Quinoa Salad with Black Beans and Sweet Potatoes

                                     from the PPK Forum


Sometimes I think that the limes I buy at the WSM have secretly been pumped with sulfuric acid. Now, I know I know: limes are highly acidic. A lot of people's mouths reactly strongly to them. Blah blah blah. But nonetheless, I still believe that the ones I bought this weekend were highly sulfuric. Reason being, I used them on this (extremely delish, springy, and simple) salad dish, and EVERY time I ate it all week, it felt like the insides of my mouth were rotting out. Kind of like the inside of my mouth were one of the nazis from Raiders of the Lost Ark:




You say: That's the norm for limes.

I say: Sulfuric acid.

You say: Not sulfuric acid.

I say: The melting of inner mouth-Nazis.

You say: Fine. Sulfuric acid.

I say: Booyah. I win.

Nonetheless, I really did dig this dish. It was delightful, tangy, sunshiney, sweet, and chock full of protein (hurray for quinoa). And it's a simple dish to whip up. I made a double-batch and it's lasted me all week.

The inside of my cheeks are not pleased.

But the rest of me sure is.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 c. quinoa


• 1-2 T. olive oil


• 1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced


• 2 scallions, thinly sliced


• 1/2 t. dried red chile flakes


• 2 c. water


• Salt, to taste


• 1 sm. can black beans, drained and thoroughly rinsed


• Juice of 2 limes


• 1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro

DIRECTIONS

Rinse quinoa. Heat oil over medium-high heat in a medium skillet (be sure you have a tight-fitting lid for the skillet). Add sweet potato, scallion, and chile and saute until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add quinoa; toast for 2 minutes. Add water and salt.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium low, and cover. Simmer until quinoa and sweet potato are tender, about 10 to 12 minutes. If liquid remains unabsorbed in the pan, raise heat to high and cook for 2 minutes until it boils off. (Mine was more moist than I would've liked, so I would probably use a tad bit less water next time. But it still was damn good regardless.)

Stir in black beans and lime juice and cilantro.

Serve warm or chilled.

(original recipe posted on the PPK Forums)

Caribbean Black Bean & Quinoa Salad

Short and sweet today. ("That's what she said!" Oh man, I can't wait for that show to start up again. Anyways...)

My friend P rocks. I would totally have her babies, if she was a lesbian and I was a lesbian. But alas. WE HAVE BEEN FOILED BY NATURE! Anyways, every once in a while she invites me over on a weekday and cooks dinner for me. (I have yet to return the favor but plan on it. Soon. You hear me, P?!?!) I am so very happy that she recently moved to the area--as she said a month or two ago, "Since I moved here, I think we've hung out more in two weeks than all the time we've hung out previously put together." (She said it a bit more eloquently and grammatically suavely though. And also while batting her eyelashes at me and licking her lips seductively or epileptically or maybe a bit of both).

Anyways, having her in the neighborhood pleases me because she appreciates a sense of community the way I appreciate a sense of community. For example, for a long while, I've been wanting to do a montly rotation of Vegan Dinner Nights with a couple other friends in the neighborhood--I like that sense of community and sharing, especially since I love to cook. But of course, that never seems to pan out. Luckily P is weird like me and enjoys that kind of shit (which means we have to start doing this, just the two of us, P, and maybe inviting a few other worthies once in a while too--how 'bout it?). So it's really nice to have someone say to me, Hey, how 'bout coming over this week and I'll cook you some quinoa?

She also shares my fiendish hatred of raw onions. I mean, she gets me. She really gets me.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'M GLAD YOUR IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, P! *tearing up a little and then throwing up a little just to diffuse the mushiness of this moment*

Now to the point of all this: she whipped up this quinoa dish for me last week, and it was quite delicious. Delicious enough that I overate it and had a stomachache when I got home.

It is simple. It is tasty. It is good for you. And it will make you gassy! Hurray for gas!

(Oh, and the original recipe uses rice, but P got all creative and used quinoa instead. So I'm putting the quinoa version below.)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 c. extra virgin olive oil


• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar


• 1 T. Dijon mustard


• 1 t. ground cumin


• 1 t. minced garlic


• Salt and pepper to taste


• 2.5 c. cooked quinoa (about 1 cup raw, I'm guessing)


• 1 15-oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed


• 3/4 c. chopped red bell pepper


• 3/4 c. chopped yellow bell pepper


• 1/2 c. chopped scallions

DIRECTIONS

Whisk oil, vinegar, mustard, cumin and garlic in a medium bowl until well blended.

