Recipe: Mojito Quinoa Salad

October 18, 2012 by Laureen Fox | 14 Comments

I can hardly wait to share this salad with you. Yep, it’s that good!

I know, I’ve been excited about some of my recipes before and I may have said that one or two of them were the best but this time I really mean it. I can’t imagine how I could top this one.

You may have guessed by the number of quinoa recipes on my site that I’m a tad smitten. Maybe I should drop the Kitchen and call it Fox in the Quinoa

I also happen to love mojitos. Traditionally, a mojito is a Cuban cocktail that consists of five ingredients: rum, cane sugar, lime juice, sparkling water and fresh mint. I don’t really drink alcohol anymore (I know, boring huh?), so my mojitos usually have a bit of added fruit instead of rum. I think a virgin raspberry mojito might be my favourite, followed closely by mango.

Okay, calling it mojito might be a bit of a stretch. This is definitely not a cocktail and I only used two of the five ingredients…three if you count using maple syrup as a sweetener instead of cane sugar but I like the name Mojito Quinoa Salad and it’s my recipe, so I get to call it what I want.

Anyways, this recipe was born of a need to use up some leftover cooked quinoa I had in the fridge. I fell short on the ingredients for my usual Quinoa Salads. Time to improvise with the ingredients I had on hand. This super yummy salad is the result.

All I wanted was a little lunch, I wasn’t planning on posting a recipe but such is the life of a food blogger…before you know it, the plate gets assembled all fancy and out comes the camera.

I’m still in the Okanagan at my parent’s place. If you’re familiar with this area in the Province of British Columbia, you’ll know that the Okanagan Valley is famous for its beautiful lakes, orchards, vineyards and nice warm dry weather.

Autumn display at Matheson Creek Farm

My parents live a short distance away from the Matheson Creek Farm Fruit Stand (more than your average fruit stand, it is constructed of straw bales, stucco & reclaimed wood).

Vines heavily laden with grapes that are ready for harvest

Everything they sell there is grown on site and picked fresh daily. I have some beautiful Concorde Pears that I picked up from Matheson’s. In fact I like the concorde pears so much, I bought a 20 pound box of them. One of those pears made it’s way into my salad and I’m so glad it did. The pear goes perfectly with the rest of the ingredients.

Recipe: Mojito Quinoa Salad

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Summary: Quinoa, fresh mint, lime and sliced pear make for one beautiful, tasty salad.

Ingredients

1/2 Cup quinoa, rinsed and cooked for 12-15 minutes in 1 Cup of water
2 sprigs fresh mint, rinsed, leaves removed and sliced into strips
2-3 sprigs fresh cilantro, rinsed, leaves removed and chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil, or dressing oil of choice
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp real maple syrup, or sweetener of choice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cumin
1 ripe pear, sliced or diced

Instructions

In a medium size bowl, add all ingredients except the pear. Mix until well blended. Taste, adjust seasonings if needed.
If you’re a food blogger like me and you want to have your salad look all fancy for the camera, arrange slices of pear on two plates and top with salad mixture. If you don’t need fancy, dice the pear and toss into salad mixture.
Serve immediately.

Recipe by Laureen

Preparation time: 15 minute(s)

Diet type: Vegan | Vegetarian

Diet tags: Gluten Free | Grain Free | Sugar Free | Dairy Free | Egg Free

Number of servings (yield): 2

To see a text listing of Laureen’s gluten free recipes, click here

For dairy, egg, nut and gluten free flour substitutions, click here

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