Recipe: Quinoa & Pomegranate Salad

I’m still experimenting with using quinoa and I realised that I prefer eating cold quinoa mixed in some sort of salad instead of hot quinoa as I’m still not used to the taste of hot quinoa. Yesterday I decided to try and make a quinoa salad so basically I just grabbed whatever was in my fridge and chopped it up to make a nice healthy low-fat quinoa salad with ruby-like pomegranates seeds peeking through.

Obviously the star ingredient in this dish is the quinoa which I have prepared and kept in the fridge in advance, all I had to do is take it out of the fridge and fluff it with a fork and it was ready. If you don’t have ready-to-eat quinoa in the fridge you can prepare it easily as I’ve written before in my mushroom quinoa risotto recipe. Basically for every measure of quinoa you use double the amount water with a sprinkle of salt, put them together in a pan and bring to a boil on high heat then reduce the heat to medium-low and let simmer for 15 minutes until all the water is gone and the quinoa is double in size. Here is a video I found on Gcalories blog that explains it better (link).

Juicy pomegranate are the second star in this salad and since the quinoa is flavourless it’s the pomegranate flavour that’s prominent. I had a pomegranate in the fridge that I didn’t know what to do with so I decided it was going to be a pomegranate feast. What do you need?

Burnley Ingredients – serves 1:

1/2 a pomegranate – 1 cups of  http://davidpisarra.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-user-extra-fields/js/wpuef-configurator.js COOKED quinoa (about 160g cooked quinoa) – five tablespoons cooked chickpeas – half a cucumber, a bunch of mint leaves, chopped – a bunch parsley, chopped – a bunch of fresh thyme, chopped – a splash of olive oil – a splash of pomegranate molasses, salt & pepper, a dollop of mustard, a splash of lemon juice – a dash of summaq powder – 25g of low fat feta cheese.

How to:

1- In a bowl place the quinoa, the chickpeas, the pomegranate seeds, and the chopped herbs.

2- halve and deseed the cucumbers then cut into small quarters, add to the mix.

3- In a small bowl combine the olive oil, pepper, summaq powder, pomegranate molasses, mustard, and lemon juice. Whisk until you have a dressing.

4- Add the dressing to the salad, sprinkle with salt and mix gently.

5- Crumble the feta cheese and mix slowly into the salad.

6- Douse the salad with some more summaq powder and serve immediately!

Easy, no? It cannot get any easier and if you have all the ingredients within arms reach and your quinoa ready you will prepare it in five minutes, ten minutes tops!

Because of the pomegranate, molasses, and summaq combination the salad had a sour-sweet kick that is both delicious and refreshing. The feta cheese adds a salty edge and the cucumbers add a nice salad-y crunch.

It was made in five minutes and gone in another five, that’s how good it was. It kept me full yet feeling very light for a very long time and I didn’t get the urger to eat something sweet afterwards for I’ve already had some sweetness in my main meal. Quick, light, vegetarian, protein packed, and healthy salad!

What do you think? Would you try quinoa in this salad? How do you eat your quinoa?

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