Throw all other ingredients in a large bowl and toss with enough dressing to moisten.

Season with salt and pepper

(May be made 6 hours ahead, though it tastes yummiest when warm! Cover and refrigerate)

Makes 6 servings.

My Quinoa Pussy is Your Quinoa Pussy!

It's quinoa-y. It's pussy-licious. It's the ppk's quinoa puttanesca. And I done licked that quinoa pussy DRY!

Seriously though: this dish was fairly easy to whip (tee hee) up. And it was relatively tasty (though I must admit: it didn't blow me (tee hee) away). The only problem I had with my quinoa pussy is that it didn't end up quite so... um... well-lubricated with tomatoey juices as the one pictured on the ppk. But that's ok. I think I would've liked a juicier, slicker quinoa pussy, but I'll just have to tackle that again in the near future.

QUINOA PUTTENESCA - THE QUINOA OF WHORES

• 2 to 3 cups cooked quinoa*


• 1 tablespoon olive oil


• 3 cloves garlic, chopped


• 1 teaspoon thyme


• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes


• generous pinch each tarragon and marjoram


• 1/4 cup white wine


• 1/2 cup kalamata olives, roughly chopped (sliced in half is great)


• 1/2 cup capers


• 20 ounce can crushed tomatoes


• fresh black pepper

DIRECTIONS
Preheat a sauce pot over medium heat. Add the oil and garlic and stir for about a minute, being careful not to burn the garlic. Add herbs, spices and wine; cook for about a minute.

Add olives, capers and tomatoes. Cook for about 15 minutes. Serve either by scooping quinoa into individual bowls and pouring the sauce over it or just mix everything into a bowl together and reserving a little sauce to pour over each serving.

*Mix one cup dry quinoa with 2 cups water, bring to a boil then lower heat and cook uncovered for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until grain is tender and water has been absorbed.

Serves 4

(recipe from the ppk blog)

Spinach-Quinoa Salad with Cherries and Almonds

My pic is a little bit lackluster,
so I include the recipe-pic from the
Vegetarian Times as well:



This is a good salad recipe, particularly so for picnics. I brought some in to work for a friend of mine, and she whipped up a batch of it for herself just a few days later, she liked it that much. I would've liked to try this with fresh cherries, but I had no desire to spend money on a cherry-pitter that I'd only ever use once. And ye old method of biting and spitting out the seeds seemed somehow... unsanitary... for a salad that I was sharing with others. But I bet this would be a damn foxy salad with some fresh cherries.

Mmmm. Cherries.

INGREDIENTS:

Salad

• 1/4 c. sliced almonds, toasted


• 1.5 c. quinoa, rinsed and drained


• 2 c. spinach leaves, cut into thin slivers


• 2 c. fresh cherries, pitted and halved, or 1 c. dried cherries, chopped (I used the latter)


• 1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and cut into 1/3-inch dice (about 1 1/2 cups)


• 1 15-oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained


• 1 small red onion, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)

Dressing

• 1/4 c. plain soy yogurt


• 3 T. olive oil


• 2 T. fresh lemon juice


• 2 cloves garlic, minced

Directions

Prepare quinoa according to your liking (I cook mine in my rice-cooker, with a 2:1 ration of water to quinoa). Allow to cool.

Toss together all salad ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic. Pour over salad, and toss to coat. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Chill 30 minutes to allow flavors to develop, then serve.

(Original recipe from the Vegetarian Times)

Two-Quinoas Salad

So I am back. In black. (In actuality, I'm black in lime green and mustard--it's spring, folks! I'm not wearing black when it's actually been nice and in the 70's finally all weekend!) Anywho, E, the boy, in all his diligence, patience, and computer-savvy wisdom, managed to finally fix my computer this weekend. So PICTURES!! HURRAY!! Long motherf-ing overdue, I must say.

Which means now it's time to play catch up, and I do that by starting with one of my favorite recipes from last week:

Have Cake, Will Travel's Two-Quinoas Salad.

Now one quinoa's good in and of itself--so just imagine how mind-blowing TWO quinoas would be in the same dish.

Yeah. You hadn't thought of the possibility, had you?

Anyways, originally I had just planned on making this dish with regular quinoa only (since I didn't have the "red")--but then I happened to be moseying past some grains and legumes and stuff at the WSM when I saw, guess it, BLACK QUINOA. I'm not sure that it's the same as red quinoa, but I figured, hell, close enough. So I nabbed some.

