Quinoa & purple

A wintry salad to stave off hunger and snow

Ingredients

1. quinoa - about 1/2 - 1 cup
2. 1 onion
3. can of mixed beans - or unmixed if you only like one kinda bean. Not baked beans though. Bleurgh.
4. 1/4 red cabbage, roughly chopped
5. jar of piquant peppers (try saying that fast)>
6. oil, lemon juice, chilli, seasoning

Method

• First, toast the quinoa - basically bung it in a dry saucepan over a highish heat stirring frequently so it doesn't burn until it's golden brown and starts to smell (nice). Then add twice the volume of water and simmer for 10 mins until it splits and goes soft.
• While the quinoa is cooking, chop the onion and bung it in the microwave on high for about 5 mins to soften and sweeten it.
• Roughly chop the cabbage and peppers; drain the beans.
• Add all the ingredients together with the quinoa while it's still warm, add oil, lemon juice, chilli and seasoning to taste. Everything will marinade as it cools down ....

This goes well in a winter lunchbox, and as it's not too gloopy it won't leak out the edges of your Underwhelming Tupperware box ....

dip theory (a)*

for dip heads everywhere... i ran out of houmous (shock! middle class disaster!) and decided to go off road with an alternative with random items.

Ingredients

1. can of cannellini beans, drained
2. juice of half a lemon
3. couple of good handfuls of spinach
4. seeds from a couple of cardamon pods - bash up to get the seeds out
5. splash of olive oil
6. 1 tbsp tahini
7. pepper
   

Method

• toast the cardamon seeds in a dry frying pan.
  
• if you're a jessie, heat the oil in the very same pan and gently fry the garlic. hard core garlic nuts can just chop it up.
  
• bung it all in a liquidiser and process until squish. serve with pitta.
  

that's it .... you can add salt if you want but i tend to leave it out, given that the pitta usually comes with quite a lot of added salt (read the label ...)

* the theory is that pretty much everything can be dipified.

extreme green bean machine

speedy vaguely italian salad, simply dressed with lemon juice and olive oil, ideal for hoovering up leftover green salady items and excellent with sprouted funny beans :)


Ingredients

• a ripe avocado
• handful of spinach
• can cannellini beans
• large handful cress and/or alfalfa and/or any other random sprouts
• lemon juice
• olive oil
• salt, pepper
  
• few chopped jalepenos

Method

1. Chop the avocado and spinach and bung in a bowl.
2. Add the beans and cress and mix a bit.
3. Add lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and jalepenos (if using) and toss lightly.
4. Inhale.