Oven Mexican Quinoa

Quinoa has listed as a “super food” for the last few years now. I never had it growing up and have never cooked it before. Of course in my mind my first thought was “how hard can it be?”! Not too difficult as it turns out, although I have a couple of adjustments I will make next time.

Right out of the gate I needed to make a change to the instructions. I don’t own a food processor and I can’t justify the expense of one for the little use it would provide me. So, I decided I could chop up the onion, tomatoes, garli and jalapeno and use a blender to mix them. This worked out just fine (thank god you can take apart the pitcher and put it in the dishwasher!). I did reduce the jalapeno for the vegetable mixture to one from two so it wouldn’t be as spicy for my two year old!

I decided ahead of time that I’d substitute for the walnut oil since I don’t have other anticipated needs for walnut oil and didn’t want to waste the rest. The alternates at the end of the recipe suggest using nonstick cooking spray, so I used a bit of this approximately two teaspoons of olive oil so the quinoa wouldn’t burn in the pan. I cooked it for 8 minutes, although I didn’t see much happen. I am not sure what would’ve happened if I had skipped this step. I am open to comments on this! I did add the other jalapeno and cook for another minute and then added the broth, salt, cumin and tomato paste. I spent some time trying to stir up the tomato paste so it wasn’t a big clump. I am not sure this ingredient was needed either!

So, I put all of this into a casserole dish and covered it with tinfoil. At this point it looked like soup. A sinking feeling settled into my already rumbling stomach as I put it into the oven. I checked on it to stir it at 15 minutes and it still looked like soup. Oh boy. I checked on it at 30 minutes and decided it still seemed too soupy. My solution to this was to remove the tinfoil and hope it evaporated some. When the timer buzzed I removed the dish from the oven and….. still a bit soupy but not terrible. It needed a bowl not a plate though! I dished it into bowls, added cilantro and lime juice and a bit of cheese, because let’s face it, cheese is delicious. The cheese melted on top and it tasted pretty good. A direct quote from my Mom “it’s different but it tastes alright”. Maybe not a rave review, but she was willing to let me test this out on her. She did use half the onion next go-around so it wouldn’t overpower the other ingredients and I agree. My two year old liked that I would add cheese at her request (multiple requests actually).

Overall, I’ll make it again. The leftovers heated up quite well and it all got eaten. Now if only I can figure out what to do with the rest of the tomato paste………