culinary delights: recipie #1: quinoa, veggies, chicken, stir-fry, paella, jumbalaya?

Ingredients:
Quinoa - 1 cup
Veggies - your choice
Chicken broth - I made about 2 cups worth from a bullion cube & water. make it
however you like it, or buy it in a box!
Chicken - I diced/cubed it up into pieces.

I should preface this by saying I am an unconventional cook, and my creations turn out pretty damn good usually, but if you need to be exact and proper, you are in the wrong place...

Basically, if you want the short version, you cook the quinoa, make the broth, saute the veggies in a little olive oil (and chicken broth if you want), saute the chicken in the same, & put it all together.

The Long Version:
Wash quinoa in warm water to rinse the saponin (bitter coating) off of it. I would imagine it would be a good idea to agitate it quite a bit. I neglected these rinsing steps as I spaced out a little bit, so when I finished cooking it, I rinsed it really well & we made out darn fine :o) BTW, The saponin causes some soapy looking suds.

Boil 2 cups water. Add 1 cup quinoa. Keep an eye on it & stir :o) It's supposed to take a bout 15 minutes to cook, but I always cook it longer than that. Taste it, and you'll know when it's done. The other option you have here is to use the chicken broth to cook it in. I neglected to do this as well because I was so preoccupied with everything else in the kitchen, so what I did was add some chicken broth to the quinoa after I cooked it & let it soak up the flavor - it worked. Fancy me.

Clean the chicken psychotically as always. Cut it up into small pieces - whatever yo uthink looks cute. Add a little olive oil, S & P, rosemary sprig leaves, oregano, lemon juice... garlic powder. Let it soak in.

Dice up onions, scallions, garlic, carrots, snow peas, red pepper, and a bit of zucchini.

Saute chicken in olive oil & a little chicken broth.

Heat up olive oil. Put the onions, scallions, and garlic in...add the carrots...add everything else (veggie-wise). Add some spices that you like (I used oregano, S & P, garlic powder & adobo sin pimenta). I also added some lemon juice.

Fold in quinoa & chicken pieces.

Spoon & serve. I think it would taste better in bowls, so we ate in bowls.

We added a little salt & sprinkled cayenne pepper....

Enjoy! I should have taken a picture it was so pretty.

PS - All the recipes I consulted before making this dish referred to it as a pilaf, paella, and jambalaya, so call it what you want; it's good!

Here's a new quinoa recipe that looks good, too!