Quinoa and Grilled Sourdough Salad

I am in a funk today. I could write about that, but I'd rather write about this awesome salad. Because it is really, really awesome. It reminds me of a similar salad I was introduced to by Aaron while he was still at Cibo. I can't wait to make it with farmers market tomatoes... perhaps even the little zebra striped ones that are all variegated green on the outside and burgundy on this inside. Maybe throw a few little yellow or orange ones in there for colour? I swear, half of eating is looking, so you might as well make it as beautiful and colourful as you can, right?

A lot in this salad rests on the tomato - you want ripe ones and you want to keep the seeds and guts as they will add a lot of necessary moisture to the "dressing" aspect of the salad (also, that is where most of the glutamates - read: flavour - hang out. Why shortchange your taste buds?). If the tomatoes available to you are the mealy, flat winter ones, I suggest giving this recipe a pass until better ones come along. Also, this recipe calls for sourdough bread, and I think it is a good choice, but if you want to change it up, I think any bread with a decent crumb would be fine. Although you probably don't want something that has a thick, chewy crust and a really tender interior just because I find making croutons out of that to be tricky, and having the texture of the crouton consistent just seems like a pleasant aspect of the dish. But that might be just me... I remember having a sun-dried tomato loaf from somewhere... Sunterra, maybe?... that could be an interesting bread substitution. You can also omit the quinoa without significant impact to the recipe, which might be good if your ethical code is making you feel uneasy with the grain. 

On the whole, I found this recipe to be more of a guideline than an actual recipe; that is, I found myself winging it a little bit in terms of proportions and based on what I had on hand, but it was very forgiving. I will most definitely be making this again. As usual, the ingredient list is straight from the book, but the instructions incorporate my observations and substitutions.

Quinoa and Grilled Sourdough Salad
(p. 128, from Plenty)

Serves 4

1/4 cup quinoa
4 slices sourdough bread
1/3 cup olive oil, plus extra to brush the bread
salt
4 ripe medium tomatoes
3 small cucumbers, unpeeled
1/2 small red onion, very thinly sliced
4 tbsp chopped cilantro
1 1/2 tbsp chopped mint
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp lemon juice
3/4 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 small garlic cloves, crushed
black pepper

Assemble ingredients:

Preheat the oven to 350F. Place the quinoa in a saucepan of boiling water and cook for 9 minutes, or until tender. Drain in a fine sieve, rinse under cold water and leave to dry.

Brush the bread with a little bit of olive oil and sprinkle with some salt - I used a garlic infused olive oil that I am particularly fond of for this step, and some fine grain sea salt. Lay the slices on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes, turning them over halfway through. The bread should be completely dry and crisp - bake a bit longer if you need to. My sourdough slices were pretty big, so I opted to use three rather than four so my salad wasn't actually a bread basket with garnishes.

Remove from the oven and cool down, and then break by hand into different sized pieces. I cut mine with a knife, because that worked better for me today.

Cut the tomatoes into roughly 3/4 inch dice and put into a mixing bowl. Choose a large bowl - you'll be mixing a fair volume of stuff together and you'll want the room. I was using smaller, vine ripened tomatoes because they were what I had, so I chopped up 8 instead of 4. Keep the guts. ^_^ Cut the cucumbers into similar sized pieces and add to the tomatoes. I had one large cucumber, so I diced up just over half of it, aiming to have roughly the same amount of chopped cucumber as I did chopped tomato.

Add all the remaining ingredients, including the quinoa and the croutons, and stir gently until everything is mixed well together.

I omitted the mint and parsley because I didn't have any on hand and didn't feel like spending the $8.81 I have left in January's food budget on such minute portions of herbs. ^_^ I used a regular olive oil for the dressing, and cut the amount back to 1/4 cup. An infused oil would be gorgeous in here (maybe a lemon one? A little bit of citrus could be fun). Mid-prep, I subbed out diced green onions for the white onion I was going to use as a replacement for the red onion as I had them (the green ones) on hand and I didn't want them to go to waste. I also subbed out white wine vinegar for the red wine vinegar, which wasn't an issue for such a tiny amount. Additionally, I chose to finely dice my garlic because that works better for me than having two crushed cloves floating around the salad bowl. If you find that your salad is a bit dry, you can add more of the liquids to up the dressing quotient, or add another tomato. The options are open.

You can eat the salad right away, or let it sit for a bit so the bread softens up. Because I am cooking for only me, I ate it right away while it was still crisp-ish, and will have it again later, when it will be softer. Yay, variety and no effort. ^_~

So delicious. Nom nom nom nom.

EDIT: Another article has come up in my reading about the access and impact of quinoa crop production. I am a fan of having multiple views on a subject, so if you are interested, you can find Slate's take here. It's a worthwhile read.