Red Quinoa with Mushrooms and Kale

So I've been having nasty insomnia lately, and right now am all happy to finally have talked with people who are up when I am (most of my friends are East Coast), and also possibly wired up from stress. This means, of course, I should write a blog post, right?

Red Quinoa with Mushrooms and Kale

Once again, my boyfriend linked a post that led me to this one. It has everything that drives me nuts about food blogs: long story, moaning about food, and too many pictures. But I love quinoa, and mushrooms, and kale, so I had to try it out.

I used regular quinoa since I do not have red, along with a chopped portobella cap instead of shiitake. I used this No-Chicken broth by Imagine instead of chicken stock because it's a fantastic substitute. I also added a tomato because I need to use them up, and once again pearl onions instead of diced because I have still failed to buy real onions. Followed the same instructions on that blog post though (basically sautee onions in butter, then add quinoa to toast, then add broth and simmer. Then sautee other vegetables, then add kale until wilted).

This is sounding like those annoying comments on recipes that go "LOL it was great I substituted the apples in the pie for blueberries and used cake batter instead of a crust!" Sorry about that.



So enough babbling, here's the food. I added goat cheese after this photo (SERIOUSLY what was I doing).

Overall? This was quite good. The kale was cooked properly unlike the last recipe I had, leaving it quite crunchy while still having a great colour and flavour. Portobella mushrooms worked well here. Once again, though, be careful about tomatoes adding a lot of extra liquid; you may want to consider draining some of the liquid before combining the vegetables to the quinoa if you use them. Otherwise, it shouldn't be a huge problem as mushrooms and kale shouldn't release too much moisture.

Goat cheese was a good addition, but if you're vegan and want to add an extra bit of flavour, I'd recommend dried cranberries. Moosewood has a recipe involving kale and cranberries, and it is EXCELLENT. I imagine cranberries would do well in this recipe as well.

I will note, however, that overall this was more filling than expected. I only ate half of it in one sitting even after halving the recipe. This is probably because 1 cup of dried quinoa makes FOUR cups of cooked quinoa, and two cups of quinoa is apparently just too much for my stomach.

This reminds me: I have a nice, simple lentil/rice recipe I should share sometime.

So basically? This recipe was good, filling, but I'm not sure on its own, without my additions, it would have been amazing. So it's getting a 7.5/10. I like being able to give recipes good ratings; world, MAKE DELICIOUS FOOD.

I'm so sorry for this post.

It appears I forgot to put two recipes up on this blog, since their pictures are on my photobucket. I will try to do those next. Not tonight, though, this insanity has gone on long enough.

Tschuess.