Ingredients for the quinoa dish:
1 medium cooking onion,
2 or 3 cloves of garlic,
1 stock cube,
11/2 cups of quinoa (any colour),
1 cup of split peas,
1 packet mushrooms 450g(chestnut or your preference)
2oz creamed coconut,
2 or 3 handfuls of fresh spinach (4 or 5 blocks of frozen whole spinach leaves)
Okay, to do the quinoa dish, it’s really like cook up rice, which is a dish we cook in Guyana, where you put all the ingredients into one pot. For cookup rice you’d have rice and peas and meat and you cook them with coconut milk. It’s a really tasty dish and my favourite is blackeye peas cookup but this is similar. I’ve just substituted quinoa for rice and this is vegetarian.
Okay, so this is my recipe for this dish. It’s really a dish made of quinoa, split peas, some mushrooms, a bit of coconut cream and spinach. That’s the foundation of the dish.
The first step is to chop and fry/saute the onion lightly. Add about two cloves of crushed garlic or 1 teaspoon of garlic granules or enough to your liking.
Add the mushrooms – I tossed in the cut up mushrooms. I like to use chestnut mushrooms because they’re very meaty and quite firm. I like that. So I got a pack of mushrooms they were like about I think it was about 90p but I use the whole pack. Just chop them up nice in quarters and pop that in there with the onions. Cook that down a little bit then add the washed split peas with about 1 litre of water (boiled hot water) and cook for about 15 minutes. Add 2oz or less from a block of creamed coconut.
Wash the quinoa – use a plastic sieve if you have one because the strainer part is usually smaller/closer than a stainless steel or chrome sieve. Add the quinoa to the pot, put a little more water if the cooking liquid has dried up a lot – you don’t want it to dry out at this stage because the peas won’t be properly cooked yet. Cook for about 10-15 minutes – until the quinoa begins to turn opaque and the split peas will be just firm but smash when pressed between your finger and thumb.
Crumble a cube (not a very big bullion, if you’re using the one inch type of packs, half of one should be enough) of seasoning into the bubbling mixture – vegetable, chicken, beef…your choice.
Now, you could use either fresh or frozen spinach for this stage. Wash your spinach (about 2-3 handfuls or about 4-5 blocks of frozen whole spinach) and add to the pot. Stir and lower the fire. Let the liquid dry out but be careful not to burn your dish.
Serve – should be enough for 2 people.
Salad – Chop up one sweet pepper, one red onion and a medium avocado. Steam a handful of mangetout, just enough so that they maintain their crunchiness – add that to the other salad ingredients. Squeeze some lemon or balsamic vinegar to taste and add a drizzle of olive oil. Mix and serve.
And there you go your quinoa dish and salad are ready to enjoy.
(Tip: taste as you go and adjust the flavours to suit you).