Sprout & Pea

Recently, Bob­bye, a Sprout & Pea reader asked me if I made my own quinoa pasta. Well, Bob­bye, I never had but you inspired me to give it a go! I brought up the idea while I was home over Thanks­giv­ing and my mom was equally excited about it so together we attempted to make some quinoa ravi­oli. It turns out all you need to make this pro­tein packed pasta is some quinoa flour, arrow­root pow­der and eggs. We were skep­ti­cal about how easy the recipe sounded but if it turned out well, it would be an excit­ing solu­tion to not being able to pur­chase quinoa ravi­oli or tortellini at the store. We made our dough, stuffed them with ricotta and tossed them into a pot of boil­ing water. When they floated to the top, we drained the water and topped them with a lit­tle sage brown but­ter sauce. When we took a bite, we were amazed at how great they had turned out. They even got my nit-​​picky eater dad’s approval. The one les­son I learned in mak­ing these is to thin out the dough a bit more than we did. I also would add a lit­tle salt to the dough next time. And there will be a next time. I absolutely plan to make these again soon. Here’s the easy as pie recipe from Grain Free Gluten Free…

Ingre­di­ents:
1 medium sized egg (approx. 60g or 2oz.)
¾ cup quinoa flour
2 tbs arrow­root or tapi­oca flour
Note: Use 1 egg for every 90 — 100g (3 ½ oz.or ¾ cup) flour. Increase the amounts to suit.

Bring ingre­di­ents to room tem­per­a­ture. Com­bine in a bowl and knead until it forms a firm dough. If the dough is too dry, add a very small amount of water to moisten. If the dough is too moist, add small amounts of flour and con­tinue to knead.
The dough should be firm and smooth. When you press it to a flat sur­face and pull it away, none of the dough should stick. If it does, it is too wet. If the tex­ture is at all crumbly, it is too dry.

Use a pasta maker or rolling pin to form into the desired thick­ness and shape. The pasta can stick together when it has been freshly cut. If you don’t plan to cook it imme­di­ately, lay it out so that each piece is not touch­ing another until for about half an hour until the pasta has dried out a bit.

Plunge into boil­ing water for 2 – 3 min­utes until al dente. Your quinoa pasta is ready to serve.

As always, Thanks­giv­ing din­ner was one of my best meals all year. My mom made cor­nish hens with pota­toes, apples, cel­ery root and lemons that turned out so fla­vor­ful and juicy (not sur­pris­ingly). She also made an amaz­ing sweet potato souf­flé, an apple chut­ney and a pump­kin cheese cake that we didn’t eat until the next night because we were too full by the time dessert came around. I con­tributed my car­damom and orange stuff­ing and some brus­sels sprouts to this meal for 12 that was made for 3. It worked out per­fectly as we all got to hap­pily enjoy left­overs and each oth­ers com­pany for days. What did you make for Thanksgiving?