Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa

 If you follow this blog you’ll know that quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) is our grain of the month. It’s a grain I particularly love and writing about it yesterday inspired me to cook some for lunch today. I chose this recipe from Epicurious because it used ingredients I had to hand. The only substitution I made was to replace white quinoa with red which had the added advantage of looking particularly jewel-like.

The recipe has an unusual method of cooking the quinoa which involves both boiling and steaming. I found it produced nutty grains with a bit of bite to them. The only thing I would change next time is to substitute olive oil for the butter to make the recipe a bit more heart healthy. My husband is painting the outside of the house today and so was in need of a hearty and nourishing lunch. He loved it.