Quinoa Salad

As you can see I'm continuing the quinoa theme. When I find a new food that I like I'm like a child with a brand new toy- I bring it out to play with at every possible opportunity. Cue a load of quinoa salad experiments in the kitchen. Attempt number 1 went spectacularly wrong when I just read the serving size on the back of the packet as being 100g of quinoa, not realising the sneaky bit of text a bit further down informing me this meant 100g of its cooked weight. There I was rabbiting on to my mum about how amazing it was that so much quinoa only had 100 or so calories, before she burst my bubble and informed me just how wrong I was. Of course, it's still very low calorie, just not to the extent that I had first thought!

Quinoa Salad 

Ingredients (Serves 1)

• 60g uncooked weight of quinoa
• 300g water
• 1/4 of a broccoli
• 15g grated parmesan
• Handful of rocket
• 1 large egg
• Balsamic vinegar, to drizzle 

Method:

• Boil the water and add in a pan to the uncooked quinoa. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring every few minutes or so. By the end of the 20 minutes the quinoa should have absorbed all of the water, although you may have to add a bit more water towards the end if the quinoa starts sticking to the bottom of the pan. Keep stirring to stop it from sticking. 
• Using a separate saucepan, steam the broccoli for 7 minutes. (To steam broccoli, place a steamer and lid over a pan of boiling water). 
• Whilst the quinoa and broccoli are cooking, spread out the rocket on a plate and grate the parmesan. 
• Just before the broccoli and quinoa are ready to serve, boil the kettle again. Serve up the quinoa and broccoli then quickly pour the boiled water into the pan that had the steamer on top of it, crack in your egg and poach for 2-3 minutes, depending on how dippy you want the centre. 
• Add the poached egg on top, sprinkle over the parmesan and drizzle with balsamic vinegar.