Camy Tang's Savory Steel Cut Oats with Spring Vegetables

Camy Tang writes romance with a kick of wasabi. She grew up in Hawaii and now lives in San Jose, California, with her engineer husband and rambunctious mutt, Snickers. She graduated from Stanford University and worked as a biologist researcher for 9 years, but now she writes full-time. She is a staff worker for her church youth group, and she leads one of the worship teams for Sunday service.On her blog, she ponders knitting, spinning wool, dogs, running, the Never Ending Diet, and other frivolous things. Visit her website at http://www.camytang.com/ to read free short stories and subscribe to her quarterly newsletter.

Camy's newest book release: A Dangerous Stage

Tessa Lancaster worked for her uncle in the Japanese mafia until she was sent to prison for a murder she didn't commit. Now, after finding God behind bars, she takes odd jobs as a bodyguard to keep her distance from the family business.

In A Dangerous Stage, the second book in Camy Tang's Protection for Hire series, Tessa gets caught up in the web of lies surrounding a shady singing competition. Hired by one of the contestants, she works with Charles Britton---the lawyer who sent her to prison---to discover the dark figures manipulating the contest from behind the scenes.

Tessa's abilities will be tested like never before as she's forced to balance the safety of her client's family and her deepening relationship with Charles. In the midst of the chaos, she holds on to her faith to keep her safe and bring down the shadowy organization.

Camy's Recipe: Savory Steel Cut Oats with Spring Vegetables

This all started because I made vegetable risotto in my rice cooker, although I added more veggies than the recipe indicated, which added more water to it, which made the rice mushy.

Several months ago, I tried making a savory steel cut oats recipe from The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, but didn’t much care for it because it had too much honey in the recipe, and I didn’t like the taste of the olive oil, steel cut oats, and honey together. But I liked the texture of the steel cut oats, so I decided to combine the veggie risotta and steel cut oats recipe for a savory breakfast dish. I rather like eating savory steel cut oats for breakfast, and this ensures I get some veggies with breakfast.

I did a combination of the risotto recipe from the cookbook and the savory steel cut oatmeal recipe. Here it is:

1 tablespoon butter

1 minced garlic clove

1/2 diced onion

1 cup chopped leafy greens--I used kale, you could also use spinach, chard, beet greens instead

1-2 small carrots, finely diced, or 1 large carrot finely diced

1-2 small summer squash or zucchini, finely diced

1-2 small tomatoes, diced

(Note: You can pretty much add any veggies you like, although I’d suggest you chop them up well so they’ll cook thoroughly. If you like them more crunchy, you may want to chop them less fine and see if that gives them a harder texture, but I haven’t tried that.)

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

1 cup steel cut oats

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cumin (I actually used more than a 1/2 teaspoon, I just kind of shook it in)

Dash of cayenne pepper

Throw the butter, garlic, and onions in the rice cooker and hit the start button, then close the lid and let it cook while you cut up all the veggies.

Add all the veggies to the rice cooker, give it a good stir, and add the rest of the ingredients. Stir it all and reset the rice cooker. Put it on the regular rice setting.

After cooking, stir it again and then cover it and let it steam for 10 minutes before eating.

Note from Camy: It ended up needing a little more salt for my taste, but for those of you who don’t want too much salt in your diet, you can omit the salt entirely. It has a texture similar to rice or risotto in that it was sticky, but it has that nice steel cut oats texture. The veggies and spices make it a good savory side dish, although I eat it for breakfast. It has a slightly Southwestern flavor to it because of the cumin. If you don’t like that style, you can omit the tomatoes and switch the cumin to something else to make it less Southwestern.