Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Quinoa Salad with Feta, Mint and Blood Oranges

This salad is being entered in one of this week's Food 52 contests: Your best recipe with feta, blood oranges and mint. You can check out all the entries in the contest here.

I used a mix of red and "regular" quinoa and chose to use pine nuts. I think pistachios would be really nice too. Another nice combo would use goat cheese and toasted hazelnuts and parsley instead of mint.

Quinoa Salad with Feta, Mint and Blood Oranges
Serves 4-6 as a side dish
Make this a main dish by topping it with a fried egg or topping it with some grilled chicken or sea scallops.
  • 1 cup quinoa
  • 1 1/4 cups water
  • 3 blood oranges
  • 1 shallot, finely chopped
  • 1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted
  • 1/4 cup chopped mint
  • olive oil
  • 3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
  • salt and pepper to taste
Make the quinoa: Rinse the quinoa in a mesh strainer. Bring the water and a pinch of salt to a boil in a small saucepan. Add the quinoa and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes until quinoa is tender.
While the quinoa is cooking, prepare the oranges. Cut the peel off of two of the oranges and then cut them into bite-sized sections, removing any really fibrous bits. (If you know how to supreme an orange - do that.)

Combine the cooked quinoa, chopped or supremed oranges, shallots, pine nuts, and mint. Squeeze the juice of the other orange over the salad and drizzle it with olive oil (about 2-3 tablespoons). Gently stir in the feta cheese. Taste the salad and add salt and pepper to taste.

2 comments:

Peter M said...

Quinoa seems to be a great subsititute for wheatberries, bulgur or even barley! Feta always makes a dish better!

Sunday Cook said...

I like quinoa a lot, especially because it cooks *much* faster than brown rice, barley and especially wheatberries, but it still packs a hefty nutritional punch!

And yes, feta does make most things taste better. :-)

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