quinoa and mushroom loaf (nut roast/turkey substitute)

So, you have someone visit who won't eat the turkey and can't eat dairy or nuts...and they need all their food to be gluten free.  You still want to give them a delicious protein portion to go with their roast potatoes and sprouts...here is a possible solution.

I wrote up a recipe for quinoa, butternut squash and cashew loaf.  Using some of the batch of quinoa I had cooked for this and the cranberries I made a second nut-free version with mushrooms and egg. This is a mild savoury loaf with the mushrooms and quinoa held together by the batter produced from the flour and egg.  The quinoa texture is still discernable.  Test the flavour when you have made the mixture by frying a small amount.  Add more seasonings if you want a punchier flavour.

The quinoa, mushrooms and egg as well as the lentils in the flour combine to make this a high protein dish.


It is always a good idea to have an alternative to turkey as people may be vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian or just not like turkey.  I had a look at a few recipes on the internet, including the useful evaluative series at the Guardian. I wanted to use roasted butternut and cashew, so also looked at the River Cottage nut roast.  I also fancied including cranberries, and found this pretty-looking recipe from Jamie Oliver.  I wanted this dish to be a complete protein source - it seems to me that too often the vegetarian option in restaurants hasn't thought through either the flavour balance or the nutrient balance.

I cooked a whole 300g bag of qunioa, rinsing thoroughly first, to make both recipes.
I cooked 300g of fresh cranberries for a couple of minutes with the juice of a satsuma, 1tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp chilli jam.  This was used in both recipes.

Ingredients

325 cooked quinoa (all that was left)

250g chestnut mushrooms, chopped

1 red onion, chopped

1 tbsp oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 eggs

1 tbsp soy sauce (check gf- I use Sanchi Tamari)

pinch mixed herbs

1 red onion, chopped

50g flour ( 40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20%cornmeal)

Cook onions over gentle heat until soft.  Lift out of oil and use the same oil to cook the mushrooms until softened.  You may need to do this in batches.  Add more oil if needed. Cook the garlic in with the last batch of mushrooms.

Mix all the ingredients together.  The flour and egg will give a cakey mix to hold the quinoa and mushrooms together.

Dollop mixture into the prepared mini-loaf tins with cranberries at the base or cook in a large loaf tin lined with baking parchment.

Cook at 180C for 25 minutes.

This is very good cold.  It holds together well so would make a good lunch box or picnic food.

Turkey alternatives- vegan quinoa, butternut squash and cashew nut roast

It is always a good idea to have an alternative to turkey as people may be vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian or just not like turkey.  I had a look at a few recipes on the internet, including the useful evaluative series at the Guardian. I wanted to use roasted butternut and cashew, so also looked at the River Cottage nut roast.  I also fancied including cranberries, and found this pretty-looking recipe from Jamie Oliver.  I wanted this dish to be a complete protein source - it seems to me that too often the vegetarian option in restaurants hasn't thought through either the flavour balance or the nutrient balance.

I made two versions, I'll post the second, including mushrooms, later.
I cooked a whole 300g bag of qunioa, rinsing thoroughly first, to make both recipes.
I cooked 300g of fresh cranberries for a couple of minutes with the juice of a satsuma, 1tbsp sugar and 1 tbsp chilli jam.  This was used in both recipes.

Ingredients
600g cooked quinoa
250 roasted butternut squash (peel, chop, rub with oil, roast in hot oven half hour)
250g cashew nuts, chopped (quick blast in blender, be careful not to powder)
1 red onion, chopped, cooked until soft in 1 tbsp oil
1 tsp mixed herbs
1 tsp vegetable bouillon powder (make sure gf)
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/4tsp pepper

cranberry 'topping'

Mix all the ingredients and check seasoning. As you stir the mixture the butternut squash pieces will break up  If any are too large just cut them. You want a mixture with some contrast but no large lumps.

You can eat this as it is to test or fry a small blob to give a crisp outer to test what it will be like when baked. You may well want more salt as I eat very little (just enough to stop my tendency to low blood pressure). You may also want to reduce or remove the cumin if you don't like its distinctive earthy taste. Try some sage as an alternative.

Place a layer of the cranberries in the bottom of your dish and pack the quinoa mixture on top.  I used individual baking cases - the sort often used for lemon drizzle, as some of these are being given away.  I made eleven individual nut roasts from this mixture, filling the containers to just below the surface. Drizzle a little oil on top to help it go crisp and brown when baked.

before baking

Bake in the oven with other things you are cooking for about 20 minutes.  These can be frozen; just get out of the freezer a couple of hours before you want to cook them if they are the individual size. These tiny individual portions are easy to tuck in next to other items.  Leave them to rest ten minutes before serving.

This nut roast has a light flavour and slightly crumbly texture.  It would go well with the other traditional items on a Christmas dinner.  Just remember to have some gf vegan gravy to go wit it.

Peppery Quinoa fritatta / omelette

I'm always on the look out for foods that can be taken to an event when it isn't safe to eat the food provided. This 'kale and quinoa crustless quiche' looked worth using as an inspiration as it is a very high protein portable food.  Whilst it takes several stages as the quinoa needs precooking, it is a very simple thing to make.  The original recipe called for lots of cheese, which I can't eat, so this is more like a traditional fritatta in that it relies on the egg to hold the whole thing together.