And lemme just say, if you can get your hands on some, you must, because it's SO. DAMN. GOOD. It's like the wild rice of the quinoa world. Regular rice rocks, but if you can mix it up with some wild rice, well, hells yes, your tummy will be hop-skip-jumping gloriously all over the place. Same with quinoa. The regular stuff is tender and yummy, but add in some black quinoa, and you've got a bit more texture and oomph, a bit more muscle, a bit more crunch, a bit more heartiness. It's good good stuff.

And so is this recipe. What first attracted me to it was the intermingling of fruit and veggies. I was like, Blueberries?? And fricking PEAS???? Um, what?!?? I didn't think it could pull it off, but it totally did. The blueberries and the dressing add a bit of springy sweetness while the veggies and beans add a bit more heft. Talk about good spring yumminess. This is totally totally it.

The only changes I made to the recipe were a) I left out the pecans (they're damn expensive, peeps--and I figured I could live without) and b) I halved the amount of oil. And truth be told, next time I make it, I am probably not gonna use ANY oil at all. Not because it tasted horrible WITH the oil, but mostly because it didn't add too much excitement for me, and I could just as easily do without the fat and calories. I definitely recommend though, if you ARE gonna use it, just using half the amount. Even then, it was a bit oily (though delish).

Variations have been included below...

INGREDIENTS:

Salad:


• 3 c. cooked quinoa [I used regular and black, but normal alone is fine if you can't find red or black]


• 1/4 c. raw pecan pieces (optional)


• 1/4 - 1/2 c. blueberries [I used frozen, just let thaw a little bit before eating]


• 1/4 - 1/2 c. green peas [I used frozen, just let thaw a little bit before eating]


• 1/2 cup cooked kidney beans


Dressing:


• juice of a 2 small lemons


• 2 t. grated lemon zest


• 2 T. rice vinegar (I used sweetened)


• 2 T. olive oil (next time I'd omit)


• 1/4 c. chopped red onion


• 2 garlic cloves, pressed


• salt and pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS

Place all ingredients in a medium sized bowl, and mix.

Prepare dressing in a small sized bowl, and whisk it well. Drizzle onto salad ingredients, and enjoy!

Thanks, Have Cake, Will Travel!

International Quinoa Salad

So I've been intrigued by quinoa for a while for several reasons:

1) it is spelled way differently than it's actually pronounced (my friend D's technique for remembering the pronunciation is to think of "Joaquin" of "Joaquin Phoenix"-fame and switch the syllables around: "keen-wa"--he is brilliant, yes, especially since I'd been referring to it as "kwi-no-ah" for weeks); and

2) it looks way too much like the little suction cuppy things on the tentacles of octupi:



Thankfully, it doesn't taste anything like them suction cups though!

For about three weeks I've had a box of quinoa sitting in my kitchen waiting to be used, and finally finally finally I was moved into cooking-action upon stumbling across Fat Free Vegan's International Quinoa Salad recipe--as soon as I saw them little octopi-suction cups in her picture, I knew that it was the quinoa recipe I was bound to tackle.

And I must say, there's a lot of chopping of vegetables, but short of that, it's a really simple recipe. The only change I made was to cook the quinoa in my rice cooker at a 2:1 ratio of water to quinoa (for this specific recipe, I used 1.5 c. quinoa and 3 c. water). And I used 1/2 t.'s worth of red chili peppers *in adobo sauce* (with the adobo-y-ness rinsed off) due to easy access.

The end result was a delicate and simple (but flavorful) salad with a clean and summery taste, perfect for a picnic or a family barbecue. I definitely think the avocado adds a lot to the dish (the creamy richness contrasts with the clean crisp flavor of the rest of the salad) but it is also a wonderful dish even *without* avocado garnishing it, given all the other contrasts housed within it--between the spicy peppers and the cool mint, the crunchy cucumbers and the softer quinoa. All in all, it's probably one of my favorite dishes I've made in the past few months or so...

THE RECIPE: Fat Free Vegan's International Quinoa Salad

And to top it all off, the box of quinoa I bought has this sweet little booklet in it that offers up recipes (some examples can be found HERE) and gives you about 15 billion different ways to cook it, from braised to quinoa-croquettes to alternatively-colored quinoa. And the recipes are arranged by the season: I got the Fall/Winter booklet this time around, so if you happen to be standing in the grain aisle and see someone fishing through all the boxes of quinoa, looking for the Spring/Summer edition, that'd be me. =)