book a week geek

Enough people have asked me for this recipe that it’s time to just post it.  It’s from La Dolce Vegan! (the teal book), which has continued to impress me with amazing salad recipes for years & years.  Also my favorite cookie recipe is from here.  I usually find Sarah Kramer extremely annoying but she is lower key in this book, which might be why I am so willing to peruse it often and make tasty goods like this quinoa black bean salad.

Dressing:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp flax/hemp oil (I omit this.  Who needs this much oil?  Not me.)
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 tsp chili powder (if you are like me, this isn’t enough.  I dump at least a whole tsp on this guy.)
• 1/4 tsp salt & pepper
• Additional note: I add a butt-load of cumin.  Cumin is the tastiest spice in the drawer and I put it on just about everything.  It is a necessity on this salad.

Salad:

• 1/4 cup quinoa
• 1 can of rinsed black beans
• 2 green onions minced (Go all out here.  2 isn’t enough!)
• 1 large tomato chopped
• 1 large celery stalk chopped (Again, go all out here.  The more the crunchier and therefore the better.)
• 1/4 green pepper, chopped
• 1 avocado chopped
• 1/4 C. cilantro chopped
• 1/4 C. frozen corn niblets (The recipe calls for frozen corn, but you know what, it’s summer and gorgeous ears of corn can be found just about anywhere.  Just boil one yourself and cut the kernels off, like I used to do when I had braces & couldn’t eat corn on the cob.)

Directions:

Cook the quinoa.  While it’s cooking, stir together the beans, onions, tomatoes, celery, green peppers, avocado & cilantro in a large bowl.  In a small bowl, stir together the oil, vinegar, chili powder, salt & pepper (AND CUMIN!).  Once quinoa is done, remove from heat and stir in the corn.  Let sit, covered, for 5 minutes.  Remove lid & let quinoa cool.  Add quinoa & dressing to salad and toss together well.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.

This makes a ton of salad.  It will provide you with leftovers for at least 4 meals (unless you have an eating machine bf like OMC.  Then you will have leftovers for, like, a tiny snack.)  It’s still summer, guys!  Eat like it!

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 at 9:37 am and is filed under cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.