Quinoa Salad with Cucumber and Purple Onion

The other day, I went to what is being billed as the largest book sale in the world. I kid you not, IN THE WORLD.  I don't know how such things are judged but I can tell you it was doggone BIG.  The hall was at least three football fields large and the tables were filled with stacks and stacks of books.  And I must confess that I peeked under the tables (looking for an empty box to carry my haul in) and found FULL boxes instead.  So I had to go back two days later and see what had been put out. And, of course, I bought more books.

Part of my haul:

This recipe came from one of the first day's books, The Conscious Cook.  I had been wanting to try quinoa and the book serendipitously opened to just the right page.  Really, this was not like the Ouija board in college.

Quinoa is an ancient grain from South America but, for those of you keeping track, despite my childhood time spent in Peru, I had never heard of it until a couple of years back.  Seemingly it is notoriously hard to grow outside of the Andes and The Conscious Cook has an interview with a man named Don McKinley, who finally succeeded in the US.  My particular box was bought in Carrefour and came from Bolivia.

Ingredients

3/4 cup or 125g quinoa

2 tablespoons purple onion (half a little bitty onion)

About 2-2 1/2inches of an English or Japanese cucumber (the long skinny ones without many seeds)

5-6 basil leaves

1 endive or chicory, separated into leaves

Sea salt

2 oranges

1 tablespoon white wine or cider vinegar

3 tablespoons olive oil

Salad greens (I used rocket or arugula.)

Method 

Cook your quinoa according to package instructions, substituting vegetable broth for the water.  For those of you with a small bag of bulk quinoa, without instructions, (you know who you are!) my recipe called for two times the amount of quinoa in water so I used 1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock. The instructions further said to put the quinoa in cold water, bring to the boil then cover and simmer for 12 minutes.

This is me adding the vegetable stock powder.  

Once the quinoa is cooked, allow it to cool to room temperature.  Impatient as I was, I spread mine out on a plate, and popped it in the refrigerator.  It was cool in no time.

Chop up your purple onion and your cucumber. 

Stack the basil leaves and roll them up and slice them finely. (Fancy chefs called this chiffonade.)

Juice one lemon and add to the onion, cucumber and basil. 

When the quinoa is cool, mix it in too.   Add salt as needed.

The next step is making a nice vinaigrette for the greens.  Peel your oranges and cut them in sections.

If you have any pulp left in the peels, squeeze the juice out and save it. Squeeze a few of your sections until you have about two tablespoons of orange juice in your bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of vinegar. 

Now drizzle the olive oil slowly into the juice and vinegar bowl, whisking quickly, until it emulsifies, which just means the oil is incorporated into the juice.  Add salt and black pepper to taste.

When you are ready to serve, drizzle your salad greens with the vinaigrette and toss lightly till coated.

Top with endive leaves and fill them with the quinoa mixture. Strew the orange sections around.  Beautiful and delicious.

Enjoy!

This lovely recipe came, with a few adaptions, from The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen. 

Rhubarb Apple Ginger Crumble

The blessing of living in a tropical place is that every fruit or vegetable that is not tropical will be imported from SOME PLACE year round.  So we get rhubarb here in Malaysia at least twice a year when the north and south hemispheres enjoy spring and early summer.  And apples are available all the time, because even though they are an autumn fruit, they travel well and stay fresh for ages, if handled properly.  One of my dear husband's favorite things is a rhubarb apple crumble, so I am delighted to be able to make it for him today.

Ingredients

1 large green apple

300g or 10.5oz rhubarb

1/2 cup or 110g sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon cornstarch or corn flour

3 ounces or 90g or 7 gingersnaps

30g or 2 overfilled tablespoons of softened butter plus extra for buttering dish

1/2 cup or 45g quick cook oats

To serve: pouring cream is a must at our house.  But feel free to substitute vanilla ice cream if you prefer. 

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Cut the dried ends off the rhubarb and then cut it into half inch pieces.  Peel the apple and cut it into small, rhubarb-sized pieces.

Sprinkle on the sugar and the vanilla extract and add the cornstarch.

Toss the bowl until the rhubarb and apple are well coated.

Butter the baking dish and pour in the apple/rhubarb mix.

Break the ginger snaps into crumbs with a rolling pin or meat tenderizer.

