Quinoa Tabbouleh

As a busy student, I’m always trying to think of recipes that I can make and eat as my complete meal. This recipe is a great substitute for a lunchtime sandwich. It utilizes parsley not just as a garnish but as it’s main ingredient, making this recipe low in calories, and the rich green colour represents it’s high content of nutrients, especially vitamin K and iron.

Ingredients:

1 cup of quinoa

A stock of parsley

One large cucumber

2 to 4 large tomatoes

one whole squeezed lemon

garlic

olive oil

½ tsp kosher salt

black pepper

There are two ways to prepare this recipe, the quick way, or the way that gives a better taste, if you have the time to prepare it this way. I typically do the short method so I will explain the longer way in brackets.

Step 1: Cook one cup of quinoa for 15 minutes. Take off lid, stir and let cool for 15 minutes, or if you live in a cold climate like I do, utilize that snow and stick your covered pot outside for 15 minutes. (the longer method has you adding the salt, pepper, lemon and garlic to the quinoa at this stage and setting in the fridge for 2 hours, allowing the quinoa to absorb the flavour)

Step 2: Mince the parsley, which is done easier with a Santoku knife. A food processor can also be used for this step, as it is a lot easier and faster but this seems to diminish some of the flavour from the parsley as it cuts the parsley finer, making it more watery. Add to a large bowl. Chop the tomatoes and cucumbers and add to the parsley.

Step 3: Dice around 4 to 5 cloves of garlic and mix with around 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the pressed lemon juice. Add the salt and pepper and add the entire mixture to the large parsley bowl. Warning! Will cause garlic breath. Garlic is an integral flavour in this recipe, but if you are concerned about garlic breath cut down on the number of cloves you use or completely eliminate the garlic from the recipe.

Step 4: Add the quinoa and mix all ingredients well.

Optional: To bring out the flavours and to slightly cut the bitterness from the lemon and garlic I add ⅛ tsp of brown sugar. I find this really enhances the flavours but you need to be careful not to over-do it because too much sugar will destroy the taste and ruin the recipe.