Black Eyed Peas, Tomato, Spinach and Quinoa Salad

This is another way to combine leeks, spinach and black eyed peas. This delicious salad is worth serving year round–not just on Rosh HaShana.

Chocolate Quinoa Cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes made with quinoa? Yes. They are really good: moist, fluffy and intensely chocolate.

This is an adaption of a recipe from a 2009 cookbook called Quinoa 365, by Patrica Green and Carolyn Hemming. It also appears on the authors’ website, Patricia & Carolyn. This recipe has been making the rounds on the internet, appearing on quite a number of food blogs, all with rave reviews.

Cake on the Brain had the idea of making the batter into cupcakes to make the cake more sturdy and less squidgy. I thought this was an excellent idea and copied it. I don’t have the jumbo muffin pan that Cake on the Brain apparently possesses, so instead of getting 12 large cupcakes, I got 15 normal cupcakes.

I made very few changes to the original recipe. To make the recipe pareve, I replaced the butter with oil and the milk with coffee.

The recipe calls for either 2 cups of cooked quinoa or 2/3 cup dry quinoa cooked with 1 1/3 cups water. If you are making quinoa pilaf or salad, just make extra quinoa. I made a whole 12 ounce bag of quinoa (2 cups dried), which, when cooked, was enough for a quinoa salad plus this recipe.

Bonus: Patricia & Carolyn also have a recipe for Quinoa Lasagna that looks fantastic and would be great for Pesach.

Spinach Quinoa Tabbouleh

Did you know that you can sometimes substitute spinach, kale or Swiss chard for parsley? Well, apparently, you can.

I tried making kale pesto a while back and loved it (though I have yet to post about it). This week’s Shabbos salad was a tabbouleh-like mix of tomatoes, cucumbers, quinoa and finely minced baby spinach. Right before serving, I tossed in some diced avocado.

The original recipe was a cilantro chickpea salad from Heather’s Dish that was spotted on Oh She Glows by Arielle of The Diva Dish who added in quinoa, avocado, lemon juice and cherry tomatoes to make Lemon Quinoa Cilantro Chickpea Salad. I went back to lime juice, added in cucumbers, and removed the cilantro to make a kind of tabbouleh.

Last week, my husband said the farro salad was the best salad ever, and now his vote is for the tabbouleh. So light, so refreshing, so perfect for summer.

Spinach Quinoa Salad

This is a fusion of spinach salad and quinoa salad, with an equal balance of the greens and the grains. The dressing is a super simple mixture of lime and lemon juice, with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper. A drizzle of honey is entirely optional, but a very nice addition to the dressing. Pecans, sliced pears, scallions and red onion add crunch and color. If you are serving this with a dairy meal, crumbled feta cheese is a delicious topping.

The spinach doesn’t get so soggy, so you can take leftovers to work the next day.

I made this for Shavuoth and served it along with a do-it-yourself salad bar, a cheese platter, roast salmon, yellow rice, stuffed shells and eggplant parmesan. Dessert was fresh fruit, plus low-fat cheesecake and regular cheesecake.

Acorn Squash Stuffed with Five Grain Pilaf and Tempeh

This would be a great thing to serve to vegans on Thanksgiving: it looks festive, has seasonal fall flavors, and is a filling meat-free main dish.

I used a grain mix, but you could use any single grain you like. The idea is simple: saute onion and garlic with some diced tempeh. Add seasonings and fold in cooked grain. While you are doing all this, let acorn squash roast until tender and then stuff it with the pilaf. That’s it.

It is actually not so complicated to make, so it is a nice weekday vegan supper, too. I brought some to Leora, and she says I should mention that she really liked it. A lot. My husband liked it so much that he wants it added to the regular rotation, and he is more a meat and potatoes type of eater than a fan of vegan cuisine. Which is a way of saying that this dish pleases the health conscious but also has that crucial mainstream crossover appeal.

The combination of grains, vegetables and seasonings is unusually savory. What I especially like is the way that the tempeh seamlessly blends in with the other ingredients. Tempeh can sometimes be a bit of a tough sell–this recipe has a great chance of converting the tempeh suspicious.

The Kosher Connection, an informal group of creative kosher food bloggers from all around the world, proudly present the first kosher recipe challenge.  Each month we will present you with recipes on a different theme from all the kosher food bloggers.

This month is root vegetables!  Follow our recipes on Twitter with #KosherRecipes.

Tempeh Quinoa Burgers and Stuffed Eggplant

The recipe from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health for tempeh-quinoa burgers (which you can see here at The Golden Yolk) sounds more complicated to make than it is. You need cooked quinoa, cooked sweet potato and a sauteed mixture of tempeh and vegetables. I was putting off making them, and then realized that I usually make quinoa and roast sweet potatoes anyway.

Here is what you do: combine cooked quinoa (1/2 cup raw cooked with 1 cup water) and cooked sweet potato (1/2-2/3 large, roasted or boiled with the quinoa) with a sauteed mixture of 1 cup diced onion, 2 cloves minced garlic,  1 cup minced red pepper and 8 ounces diced tempeh, plus some seasonings. In terms of the seasonings, I thought that the mixture tasted delicious with just the 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. oregano, 1/4 tsp. pepper and 4 tsp. soy sauce added. The 2 Tbl. ketchup (or tomato paste or salsa) and 2 tsp. Dijon mustard made the mixture more burger-ish, but wasn’t crucial. I skipped the cilantro, sesame oil and sesame seeds. For the burgers, shape about 8 patties and bake them on a greased baking sheet at 375 degrees for about a half hour.

