I was introduced to quinoa on my first visit to organic/health food store and vegan/vegetarian restaurant Sweet Cherubim on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, BC.  I like the sound of healthy foods, even though I am no expert, and was told of all the great health benefits of this grain, so I gave their quinoa salad a try and was in food heaven. It was fresh, light, and just plain delicious. Since then, I have tried to substitute all recipes that use rice or cous cous with quinoa. It hasn’t been very easy to do this in the UK as quinoa was not always easy to find, but somehow  in the last few months I have started finding it in large grocery store chains (Sainsbury's, Asda, Waitrose, Co-Op etc) and not just health food stores. This means that it is quite affordable (although I did find some independent health food stores had it very reasonably priced). I also find that it has been getting a lot of mention in magazines and various articles so I guess the Brits are starting to try it out!

As mentioned, an easy way to use quinoa is to just substitute the “rice” ingredient in any/most recipes. My favorite dish where I apply this “rule” is sushi rolls. They are really easy and quick to make and I have even made a silly little instructional video to show you how (sorry for the really poor quality):

Other dishes I have used quinoa in is curries. I add a little bit of turmeric to the water that I cook the quinoa in and, as it simmers, the turmeric (which also seems to have many health benefits) is absorbed into the quinoa. Pile your curry on top and voila!

And yet another dish that is fantastic with quinoa: Greek “Yemista” or roasted stuffed vegetables. I used a recipe from a book called Cretan Cooking (by Maria and Nikos Psilakis) (see image below - click to enlarge) that my mother gave me. It doesn't say to pre cook the quinoa or rice  but I did pre cook it as I found it easier to work with. I also used dried mint and parsley as I didn't have any fresh in stock. I also omitted the butter and the grated cheese. If you are a meat-eater, you can always add ground beef to this recipe and you will find many Yemista recipes online with ground beef in the ingredients.

So there you have it: A South American grain used in a Japanese dish, an Indian dish and a Greek dish. Quinoa really is versatile.

What is your favorite way to use quinoa?

And just in case you have no clue how to pronounce the word “quinoa” (I sure didn’t the first time I saw it), here you go:

Enjoy and Happy Cooking!

I was quite curious about this recipe, so I gave it a try about a year ago.

No sugar, no eggs, no milk! So perfect for those lactose intolerant folks out there!

I followed this recipe from BBC GoodFood:


Ingredients:

• 450g (1 lb) ripe bananas,mashed
• 50g (2 oz) chopped nuts
• 100ml (4 fl oz) sunflower oil
• 100g (4 oz) raisins
• 75g (3 oz) rolled oat flakes
• 150g (5 oz) wholewheat flour
• 2.5ml (0.5 tsp) almond essence
• pinch of salt
  
  Method:
  
  1. preheat the oven to gas mark 5, 190c (375f).
  2. mix all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl. the consistency should be moist.
  3. spoon into greased 450g (1 lb) loaf tin and bake in the oven for 50 to 60 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
  4. cool for 10 mins until cool.

It serves 10 depending on how big the pieces are. I cooked mine in a loaf tin and yes it could serve 10 but the pieces would be quite thin.

I input the ingredients into MyFitnessPal, a calorie counter app that I sometimes use to, well...count calories! Anyways, I input the serving amount as 9 so if you dish out 9 servings from the final amount, it equals to 219 calories per serving. If you have 5 servings out of it, that is 395 calories per serving. If you would like to do the math for another amount of portions, the entire loaf is 1973 calories. Divide 1973 by the amount of portions you get out of the final product and you will get your calorie count. So basically, measure out your portions accordingly ;-)

My notes about this recipe:
I found it to be a very simple recipe to make. I read the comments on the recipe page which have great suggestions and I did as one had done: I only put half the amount of oil and used water to replace the other half. It is very moist and quite rich with the almond extract and I also added vanilla extract to experiment. And I threw in about 50g of dark chocolate chips (so I guess there is sugar in those-oops!). I also didn't put in many walnuts and I omitted the raisins completely as I am not a huge fan of raisins. I may try the honey and carrot idea that someone suggested in the comments. If anyone else tries this, let me know how it turns out!! Happy Cooking!

And here are the rest of the nutritional facts about this "Healthy" Banana Bread as calculated by MyFitnessPal (all will be approximate) and again, these facts are for the ENTIRE loaf so don't freak out too much. Again, if you would like to know the nutritional facts per portion, divide the numbers by the number of portions you get out of the finished product! Enjoy!