Quinoa and Black bean salad

 I got introduced to salads after coming to US. Can you have salad as a meal?? If you would have asked me this question 7 years ago, I would have replied, what? No way… But now, I love them. Salads doesn’t mean just lettuce and greens. Thanks to my friend Tami for introducing me to a variety of salads. Her salads are so yum :-) 

She made this salad for one of our team potluck. Just loved it and it became a staple in our household. I make it in bulk, and have it for lunch for the whole week. Protein filled salad. Basically we got this recipe from epicurious.com. I just followed the recipe pretty much same from epicurious, just adjusting the proportion. And the only one variation is, I didn’t go for jalapeño chillies. I just used the regular Indian chilly and also added shallots.  

Here is what I did,

Ingredients:

• Quinoa – 1 cup
• Black Beans – 1 can (you can soak kidney beans overnight and pressure cook them too)
• Green Bell Pepper – 1
• Green Chillies – 2 
• Water to cook quinoa
• Corn – ¼ cup (I used frozen corn)
• Finely Chopped Cilantro – ¼ cup
• Finely chopped Shallots – 2

Dressing:

• Red Wine Vinegar – 1 tbsp
• Olive oil  – 3 tbsps
• Cumin Powder – 1 tsp
• Ground Black Pepper – 2 tsps (as required)
• Lemon Juice – 2 tbsps
• Salt – 1.5 tsps

Steps:

• Finely chop the bell peppers, shallots and cilantro.
• If you are using canned beans, rinse them well.
• Deseed and finely chop the green chillies.

• Cook the quinoa.
  • Wash the quinoa nicely.
  • Boil the water. Add a tsp of oil and ¼ tsp of salt.
  • Once the water to starts to boil add the quinoa and when it is half done cover and cook for 5 more minutes.
  • Once the quinoa is cooked, drain the water and fluff it well.
  • You can also pressure cook the quinoa.

• Mix every thing given under dressing.

• Add the chopped veggies, black beans, green chilly and corn to quinoa.
• Add the dressing and mix well.

That’s it. The salad is ready. Serve chilled. :-)