I had a eggplant I needed to use and I had the idea of roasting it and stuffing it with some of the burger mixture. I halved the eggplant, rubbed it with olive oil and roasting it at 375 for a half hour. Then I mashed the roasted eggplant (scraped out of the skin)  into about half the burger mixture. Then I roasted the eggplant again with the stuffing inside the eggplant skins (375 degrees for a half hour). It was an excellent combination.

Quinoa with Garlic Roasted Sweet Potatoes

This started off as Melissa Clark’s recipe for Cinnamon Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Garlic (from Cook This Now).  The basic idea of that recipe is roasting  (at 425 degrees for about a half hour) sweet potatoes (1 1/2 lbs., peeled and cut in 1″ cubes) after tossing them with 3 Tbl. olive oil, 1 tsp. kosher salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper, 6 whole unpeeled garlic cloves and a broken cinnamon stick. I decided to toss the cooked sweet potatoes (after removing the bits of cinnamon stick) with a batch of cooked quinoa, toasted almonds, dried cranberries and diced prunes. I also added in some lemon juice. When heated through, the ingredients melded together. The dish reminded me of both couscous and tzimmes at the same time.

My only issue with the original dish and my variation is the intensity of the roasted garlic. I think a little less garlic would be better, or maybe it would better to mash one roasted clove and stir it into the dish and leave the remaining roasted cloves on the side for adding as desired.

Quinoa a la Jardinera

We tend to prefer quinoa in  salad form. Even when I make a quinoa pilaf, we like it even better the next day served cold as a salad.

In my ongoing quest for a more exciting quinoa pilaf, I pulled off the shelf a book by the late Felipe Rojas-Lombardi: The Art of South American Cooking. Since quinoa is native to South America, it isn’t altogether surprising that Chef Rojas-Lombardi’s tome has a few interesting quinoa dishes.

His Quinoa a la Jardinera is a particularly nice pilaf style preparation. Warm quinoa is tossed with a colorful confetti of sauteed diced vegetables, including red and green bell peppers, red onion or scallion, carrots, and celery. Other vegetables, such as corn and peas, can be also added. You can tell from the original instructions that the recipe comes from a high-end restaurant chef rather than a home cook–the vegetables aren’t just to be chopped or minced, they are to be cut in a 1/8″ dice.

(Chef Rojas-Lombardi had an interesting background. Originally from Peru, he worked as James Beard’s assistant, was a founding chef of the gourmet food store Dean & Deluca, and then went on to become executive chef at the Ballroom. His restaurant featured tapas, and he is credited with starting the tapas trend in U.S. restaurants.)

The pilaf’s flavor is enlivened with an interesting mix of ginger and herbs. The herbs are particularly important because quinoa on its own has a pretty subtle flavor. When I first served this to my husband, he liked it, but thought it lacked the “big flavor” of quinoa salads I have made in the past. I add more dill (better), and served it the next day cold as a salad with some grape tomatoes tossed in. On the side, I served some guacamole and tortilla chips. Now, that combination–the fresh acidity of the tomatoes, the pungent garlic creaminess of the guacamole, the crunch of the tortilla chips, the subtly chewy-crunchy texture of the quinoa with the backnotes of herbs and ginger–now that had really big, big flavor.

Butternut Squash, Craisin and Quinoa Pilaf (or salad)

Trying to use up my grains before Pesach, I made a variation on this recipe from Whole Foods for Butternut Squash Kasha Salad with Citrus Vinagrette and Spicy Almonds.

I took the basic idea of the recipe and ran with it:
(1) roast butternut squash until tender, after tossing it with oil, salt and pepper.
(2) toss kasha with a citrus dressing.
(3) combine squash and kasha.

The results were quite nice. The kasha took on an orange-ey flavor which worked well with the roasted squash. I served it warm as a pilaf and then leftover cold as a salad with some extra dressing added. The only thing I wish I had added was some craisins and sliced almonds.

The next week, I made a similar recipe with red quinoa, with the dried cranberries and scallions added in. Then I remembered that I had seen a similar recipe here. Actually, if you google it, you will see that there are quite a few recipes pairing quinoa with butternut squash.

Sweet Chili Lime Mushrooms with Collards and Quinoa

I had collards that I needed to use up. Originally, I was thinking of making a recipe from Food52 for kale and quinoa, and then I saw this recipe at VeganYumYum for Sweet Chili Lime Tofu with Wok Steamed Collards and Quinoa. The only problem was that I had no tofu and I needed to use up a box of cremini mushrooms and some portobellas.

It occurred to me that the tofu marinade (sugar, lime, soy, garlic, red chili flakes) would work perfectly with grilled mushrooms. The resulting mushrooms were spicy, sweet, hot and tangy. A nice change from the usual grilled portobellas.

The mushrooms are worth making separately from the collards and the quinoa if you are looking for a side dish instead of a vegetarian main course.