Use the flat side or you will break your bag. 

Add the soften butter and mix well.

Add the oatmeal and mix until it is a lovely homogenous crumble.

Pile the crumble on top of the rhubarb and apple mixture.

Bake for 45 minutes, covering with foil halfway through if it looks like it is browning too quickly on top before the filling starts bubbling through the topping.

You can see the fruit, just bubbling up in the front. 

Serve a good spoon of hot rhubarb apple crumble with a generous helping of pouring cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, if you prefer.  

Enjoy! 

Stuffed Eggplant

I started school in the British system, with three years in Trinidad, and so I like to joke that I was bilingual before I learned my second language.  Sometimes the British words are indeed different from the American ones. When I am writing out a recipe, it is a challenge to make sure my various readers (many thanks to all five of you!) will understand the terminology and units.  (My goal is always to get you to try the recipe!) Like the units, the name I use for ingredients depends on where I first came across the recipe. Then I tend to revert to American for the method. Ride along with me!

Ingredients

2 large aubergines or eggplant (or eggplants?  What is the plural?)

6 ripe tomatoes, 4 chopped and 2 sliced

1 lb or 500g minced or ground lamb or beef (I used lamb.)

1 medium onion

2 cloves of garlic

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Sea salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

There's the recipe on my iPad! 

From Jamie’s magazine, issue 22, from an app on my iPad.

Method

Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C.

Cut your eggplant in half and scoop out the flesh, leaving a 1cm or 1/2 inch edge. 

I used a grapefruit spoon. Worked like a dream. But any spoon will do. 

Drizzle the shells with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  

Place them on an oven tray and bake for 30 minutes.  (Jamie’s original recipe said, Cover with foil and bake, but somehow I missed that step and they turned out just fine.)

Meanwhile, dice the flesh, the onion and the garlic. Fry all three in the olive oil until soft.  Set aside.

Brown your meat and then stir in the herbs and cinnamon and chopped tomatoes.

Add in the eggplant mixture and cook for 10 minutes.

Fill the shells with the stuffing and top with the sliced tomatoes.  Bake for 30 minutes. 

I served this with a lovely salad of greens. 

Enjoy!

Funky Spaghetti

Funky spaghetti is a cross between warm salad and tasty linguine, with tomatoes, olives and fresh basil! Serve it as a main course or side dish.

I wish I could remember when I first heard the name Jamie Oliver.  Certainly I watched his first series, The Naked Chef not long after arriving in Malaysia, so possibly as early as 2002. 

But I distinctly remember watching the Oprah show in 2003 when he made his first appearance and cooked this dish, with the help of some picky eater children.  It’s so fast that I was sort of expecting it to make an appearance in his new 30-Minutes Meals which my wonderful, kind and generous friend, Jane, has recently lent me.  But it didn’t.

It’s still one of the fastest and most delightful dishes around.  The little bit of prep that is required is easily done in the time the pasta cooks.  And in under 15 minutes, dinner is served. (N.B. My adaptation is probably NOT suitable for picky eater children!)

Funky Spaghetti

My recipe was adapted from this one by Jamie Oliver on the Oprah Winfrey website. It serves 3-4 (or more as a side dish.)

Ingredients

1 pound or 500g linguine

10 ounces or 300g baby plum tomatoes, red and yellow, preferably at room temperature

2 handfuls of fresh basil, leaves picked, and chopped if rather large.

6 to 8 glugs extra-virgin olive oil

1 clove of garlic (peeled and finely chopped)

Good splash, or even two, of balsamic vinegar

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

5-6 Greek-style (read: really salty) black olives

2 small hot green chilies, chopped very fine.

Method

Put a large pot of water on to boil. While your water is coming to a boil, halve tomatoes.  Depending on the size of your little tomatoes, you might want to quarter them.  

Put pasta in the boiling water and cook until al dente.  While the pasta is cooking, add the garlic and chilies to a bowl with the vinegar. 

Add the tomatoes to the bowl and scrunch them until slightly mushed.  Season to taste with the salt and pepper.  

 Pit your olives and chop them up and add them to the bowl.

Cut the basil finely and add to the bowl. 

Pour on the olive oil and give it all a good stir. 

Drain pasta, and while still steaming, mix with tomatoes.

Separate onto plates and serve. 

Enjoy!