There has been a lot of publicity about quinoa as a superfood, so I thought I would give it a go. I started with puffed quinoa adding it to my breakfast granola. This works well as there is little change in the flavour of the other ingredients and no preparation required. It just adds a different texture and more goodness, I hope.
With that success I progressed to the raw quinoa.
After looking for suitable recipes, I came to the conclusion that any recipe using burghul could be substituted with quinoa.
That is what I did with this salad. The flavours of the other ingredients take away the blandness of the quinoa.
How to cook quinoa
Cook according to instructions on packet or as follows:
Using 1 cup of dry quinoa
Soak quinoa in large pan of cold water for 5 minutes. Stir gently then pour off water using a fine sieve. Transfer to a pot with 1 1/2 cups of cold water and 1/2 tsp salt.
Bring to boil, cover with lid and simmer for 15 minutes. The water will be absorbed so be careful it doesn’t stick.
The quinoa can now be used to make Quinoa and Pomegranate Salad.
I use the Nigella method to extract seeds from the pomegranate by cutting the fruit in half then whacking with a wooden spoon. Make sure you do this over a large bowl or everything will be covered in bright pink juice.
invisiblespice 