Kidney Beans & Quinoa with Acorn Squash: Squish n' Squash Revisited

Around autumn, a perennial dish at home while I was growing up was one that we dubbed "Squish n' Squash." My mom roasted acorn squash halves, melted a smidgen of butter and a teaspoon of brown sugar in their center, then served them alongside kielbasa sausage. I'm told I gave the dish its name when I was very young - although I'm not sure what thought process led me to name the sausage "squish"...because it's squishy? 

When I was younger, of course, I gladly ate the sausage with a small pool of ketchup, and choked down only as much of the squash as my mom required before leaving the table. Since then, I've learned to appreciate the flavor of squash, lending itself so well to both sweet and savory adornments. I also understand why my mom wanted me to eat it, because squash is chock-full of fiber, vitamins and minerals. I still enjoy a good meal of squish n' squash, but kielbasa sausage isn't exactly something you should eat with any frequency. So I set out to find a healthier alternative that captures the flavor of kielbasa without requiring some fake processed soy sausage.

What I came up with seems to be a pretty good alternative (and it's vegan!). Red kidney beans and quinoa, both excellent sources of plant-based protein and fiber, combine with a good helping of garlic and paprika, with a little fresh marjoram to recreate the seasonings in kielbasa. Scoop that into your squash that's been roasted to a delicious tenderness with a touch of maple syrup, and you've got the makings of a good, healthy, satisfying meal. You'll almost, almost, forget about the kielbasa sausage.

Ingredients

3/4 cup quinoa, rinsed

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups water or veggie broth

2 cups cooked red kidney beans

1 tsp paprika

2 Tbsp fresh marjoram (1 tsp dry)

freshly ground pepper, to taste

2 acorn or "heart of gold" squash, rinsed, halved and seeded

4 tsp maple syrup

olive oil to drizzle

Directions

1. Place squash halves, cut side down, on a baking sheet. Roast in a 375 degree F oven for 30-40 min, or until squash flesh is tender. Turn squash over, lightly drizzle with olive oil, and put a teaspoon of maple syrup into each squash half. Return to oven and bake for an additional 5-10 min.

2. While squash is roasting, add quinoa and garlic to a medium saucepan. Toast over medium heat until quinoa starts to crackle, then add water (or broth) and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, until liquid is absorbed.

3. Add cooked kidney beans, paprika, marjoram, and ground pepper to quinoa and cook over medium-low heat until cooked through, about 5-10 min.

4. Scoop bean mixture into each squash half, or serve on a plate alongside squash.

Serves 4

The Maillard Reaction: The Chemistry Behind Cooking

I know my typical post on here involves recipes, but this is Kitchen Chemistry, and I am a chemist, so you have to expect that some chemistry will slip in here every once in a while. It just so happens that this year is the 100th anniversary of the Maillard reaction (pronounced May-yard), discovered by the eponymous and well-mustachioed Louis-Camille Maillard. You probably have no idea what the Maillard reaction is, but you most certainly know its application: it's the chemistry behind the browning of food when cooked.

When you subject food to high temperatures in a relatively low-moisture environment (a.k.a. sauteing, grilling, baking, but not boiling or microwaving), it browns. What's happening is that the sugars in the food are reacting with the amino acids that are also in the food, resulting in a number of new compounds. The specific compounds will vary among different kinds of food, but generally they're responsible for the pleasant taste and texture of cooked food.

Now, wait a minute, you might ask: table sugar can brown to make caramel, but there's no amino acids around there (OK, maybe you're not asking that, but I'll answer anyway). This is the result of another non-enzymatic browning reaction: carmelization. In this case, the sugars are reacting with other sugars, producing rearranged compounds, fragmenting and polymerization, all of which change and enhance the flavor of the food.

Of course, it's not really that simple (if you've taken chemistry, you should know that it's never that simple - otherwise people like me wouldn't have a job!). Since most foods have both sugars and amino acids, often a combination of these two reactions occurs when they're cooked. Also, even if you assume that only one of the Maillard reaction or carmelization are at work, still as many as hundreds of new compounds can be made. Despite discovering the reaction, Maillard never really understood it. It was about 40 years later that an American chemist, John E. Hodge, delved deeply and worked out the various processes at work. Impressively, he did the work himself. In case you weren't yet convinced of the complexity of the reaction, here's a schematic from his paper in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry:

Basically, there are three stages to the reaction:

• The sugar and amino acid combine to form a glycosylamine.
• The glycosylamine, which is unstable, undergoes an Amadori rearrangement - atoms get moved around, and what was a cyclic compound gets opened up into a linear chain.
• This intermediate (which is also an intermediate of glycation in the body; that's right, your body does the Maillard reaction too - except in the body it's not good) reacts in different ways, branching out to form a wide array of nitrogen-containing products, both small molecules and polymers.

Is this really a big deal? Well, turns out, it is, for a couple of reasons. The discovery was the first to really explore the chemical basis behind the flavors and smells in food, and led to the establishment of food science. Also, while a large number of the compounds produced upon cooking are pleasant and desirable, some of them, particularly in processed foods, can be dangerous. It's been a long goal of food chemists to find ways to process food in ways that minimize the harmful compounds while enhancing the pleasant ones, such as enzymatic pre-processing to break down the amino acid asparagine, which forms some amount of acrylamide (a carcinogen) in the Maillard reaction when it is present in food. It must also be a big deal, because a group of chemists recently convened in France near Maillard's hometown for a conference celebrating the 100th anniversary of the discovery, complete with a large tower of profiteroles.

Still not convinced? At the conference, Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn contended, “The Maillard is, by far, the most widely practiced chemical reaction in the world.” That's because people like you are running this reaction every time you cook. See? You are a chemist after all. :)