Gluten-Free Curried Quinoa Salad

Sunday nights I like to prepare meals for the week ahead.
Quinoa has become a new favourite of mine as it is hearty, versatile, easy to freeze, is a complete protein source, is gluten-free and has a high nutritive value.
It also tastes good.

Tonight I made a quinoa salad using fresh vegetables and fruit from yesterday's market.

I wanted to make a zesty salad that would keep well - so something light on dressing and with vegetables and fruit that wouldn't go mushy by tomorrow (yes tomato - I'm talking to you;)

I am very happy with how this recipe turned out - use it as a template, adding in veggies and fruit you like/have in the fridge that won't go soggy. You can't go wrong!

 
What You'll Need - The Salad:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 red pepper
• 1/4 head of broccoli
• 1 crunchy apple
• 1/4 cup of raisins (dried cranberries would also be nice)
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts (almonds would also work well)
• 1 large carrot

What You'll Need - The Dressing:

• 1 Tbps liquid honey
• 1 Tbps curry powder (I used the Silk Road Spice Merchants Madras Curry Powder. This one is heaven)
• 1.5 Tbps olive or grapeseed oil
• 2 Tbps fresh lemon juice
• Twist of fresh pepper
• 1 Tbps dried dill flakes (not necessary, but I love dill...and just dried some and wanted to use it)

What You'll Do:

• Cook your quinoa (1 cup quinoa, 2 cups water. Boil water and slowly add quinoa, turn the heat down to a simmer, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes or until all the liquid has been soaked into the grains)
• Dice your vegetables - make them as small as you can, so each bite has more than one piece of fruit or vegetable on it
• Crush your nuts 
• I just typed 'crush your nuts'...(insert immature giggle)
• Once your quinoa is cooked, let cool completely. Hot quinoa = soggy & soft veggies 
• In a small jar, add in the oil, lemon juice, honey, curry powder, dried dill and pepper
• Put the jar lid on, give it a good shake until combined
• Stir in your dressing into the quinoa grains until absorbed 
• Add the quinoa into the bowl of diced veggies and fruit
• Stir until completely mixed through
• Enjoy!

If you overdid it on the quinoa and cooked too much, good news is this grain freezes beautifully.
A trick I like is to use ziplock freezer bags instead of tupperware to store the excess.
This way you can squeeze all the air out of the bag, leaving little room for freezer burn to sneak in. You can also make the grains lay flat, so they defrost way faster than a deep container full.

The STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 2
Taste: 2
Ease: 1.5

My Favourite Dukan Friendly Marinade

You eat a lot of meat on the Dukan diet. For someone who is neither here nor there about meat and can easily go without it, eating it all the time has been a bit of a challenge.
To spice things up, literally, here is a wonderful meat marinade you can use on chicken, lean beef, turkey breast, or on your vegetables in a stir fry.

What You'll Need:

• 3 Tbsp low-sodium, gluten-free soy sauce
• 3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbsp powdered sweetener, I use Ideal. You can also use a brown-sugar sweetener, if you can find it...the Netherlands does not seem to have it
• 1/2 clove of crushed garlic (this is optional)
• 1 tsp chili paste, I use the Conimex Sambal Oelek kind because there aren't many crazy, non-natural ingredients used, and its readily available at the neighbourhood Albert Heijn

What You'll Do:
Because this is a marinade, you can mix all the ingredients together and let your meat of choice sit in it, covered in plastic wrap, to soak, refrigerated in the flavour for a few hours, or, what I like to do if I am making poultry is this:

• Dice raw poulrty into equal-sized pieces (if you put your meat in the freezer for 45 minutes beforehand, it makes it a lot easier to cut!)
• Brown the meat on both sides in a non-stick frying pan
• Pour in the fully mixed marinade into the non-stick frying pan with the browned meat
• Let simmer until the meat is fully cooked and the marinade has almost all been soaked up 
• Voila! 

This makes perfect stir-fry meat to add into your Dukan-approved vegetables.

You can also use this marinade as the sauce for your vegetables - by pouring over top and allowing the vegetables to soak up the flavour. If I use it as a vegetable sauce, I will add a little water, maybe 1/3 cup so the vegetables have something to cook down inside.

You can also eliminate the garlic if it plays tricks on you, and just stick with the chili paste.

STEWART SCORE:
Appearance: 1 (Its brown and chunky...hardly magazine spread worthy)
Taste: 2
Ease: 2

Welcome to my blog

I love to cook, bake, travel and pretty things. I also love me my Martha Stewart.
This is a space where I will post new recipes (most will be Dukan diet, gluten-free and low-glycemic), ideas for recipes, inspiration for crafts, and pretty things I find on my travels - successes and failures.

I will rank them all with my Stewart Score, while channeling the domestic vibes from the one, the only, Martha Stewart.