Dish 30: Baked lettuce wrap

This is going to have the most random ingredient list...ever. But it'll make sense eventually. Like, tomorrow. Maybe.

Using this recipe as a guide- a very loose guide- I set out to use up some lettuce leaves and some ingredient leftovers from other recipes.

Baked Lettuce Wraps:

- 12 or so leaves of broad lettuce (like Troicana, in this case)

- 1 medium onion

- 3 or 4 cloves of garlic

- 2/3 cup spinach stems, chopped

- 1 cup celery greens, chopped

- 2 cups spinach leaves, chopped

- The seeded inside parts of 3 summer squash (like what would be left over if you'd, say, peeled off the fleshy outer sections of three large squash for a salad? if you get what I'm sayin)

- Herbs and spices - rosemary, paprika, cumin and ancho

- 1/2 cup gruyere, grated

- Grated pecorino to taste 

- 1 cup cooked quinoa

Boil the lettuce leaves in salty water (2 tbs salt per 4 quarts of water) for a bit, until pliant, then remove, drain and cool)

Sautee the onions, garlic and spinach stems until soft, then add the squash innards. And rosemary. Once those are soft add the celery and spinach leaves. Once they wilt, taste, and add spices as you see fit. Cook a little longer til much of the water is gone from the pan.

Cool those and mix 1 cup of that filling with 1 cup cooked quinoa. Add the gruyere and mix.

Lay three leaves of lettuce down thusly. Scoop in a decent bit of the filling then wrap into little lettuce burrito wraps. Place in a dish with 1/4 of water. Top the wraps with some pecorino. Bake in a 400 degree oven about 10 minutes, then under the broiler for another 5 or so.

Ta da. More pecorino would've been more impressive.

Innards. Missing something.

There it is!

This dish wasn't bad. I have two leftover and look forward to eating them sometime this weekend. The flavors were good, the filling was just mushy. Looking at the recipe, I'm just going to turn this section into a giant

Notes for Improvement:
- Recipe called for an egg in the filling. It didn't necessarily need it- I didn't care if it fell apart a bit while eating- but hell, add it in there next time
- Recipe used rice- but only par cooked it and finished it off in the oven. I cut down on my bake time because my quinoa was already cooked, but having the grain be a little al dente may help with my texture issues
- Recipe used nuts and raisins - these would've held up during cooking, once again making some variation

That all being said, very valid way to use up lettuce at the very least. I left most of the stems on, and those had a nice texture to them. The lettuce was much milder than the escarole would've been, but I didn't mind. I think the big issue is that it involved turning on my oven. Let me see if there's a way I can just pan fry these.