Quinoa!!!!

 

Our food of the week has been quinoa it seems. I just keep cooking with it! It's a great rice substitute, but unlike rice, it's a COMPLETE PROTIEN, meaning that it supplies all nine essential amino acids. It's one of those foods that I really love, and I feel really good feeding to my family! And my slightly picky husband loves it too! But let's face it, he'll eat enything that has curry on it! (Now I'm just testing him to see if he actuall reads this post..... I guess we'll see)

Anywaaaaaay, back to quinoa. Last night, I made a "sort-of tabbouleh" with it.  I say "sort-of" because, being married to an Arab, I can't really call it tabbouleh if it's not a true tabbouleh. And I have definitely bastardised it. But it is delicious! And one of my husbands favorite dishes.  He asks for it more than he asks for almost anything else I make.

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but we have decided to cut back our meat consumption dramatically! We eat red meat one night a week, and chicken one night a week. Every other night is vegetarian.  (The kids and I will occasionally eat fish is the hubby is away) Of course there are exceptions like if we eat at a friends house, or potluck, or if we go out to dinner. But for the most part we stick to it. This includes all meals, so no turkey sandwhiches for lunch on a non-meat day.  The trick is doing variety in vegatarian that is not all carbs! Pasta is great, but not every night.  Trying to vary a primarily vegitarian diet so you are still getting all the protien and nutrients as well as flavor and texture combinations is a challenge when you first start.  It is a challenge that is easily conquered with a bit of research- I like google, recipe books with pictures, Pinterest, and the "all recipes" app for my phone. I'm constantly bookmarking, dogearing, and pinning new recipes.  And I'm just as quick to say "Well, I'm not gonna make that again!" If a recipe is too hard, time consuming or has uncommon ingredients that we are unlikely to use in any other recipe, it's not gonna make the cut.  I want to look in my fridge or pantry and be able to say "I can use these ingredients for this, that, and the other!" No single purpsoe ingredients in this house! That's why I love quinoa soooo much! It's a great rice or cous cous substitute.  But it can just as easily be made into a sweet salad with mango chutney and strawberries.  It can be a base in a black bean veggie burger.  It's so healthy, and really easy to cook with, and most important - pretty forgiving!

Tonight we had it as a curried stuffing in red bell peppers, and I made more than enough to do that so I just kinda piled it up around the sides too, along with sauteed eggplant and grey squash (which is basically a lighter colored zucchini).  Like I said, we've been eating it ALOT this week! But it somehow doesn't feel like we've been eating the same thing over and over and over.
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MY BASIC QUINOA RECIP(Kind of like a rice pilaf)

First check if your quinoa needs to be rinsed or not (like you would rinse basmati rice before cooking) This will keep it from becoming bitter

Heat a little olive oil in a sauce pan. Sautee one onion, diced, in the olive oil until it becomes translucent with just a bit of salt(to help draw the moisture out). Add your quiona, so it gets a nice coating of the oilve oil and onion, and gets a slight toasting, but don't let it burn. Add your water. I use 1 part quinoa, to 2 parts water. I like to do it this way, bcause i often forget to measure, and i can eyeball it pretty well this way. I add a tablespoon of Better than Boullion chicken base for flavor, but you could use beef, vegetable, a boullion cube or nothing at all. Bring to a boil, then turn it to low heat and cover, just like rice. Cook till the water is absobed. Check the texture. If it's a bit crunhy, add some water and cook a little more. If its a bit wet, remove the lid and leave on the heat stirring occasionally to allow it to dry out. That's it.
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QUINOA "TABBOULEH"

1 onion
1 cup quinoa
1 tbsp chicken sock base
olive oil for sauteeing and dressing

3 medium size tomatoes
2 cucumbers
2 bunches of parsley
1 red bell pepper
3-4 summer squash(grey, yellow or zucchini or any mix of)
lemon juice
salt
pepper
garlic

Make the quinoa as in the basic recipe.  While it's cooking i cut the squash into small pieces and sautee. You could leave it raw, but I prefer it cooked.  Separate the parley leave from the stems and chop finely. Put it in a large salad or mixing bowl.  Chop your tomatoes, cukes, and bell pepper. Add them to the bowl. Throw in your quinoa and squash.  Add a little salt, pepper and garlic powder or diced garlic. Toss it quickly so all the ingredients are mixed throughout.  Now i like it like this when its hot! But if you want to make it more like a salad, add a few tablespoons of lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar or whatever acid you like) and a drizzling of olive oil and put it in the fridge.  This is great for the next day for lunch too.
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This tabbouleh was a great meal in itself, we just made some crescent rolls on the side.  (Crescent rolls are on my to-do list....I need to learn to make these from scratch instead of buying the tubes that just get rolled out)

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CURRIED QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS

Cook the quinoa like the basic recipe, but throw in a small tomato diced small, 1/4 red green and red peppers, diced small, some cauliflower(i was just trying to get rid of mine).  While it is cooking add: 1 pinch cumin powder
1 pinch turmeric
3 pinches curry
2 pinches cinnamon
1 pinch fennel or anise seed
2 bay leaves
a little black pepper to taste
1 pinch salt  (see this is me really trying to measure....I'm having a rough time with it!)

I used red bell peppers for stuffing, I just like the sweetness of them(and I realized we were out of green)  I cut the tops off and removed the seeds. Then I put them in the oven under the broiler for a few minutes to soften them up a bit.  I also cut an eggplant into thick slices and sauteed it.  I cut three grey squash in half lengthwise and browned them up a bit in the sautee pan.  Then i put the eggplant on one side of a large pan, the squash on the other, and the peppers in the middle.  I piled the peppers high with the curried quinoa, and then piled more on top of the other veggies.  I sprinkled some garlic on top and popped in back in the oven pn 400 for 10 minutes.  When it came out i sprinkled a little fresh parsely and cilantro on top (mainly because i have too much in my garden and in my fridge so I put it in everything but my coffee...)
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Along with our curried quinoa peppers, we had a great salad.  It was our first salad of the year with all the greens coming from our own garden!!!! Obviously being only May, the tomatoes and cukes were not ours, but hey, small victories! And my husband's homemade dressing(recipe to come)