I am swimming in quinoa – I have containers upon containers of the "super grain" from some aggressive bulk quinoa purchasing several months ago. I haven't really gotten that creative with utilizing all of this quinoa – rather, I just boil it and serve it on the side of Indian dishes or stews.
To break this quinoa monotony, I turned to the internet to find some recommendations on combining quinoa with scallions and parsley (two herbs that I happened to have on hand). Not surprisingly, I found several recipes for "Quinoa with Scallions and Parsley" as well as similar types of quinoa salad.
I decided to keep it simple and largely follow a Food & Wine Quinoa with Scallions and Parsley recipe. I halved the recipe, and cooked the quinoa as I usually do (2x water to quinoa ratio, bring to a boil, and simmer until tender). As I was cooking the quinoa, I quickly chopped the herbs.
And then quickly sautéed the garlic and scallions until tender and fragrant:
When the quinoa was done cooking, I simply put it in a serving dish:
Then stirred in the scallion mixture and parsley:
When I garnished the dish with salt and pepper, I went a little nuts with the salt so ended up adding some lemon to break up the saltiness. The lemon juice (approx. 1/2 tsp.) definitely helped lighten up the dish.
I think this would be a good side to a Middle Eastern dish because the parsley adds a nicely complementary flavor. I would not make this as more than a side dish though because the flavors aren't that interesting or complex enough to carry a main dish. So back to the drawing board on new quinoa recipes!
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