Sprout & Pea

This meal is another in the gar­den series.  Along with the other gor­geous gar­den veg­gies, I brought back two fresh picked red cab­bages that have been sit­ting in my refrig­er­a­tor for about a week now.  One of them I have set aside to use for my mom’s famous cole slaw (stay tuned).  The other, was tonight’s din­ner: red cab­bage rolls stuffed with red quinoa and goat cheese and topped with a sweet bal­samic sauce.

I love the nut­ti­ness of red quinoa and thought it would go nicely with the slight sweet­ness of the boiled cab­bage leaves — but it was going to need some­thing to hold it all together and give it some kind of dimen­sion.  So, I decided to add some goat cheese to the wraps and top them off with just a driz­zle of a sweet agave bal­samic sauce.

These were pretty easy to make and all of the fla­vors com­bined so deli­ciously to make a per­fect appe­tizer for any sea­son. Here’s how I made these…

Ingre­di­ents:
1 whole red cab­bage
1 small pack­age of goat cheese (4 to 5 oz pack­age is plenty)
1 cup red quinoa
1 cup water
1 cup veg­etable broth
1 small shal­lot minced
1 tbs extra vir­gin olive oil
1/​3 cup of agave or honey
a few drops of bal­samic vinegar

Bring large pot of water to boil and place whole cab­bage in the pot. Cover and let sim­mer for about 10 min­utes or until outer leaves eas­ily come off. After 10 min­utes, use a pair of tongs to remove as many of the soft­ened cab­bage leaves as you can until they start to show resis­tance. Place leaves aside and let the rest of the cab­bage con­tinue to sim­mer for another 10 min­utes. Con­tinue until you have desired num­ber of leaves (1 leaf can be split down the mid­dle to form two wraps).

While cab­bage is boil­ing, cook red quinoa by com­bin­ing 1 cup of quinoa with 1 cup of water and one cup of veg­etable broth in a small pot. Bring to boil and then let sim­mer for 15 min­utes, stir­ring occa­sion­ally. Quinoa is fin­ished cook­ing when all liq­uid has been absorbed.

Once quinoa is close to being ready, place olive oil and shal­lots on small pan on medium to high heat and let sim­mer until shal­lots become translu­cent (about 5 min­utes). When quinoa is fin­ished cook­ing, mix in shal­lots and olive oil.

Place wraps on plate or cut­ting board and fill with a few crum­bles of goat cheese (about 2 tsps) and a spoon­ful of quinoa. Fill­ing should be placed closer to the bot­tom of the wrap for eas­ier rolling. Start­ing from the bot­tom, roll cab­bage into small wrap.

In a small bowl, mix together agave or honey and bal­samic vine­gar and driz­zle on top of wrap (or on top of fill­ing if you prefer).