If you follow my Instagram you’d know I am sucker for healthy meals. But what you may not be aware of is I loathe cooking – its never been my forte. The dilemma is I don’t even prefer ready-to-eat meals or eating out that much. I feel horrible and guilty if I eat too much processed or unhealthy meals. So sometimes I have no option but to fix myself a meal when I don’t have help.
A salad is an easy fix and if you add the right ingredients it can be quite filling and delicious too. A red quinoa salad is a great option as it is wonderfully versatile. It’s perfect for lunches, it can make a really good starter or can be a great healthy and filling dinner.
I N G R E D I E N T S
1 cup red quinoa (I use organic quinoa)
D I R E C T I O N S
How to prepare quinoa
After a few trials and errors and disasters i finally got the hang of cooking the perfect quinoa. The key to cooking quinoa is to soak it for about 15 minutes, drain the water and then put it in a pan for boiling. Soaking it in warm water not only washes off the dirt from the quinoa seeds but also preps it well for boiling. Add some olive oil so it doesn’t stick. Typically the water quinoa ratio required is 2:1 – for one cup of quinoa 2 cups of water
Dressing
– Add a few drops of olive oil and once hot add finely chopped ginger. Saute until it turns golden brown. Add flax seeds and sesame seeds and stir for 30 seconds. In a separate bowl squeeze half of fresh orange and fresh lemon, add extra virgin olive oil and the toasted seeds and mix it well.
– Dry roast pine nuts, almonds and walnuts separately until they turn golden brown.
Salad
Toss together all ingredients for the salad. Add the seed and olive oil dressing, salt and black pepper and mix well. Top it with the toasted nuts.
