Quinoa Salad--Revisiting a Classic Recipe

My sister invited us over to dinner on Sunday, and I offered to bring a salad. I usually don't have lettuce on hand, so I figured I'd do a chopped salad. This is one of my favorite recipes, though it is mostly my own invention. It started with this recipe from 1994, when quinoa was such a mystery to the American table that you had to go to a health food store. But it has come a long way since then--each time I make the salad it evolves into something a bit different and delectable.
This is an awesome potluck dish--it is best made in advanced and served room temperature, and it is gluten free and can be made vegetarian or even vegan. It can be a full meal, or a side salad, if there are lots of dishes. When I make it for myself I add cooked chicken and cheese--but for this pot luck I'm going vegetarian, not vegan and adding a peppery cheese.

 Ingredients:

1 cup dry quinoa
2 cups broth (chicken or vegetable)
1 can black beans
zucchini and summer squash
cherry tomatoes
red and yellow bell peppers
green and red onion chopped
1 can pickled jalapeno peppers
avocado
pepper jack or peppered cheese

Dressing
2 limes
red wine vinegar
olive oil
salt and pepper
cumin
cilantro
garlic--I used roasted garlic

Rinse the quinoa, and add to a sauce pan with the broth. Cook according to package directions--or until it blooms and the liquid is evaporated. Set aside to
cool. While the quinoa is cooking, drain the beans and rinse them. Pour a little of the liquid of the jalapeno and a little lime juice over the beans and set them aside.

Chop all the squash, bell peppers, avocado and cheese into similar sized pieces, and finely dice the onions. If the cherry tomatoes are pretty big, I'll cut them in half as well.

Once the quinoa has cooled, combine it with the beans, and all of the chopped ingredients. For the dressing, mix lime zest, lime juice, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, cumin, cilantro, and garlic. I'd run it through my blender to get it smooth and then pour it over the rest. Serve room temperature, preferably after the salad has had time to marinate the flavors.

The Verdict: Load this salad down with as much chopped fresh veggies as you can imagine, and you have the perfect meal for me! I split this recipe in half--took half to my sister's house and added the last of the leftover turkey, more zucchini, more tomatoes, and more jalapenos to the other half. That made 4 full meals and a little extra. This is really summer in a bowl, and is something I make after the farmer's market--I guess when it is winter this salad makes me think of warmer days!

Adventures in Quinoa

So I selected two options from my Quinoa 365 cookbook, one is a main dish and one is a dessert. I figured if I was cooking Quinoa I might as well use it twice! And I wanted to expand my horizons--I've never had quinoa in anything but savory dishes.

Here are my two recipes from the book: Thai Cashew Chicken and Broccoli on Quinoa, and Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins.

 I took these photos of the recipes to the store so I would get everything I needed, and I still ended up with no whole wheat flour, no baking soda, and no cashews. I borrowed the first two from my sister, in exchange for muffins! The second just didn't happen. So it is just Thai Chicken and Broccoli, no cashews.

My Quinoa has "bloomed" but still had some liquid to absorb.

I cooked quinoa just last week, but I usually cook it in the sauce, so it absorbs the flavor and everything cooks at once. So I was worried about getting the liquid ratio right--when the timer went off it had bloomed, but was still sloshy. Fortunately, a little more cooking, a lot of time sitting, and some fluffing and it turned out the right consistency.

 While the quinoa cooled and absorbed liquid, I got out the ingredients for the muffins. When I borrowed the flour from my sister she was all fancy with her food scale, and I wanted to do the same, but the amounts in the book were confusing. Sadly math is hard, so I got my measuring cup out and went to work. Dry ingredients in the bowl, I turned to the main dish.

I don't want to see the chicken this came from!

Oyster Sauce and Sesame Oil are new additions to my kitchen.

I buy chicken in 20 lbs bags from Costco, so I knew I'd have enough for this recipe. It calls for 4 chicken breasts, but the one I pulled out of my monster bag was almost 13 oz, which I figured was equal.






            The marinade was so flavorful and easy--I thinly sliced this monster breast, and set it all in the fridge to work its magic. 

 The quinoa had cooled, so in it went into the dry ingredients, where it formed funny little balls. The cream cheese was more of the same. I struggled with the raspberries--the frozen ones I bought were monster sized (and not even from Costco!). But I moved on to wet ingredients, where I sadly used mostly substitutions to make them lighter. Egg substitute, apple sauce, and a sweetener blend, pretty much only the vanilla was as called for in the recipe.

    I found the chicken dish to be easier to follow the recipe, (though I must admit that besides forgetting the cashews, I added less peanut butter and honey at the end). Broccoli and onion chopped, I fried them up with some sesame oil. Then the chicken into the pan. It had been marinating for hours by this point (in between cooking the muffins and finishing the chicken I went and played with my nieces) so it was pretty brown. It made it sort of hard to see when it was cooked all the way through, but since it was so thinly sliced it cooked fast!  I added a touch of peanut butter, a drop of honey, and tossed it together with the broccoli. Yummy, even without cashews!

  The Verdict: The chicken dish had great flavors, but the ratio of broccoli to chicken didn't work for me. In fact, I took the leftovers and added two more cups of broccoli, some mushrooms, and left off the quinoa all together. That is a dish I'd make again!

I brought over some warm muffins to my sister when I went to play with my nieces, her response: "tastes healthy" and "maybe you need better recipes." I actually enjoyed them--they are filling and yes, healthy. Maybe if I hadn't done all the substitutions they would have been more than healthy.

Verdict: tastes healthy.