Great Friends, Local Wine and Spicy Moroccan Vegetable Stew with Rice and Mint Gremolata

Every year Chateau Lorane Winery hosts a fall wine club party at their tasting room overlooking Chateau Lorane's Lake Louise. Our friends the Stavers, also wine club members, took us as their guests. Roger scored, winning a bottle of Merlot for making the closest guesstimate of the weight of one of two giant pumpkins that greeted us. I believe it weighed 103 pounds!

Living less than two miles from the winery, we returned to our place for dinner. Although it was a busy afternoon, with very little time to prepare our meal in advance (a little over an hour), I got busy cooking up Donna Klein's The Gluten-Free Vegetarian Kitchen Moroccan Vegetable Stew made with scallions, carrots, chickpeas, tomatoes, peas and onions and spinach, served with rice (steamed with turmeric), while my husband set to work making the Mint Gremolata garnish to top the stew. Recipes are on page 47 and 48. I doubled everything but the salt, and  tripled the crushed red pepper flakes, cinnamon, ginger and coriander. Glad I did; made our taste buds happy!

I also had everything ready to go and chilling in the refrigerator to quickly  assemble individual salads of romaine, green onion tops, sliced mushroom and mandarin oranges with a  light vinaigrette.  For a cold beverage, I served the homemade Horchata de Arrzo I made a couple days before. A very tasty, sweet complement for most any spicy meal.

I got a laugh out of making this particular recipe the day after seeing the movie Cold Soul.  Paul Giamatti plays an actor named Paul Giamatti whose extracted soul looks exactly like a chickpea.

Thank you to Roger and Joyce for a lovely evening and the 2003 Chateau Lorane Cabernet Sauvignon with flavors of plum and blackberry with hints of spice and licorice.

Here's Donna's recipe for Mint Gremolata. I doubled the recipe, as follows:

4 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 large clove garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoon freshly grated lemon peel
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

In a small bowl, mix together the ingredients until well-combined. Refrigerate up to one (1) day until ready to serve.

Note: Having a warming drawer is absolutely wonderful! While we were away for a couple hours with our friends, the stew and rice kept warm without over-heating or over-cooking, ready to serve as soon as the loaf of 10-minute bake-and-serve Pugliese (artisan recipe; not gluten-free) came out of the oven!