Sprout & Pea

There’s been a wel­come fall chill in the air recently, and it seems that sum­mer may soon be com­ing to an end, but my crav­ings for Mex­i­can food cer­tainly are not. This sum­mer, more than ever, I have been dream­ing of the tangy, spicy cui­sine day and night, and seem to have an undy­ing han­ker­ing for Micheladas. Instead of eat­ing out at my favorite neigh­bor­hood spot the other night, I decided to take on this crav­ing and cook a healthy meal in the form of my take on Mex­i­can quinoa.

After much googling and stum­bling upon extremely var­ied recipes, I set­tled on mak­ing up my own. I knew I wanted some tang, some spice and of course, some cilantro. Inspired by the recent tomatillo salsa that I whipped up, I headed straight to my local mar­ket where Mex­i­can food is in abun­dance and picked up some tomatil­los, a yel­low pep­per, a white onion and some cilantro. I hap­pened to have small amounts of three dif­fer­ent types of quinoa left over in my cab­i­nets, so I com­bined the red, black and white pro­tein packed grains and the blend made for a visu­ally fes­tive meal. When it was ready to serve, I topped it off with a dol­lop of Greek Yogurt mixed with lime juice. While it was no carne asada taco, my din­ner turned out to be just what I needed to curb the evening’s crav­ing, and a bit health­ier to boot. Here’s how to make it…

Serves 3–4
3 cups quinoa of your choice
3 cups veg­etable broth
2 cups water
1 tsp chili pow­der
1/​2 tsp cayenne pep­per
2 medium tomatil­los chopped (remove husks and wash well)
1 white onion chopped
1 yel­low pep­per chopped
3 cloves of gar­lic chopped
1 lime
1 tsp paprika
1 cup fresh cilantro chopped
1 tbs extra vir­gin olive oil
Salt and pep­per to taste

Bring quinoa, veg­etable broth and water to boil in a medium pot. Reduce heat and let sum­mer for about 15 min­utes or until all of the liq­uid is absorbed and quinoa is cooked. about 5 min­utes before it is fin­ished, stir in chili poder and cayenne pepper.

While the quinoa is cook­ing, Add onions to a heated pan with olive oil. Stir for a minute or two and add tomatil­los and pep­pers and gar­lic. Cover and let cook over medium heat for a few more min­utes. Add juice of 1 lime, paprika and a gen­er­ous sprin­kle of salt and peper. This will be done cook­ing when tomatil­los are soft and have a tangy fla­vor. When quinoa is fin­ished cook­ing, add the onions, tomatillo and yel­low pep­per mix­ture into the quinoa an mix together. Add cilantro and mix together.