Gluten-Free Recipes – Sorghum Cauliflower Curry

I am a little obsessed with sorghum lately.  I go through phases with food.  I find something that I love and I can’t get enough of it.  Sometimes it lasts for a couple weeks, sometimes a couple months.  This summer it was figs.  The fall and beginning of winter were full of persimmons and delicata squash.  My current fixation is sorghum.  While I have used sorghum flour frequently in the last three years, I just recently discovered the possibilities of cooking with the unprocessed grain.  (Anheuser-Busch’s gluten-free Redbridge beer is made from sorghum and has mainstream distribution, but the grain is still relatively difficult to find outside of specialty health food stores.)

The flavor is slightly nutty but it’s not an overwhelming, making it a good canvas for other seasonings. The nutritional properties are similar to quinoa, with higher protein content than most whole grains. Last week I made sorghum with cooked dried fava beans. I had it with dinner as a savory dish and at breakfast with almond milk as a cereal.

It takes a while to cook – even if you pre-soak it.  So it’s not for a ’10 minute meal’.  But like dried beans, it doesn’t require constant supervision so I can work on other things while it’s cooking away.  It also reheats well so I get a few meals out of one pot.

This Sorghum Cauliflower Curry was the favorite of most of my friends at a recent gluten-free whole grains cooking class.

Gluten-Free Vegetarian Sorghum Cauliflower Curry Recipe
4-6 Servings

Ingredients
3 cups water
1 cup Sorghum grain
Salt
1 cup chopped scallion
1 head cooked cauliflower florets
3 cups cooked green peas
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 cup reduced-fat coconut milk
6 Tablespoons seasoned rice wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1/2 cup packed chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:

Bring a medium pot of generously salted water to a boil.  Add sorghum, return to a simmer and cook until tender, about 60 minutes.  Drain thoroughly.

In a large bowl, combine scallion, cauliflower, and peas.  Add cooked sorghum and mix well.

In a small bowl, whisk together the black pepper, coconut milk, rice wine vinegar, curry powder and cayenne.

Drizzle vinaigrette over sorghum and vegetables.  Mix well.  Stir in cilantro.

Season to taste with additional vinegar, curry powder, salt or pepper as needed.

Serve warm.

So after my week as a vegetarian, I find myself gravitating more towards vegetarian recipes – once I took away the self-imposed meat-restrictions I haven’t been craving it as much.  Besides beans, tofu and grains like quinoa and sorghum, what else do gluten-free vegetarians use for savory proteins?