Adventures in QUINOA :)

i know i havent written in a long time but honestly whos reading this anyway lol.. recently dipak has been on a super health kick!! first things first, if you know me personally or have ever read my blog you should know that "healthy food" is generally NOT on my menu... or even near my menu really :/ anyway, im trying to cope. so i have discovered quinoa! and. im in love! :) it tastes like a mix between rice and pasta! and you make it about the same way too!

we've also bought cottage cheese, egg whites, hummus, boost (the old people drinks w extra protein), and a bunch of other things i would never eat. :/ altho i did start having the chocolate boost and.... its pretty good. maybe bc my mom used to feed my sister and me those old people drinks when we were little bc we were underweight hah... guess im nostalgic lol

so anyway, ive started using quinoa which is pronounced "keen-wah", not kwin-oh-ah like i thought. lol i learned that from an episode of White Collar. i learn a lot from TV. like gas is odorless!- friends. you can make a car bullet proof with phone books- burn notice. fig newtons werent named after issac newton- big bang theory. julius caesar invented a salad- how i met your mother lol some facts are less useful/true than others haha..

okay so today im going to give you the quinoa cake recipe with a lemon aioli! which btw is my new favorite dinner :) its so freakin goooood!

the ingredients youll need:

2 cups cooked Quinoa (i thought they meant cook 2 cups.. they really mean, cook about 3/4 of a cup. when its cooked it more than doubles in size! so i ended up with about 5 cups of quinoa the first time lol)
1 cup of grated fontina cheese (however when i was in london visiting my sis-in-law, i couldnt find fontina. i used chedder and it was awesome anyway.. so basically a cup of your favorite shredded cheese)
3 tbsp of flour (i used wheat flour in london and white flour in america haha and both were great)
2 green onions (finely chop)
1 egg (lightly beaten - and to get extra food-glue, ive been adding a splash of egg white only)
2 tbsp black pepper
salt to taste (i generally do like 1 level tbsp)

so start off making your quinoa! i noticed that some packets tell you how to make it, and others dont, so in case you dont know how to make it... heres how: pour one cup of quinoa in a pot, and add two cups of water to it. set the burner to high and when it starts to boil, turn it to medium and let it soak up the water and get puffier. generally from beginning to end it takes me about 15 minutes to make one cup of quinoa. and when you cook ONE cup, it makes about 2.5 cups of cooked quinoa. so itll be perfect for the rest of your recipe :)

now that you have your cooked quinoa, put it in a bowl and add your other ingredients right on top. i then put on gloves but if youre not insane like me, just stick your hand in there and squish it all around until its all mixed together and looks like... maybe like a cross between ground meat and latkes before you fry them lol

there is no finesse to this portion of the cooking btw. just dump and mix :) - and the best thing about this recipe is that you can make this part like in the afternoon and then fry each one up when people are waiting for dinner bc its pretty quick :)

whist that is sitting around soaking up flavor, you can make your lemon aioli! i have learned that i loooooove aioli. actually i already kinda knew that lol but i didnt think iii could make it AND love it too! but it was pretty impossible to eff up so yeah lol ..

youll need:

1/2 cup light mayo (i made it with full fat mayo too and obviously it was better, but the light mayo is actually pretty flavorful too... in fact its almost the same)
1 tbsp garlic (i have also learned that you can always add as much garlic as you want and youll never ruin the food :))
1 lemon (a little zest if you have the little zester, and the juice)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (it wont make it spicy.. must be something about the mayo that sucks up the spice or something)
1/4 tsp chili powder
salt and pepper to taste

for the ailoi, you just dump all of these into your blender and puree your heart out! then i put it into a little bowl and let it chill for about an hour while i cleaned up and made the quinoa cakes.

when youre ready to pan fry your quinoa cakes, take a skillet that might fit three small patties in it and put the heat on med/high. add about 2 tbsp of oilve oil and let it heat up. then (with my gloves!) take a little handful of your goopy quinoa concoction and roll it into a ball in your hand and then squish it down into a patty and place it into the oil. if you think you can toss it into the oil without burning yourself, youd be wrong :|

let the patties sit in the little bit of oil for a couple minutes on each side. dont let it get too too crispy tho. i thought at first that the crispier it is, the better, but its just not true. the flavor is so good, youll want to actually taste the quinoa and not just burnt cheese lol which is also yummy hah

i take a paper towel and when i move the cakes off the pan, i put them on a paper towel to catch any excess oil. i re-oil the pan every other time pretty much..

theyre awesome!! and not bad for you :) AND pretty filling! so make them and enjoy :) let me know how it goes!

this was my first batch btw.. so i had burnt them a little :/ they were still delicious