Cooking with Quinoa

Last week I was poking around the internet looking for something good to cook for dinner, and I came across this: Zucchini and Corn Taco Seasoned Quinoa Salad. I've had a box of quinoa sitting in my pantry for like 6 months now so I was glad for the opportunity to use it.

My friend Sian introduced me to quinoa a while back and calls it a "super-grain," but according to wikipedia it is actually a grain-like pseudo cereal. Whatever it is, its good, and good for you. In one cup of quinoa you get 8g of protein, 5g of fiber, and assorted vitamins and minerals. To me the texture is cous-cous like, though it looks very different. I think it could be easily substituted in places where you'd use rice or cous cous.

So after I hit the gym last Thursday, I swung by the grocery store, picked up the ingredients, and set to work on my Zucchini and Corn Taco Seasoned Quinoa Salad.



The recipe's ingredients included:

1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1 batch taco seasoning
1 ear corn (grilled and kernels cut from cob)
1 cup zucchini (grated)
1 cup black beans
1 jalapeno (sliced)
1 green onion (sliced)
1/4 cup cilantro (chopped)
1 tablespoon oil
1 lime (juice)
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup cotija (crumbled)

I mixed things up a little. For one I just got canned corn. I know grilled corn on the cob would have been much much better, but canned corn was easier. I passed on the jalapeno because I'm not into super spicy stuff. But in retrospect a little more spice would have been a plus. I was going to add cilantro but what we had in the fridge was a little sad looking, so I left it out. And I couldn't find cotija anywhere at the grocery store, so I opted for a crumbled goat cheese instead.

Once I had all my ingredients lined up the cooking began:

I measured out the quinoa, which looks very grain-like indeed:



Then I added the taco seasoning and cooked it on the stove:



Once the quinoa was cooked I threw it in a bowl and mixed in the veggies and beans. In a separate bowl I made the dressing and then added that in too:



And finally I finished it off with cheese:



Dinner accomplished:



The recipe made two servings and I'm currently enjoying the leftovers right now. It was a tasty little recipe, but if I do it again in the future I'm going to going to do a few things differently: 1) Add in the cilantro 2) Track down some cotija cheese 3) Add something, like chicken or tofu 4) Use this as a side dish to another meal, or make it a stuffing (like for peppers)