I have canned kidney beans, that I've drained and rinsed;
I have brown rice that I've already cooked ahead of time; and lots of vegetables, and a little bit of fruit here.
So, we have some diced Apple, some diced cucumber, some diced celery, roasted red peppers, that are diced,
some fresh shallot, and I'm gonna top it with some toasted almonds, and finish it with some spinach.
Over here, we have the ingredients for our vinaigrette. We have olive oil, sherry vinegar,
some lemon juice, and some garlic. All seasoned with salt and pepper. And then, I have some
Italian parsley, here, that is also going to tie up this salad.
So, the first step I would do is make the brown rice. I'm gonna make it the "pasta method." So I've got a pot of boiling water.
I'm gonna add the brown rice, and I'm gonna boil this until it's done, and then drain it.
There is a couple ways to make brown rice. You can measure out the water, I do a two and a half to one...
so two and a half cups of water to one cup of brown rice....
But in this case, I'm just going to boil it till it's done and drain it.
And I've made some ahead of time for this salad because I want it to be cold when I fold everything together.
So, the next thing I want to do is make the vinaigrette. This is a very simple vinaigrette, and in this case, I'm using a nice olive oil.
This does give a lot of flavor.
Sherry vinegar, you can also use a apple cider vinegar, but I'm trying to use a vinegar other than balsamic because balsamic is darker,
and I don't want to take the color away from my vegetables and my fruit....
A little bit of garlic....
and a little bit of lemon juice....
Whisking that together, with a touch of pepper, touch of salt....
And since I do have fresh tarragon in the garden, I'm gonna go ahead and use it.
If you don't have fresh tarragon, I would incorporate dried tarragon.....
By heating the vinegar, adding the dried tarragon, and then going ahead and making the vinaigrette.
But in this case, since I went outside and grabbed this, this makes sense.
So some fresh tarragon chopped up.
Not too much, I don't want to oxidize it.
Alright, so there's my sherry vinaigrette with tarragon, we'll set that aside...
I'm going to show you a little bit of vegetable work, so if I'm cutting my celery,
the easiest way to cut this, would be to cut it into strips.
I've already done some ahead of time, but the easiest way to make sure I get a nice dice....
And I think this recipe is calling for about a half a cup....
Is we'll cut it into strips, and then we'll cut it into chunks.
And the other ingredient in this recipe I wanted to show you would be the cucumber.
Just gonna lightly peel it
Cut in half, we're going to go ahead and scrape out the seeds....
with a spoon....
And then I'm going to cut this into small dice.
So nothing needs to be perfectly cut. This is a simple salad that I think high school students will love.
So, as you can see, very simple.... Just to kind of take the skin off, and the seeds out,
and now you have diced cucumber.
Alright, while my rice is cooking, let's go ahead and put this salad together.
I've got most of the ingredients prepped here.
So what I want to do is add the brown rice.....
my diced apple....
my diced cucumber and.....
celery,
my chopped shallot,
my roasted red pepper,
and my chopped Italian parsley.
So, as you can see, most of the work is getting all the ingredients chopped and ready to go.
And then I'll add my kidney beans at the very end.
I'll give this a kind of a stir to incorporate the ingredients.
And then I will add my vinaigrette.
And it's okay to leave the fresh herb out of the vinaigrette, but it just adds an additional flavor.
So at this point I want to sit the salad aside for about a half an hour so the flavors can marry.
So let's put this salad on a plate and see what it looks like.
So the kidney bean, brown rice, apple, cucumber, Italian parsley, salad.
Looks nice, it's had a chance to sit around and get some nice flavor.
So the last thing I'm going to add to this, will be the toasted almonds.
This can be added to the salad right now and served for lunch.....
....For high school or we can put it on the side for people who have nut allergies, and you could just add the nuts at the last second.
The nice color contrasts with the kidney beans and the brown rice and all the vegetables....
I love this salad.
Kidney bean and brown rice salad with roasted red pepper, cucumbers, and a sherry vinaigrette.
you