We have had some glorious spring weather over the past week here in the Rockies. As always happens when spring arrives, my thoughts turn to salad. Specifically, grainy salads. I'm a little obsessed with quinoa and love the variety of salads that can be made with this one simple ingredient.
This current quinoa salad incarnation arose from the dried chickpeas that I bought at this month's 20% discount day at Nutter's. My friend Carrie talked me into trying dried chickpeas in an effort to reduce our grocery bills while on maternity leave. Using dried beans is very easy but to be honest, it is a bit of a pain. You need to plan ahead and start soaking your beans the day before you want to use them. Once you've soaked them for 24 hours, they need to be cooked on a slow boil for 40-60 minutes. (check out this website for more info on using dried chickpeas). Using dried chickpeas is MUCH cheaper than buying cans at the store and the sodium content is significantly reduced. I also found that the flavour was much better. Going forward, I think that I will use a mix of dried and canned beans as I don't think that I will always have the time needed to use dried.
Anyways, back to this salad…It's a hearty salad that stores really well in the fridge. It was adapted from one of the Whitewater Cookbooks but I'm not sure which one. It's not a super fast salad to make but the effort is well worth the result.
Ingredients:
Dressing
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp dijon mustard
2 tsp honey
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 cup good olive or canola oil (I have been using Highwood Crossing lately)
Salt and pepper to taste
Salad
1/2 cup quinoa
1 large yam (about 1 1/2 cups), peeled and chopped into 1 inch cubes
1 tbsp olive oil
2 x 14 oz cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup red onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup toasted sunflower seeds or pecans
1 cup spinach, chopped
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
1/2 cup feta, crumbled
Directions:
1. Whisk dressing ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Toss chopped yams with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Spread on a cookie sheet and baked at 350F until just tender (about 30 mins).
3. Add quinoa and 3/4 cup cold water to a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 mins on low. Fluff with a fork when done. Leave lid off to let cool.
3. Place chickpeas, red onion, sunflower seeds, spinach, parsley, and feta into a large bowl. Add cooled yams and quinoa.
4. Pour dressing over ingredients and mix gently until combined.
5. Store in fridge for up to a week.
Hi Rebecca, Looks like a great recipe! We are trying to only eat meat on the weekends so am collecting some good hearty vegetarian recipes. Will definitely try it this week. p.s. one of the other benefits of dry beans is that if you regularly drain and rinse them through the soaking process it reduces whatever in beans makes you, ahem, less desirable to be in others company (i.e. gassy ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks Nik! Great tip on using dried beans.
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