The original recipe called for cooled quinoa to be stirred in the eggs, vegetables and sauce.  Pour into a pie dish.   Cook at 270C for forty minutes.  Eat hot if liked, but like a fritatta this is ideal picnic food eaten cold the next day.

Cook the quinoa in about double the volume water until is softening and you can see it separating into two sections.  Remember you need to rinse well or the quinoa will taste acrid from the coating. Leave the lid on while it cools.   If you need more water while cooking just add some, if you have too much tip it away.  Quinoa is much easier to cook well than rice.


I planned to make a version of this, but got lazy and after cooking the quinoa just made a stove top version for myself for lunch.

Ingredients
2 tbsp cooked quinoa
2 eggs
1 tsp stir-in pasta sauce, I used Sacla tomato and olive
1 tbsp roasted peppers ( I keep a jar of these on the go in the fridge most of the time - great for topping pizza etc)

Cook in a small frying pan like a normal omelette.  This is good hot, being fluffy and lighter than a normal omelette.  It also works well as a cold food and would be very useful as a picnic food or to take to work in your lunch box.  It is high in protein, very tasty and easy to handle.


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I ate the rest of the quinoa with lentil and carrot stew for one meal, and with fruit and cinnamon as a late desert.  It is a very versatile food, and, being a complete protein, is very good to serve to vegetarians/vegans.

Whole Meal muffins

I have been trying out recipes using flour mixes that do not contain tapioca or corn.  These muffins were made with urid lentil flour, buckwheat flour and brown rice flour.  The first two I ground myself, the third I bought as flour.  I also included quinoa.  This was cooked whole and added to the mixture rather than using the flour.  I find quinoa, whilst excellent in terms of being a complete protein, can give foods a slightly acrid taste.  To avoid this the quinoa should be rinsed before use.  If I really need flour I then dry the quinoa in a low oven before grinding.  In this case the nature of the muffin meant that leaving it whole would be fine.  I have found in the past that if I use uncooked whole quinoa in muffins the texture tends to be coarse, with the quinoa staying too hard.  In a  slow fermented batter this would not be a problem.

I added banana, grated carrot, dried fruit, pumpkin and linseeds to the batter as well as egg and a little oil. These muffins are high in protein and would make a good emergency meal if travelling - hence another reason to call them 'Whole Meal muffins'.  You get your protein, fruit and vegetables in one neat package, with no added refined sugar and very little fat.  I use a little oil as it helps the muffin to keep moist if not eaten immediately.

These were a little denser than I would have like. In future I would add some juice or water to make a sloppier batter, which would aid rising, and add another teaspoon of baking powder.

If you want a sweeter muffin just add a little sugar or syrup of your choice.  To check this you can cook a tiny bit of the batter in a frying pan to see what it will be like.

Makes 12 large muffins
Set oven at 175C

Ingredients
150g flour - 1/3 urid, 1/3 buckwheat, 1/3 brown rice
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas mashed (2 small - 165g)
1 large carrot, grated (100g)
20g linseeds
30g pumpkin seeds
80g cranberries
80g blueberries (or other dried fruit)
50g sunflower oil

Topping
20g pumpkin seeds
10g agave or other sweet syrup

Method
Whisk dry ingredients together

Mix all the remaining ingredients except the optional topping together

Mix wet and dry ingredients together and put in muffin cases.

Put a few sticky pumpkin seeds on top of each muffin.  This gives a crisp burst of sweetness on each muffin.

Bake at 175C for 25 minutes

Freeze when cool and use as needed. I find 20secs in a microwave is adequate to defrost them, or pack in your lunch box frozen where they will keep everything else chilled as they defrost.

Toasted quinoa, blueberry and banana muffin

Quinoa is a very nutritious food, being a complete protein, but it can have a rather acrid flavour.  This is caused by the coating the seed has to discourage insects from eating it.  If you rinse whole quinoa you can get rid of this.  I have used rinsed quinoa in these muffins, which I then toasted to a light brown before adding to the flour.  The whole quinoa gives a crunchy texture.  If you don't want this blitz the quinoa in a blender to get a smooth texture.

These muffins turned out to be quite sweet.  You may want to reduce the sugar.

Makes about 16 small muffins.  Use cupcake paper cases to line your tins to make things easier.

Heat oven to 170C (fan)

100g quinoa, rinsed and toasted
100g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
1 large banana, mashed
50g blueberries or other dried fruit
50g vegetable oil
50g brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs

Whisk the flour and baking powder together then stir in quinoa and blueberries.
Mix mashed banana, oil, sugar and eggs.
Mix the wet and dry mixtures together

Spoon into paper cases - no more than 2/3 full.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes until brown on top.

Tip onto a cooling rack to avoid a soggy bottom.   Freeze as soon as cold for an easy snack.

Apricot and almond bites

I wanted to make some cakey cookies - a little like flapjacks but not so sweet and buttery.  I wanted to use apricots for their high iron content.  The almonds, eggs, quinoa and urid make these a high protein snack.

Ingredients
120g almond butter
2 eggs
100g dried chopped apricots (mine are sulphite free so brown rather than orange) blitzed in blender with
100g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
65g  dried apricots, chunks
100g quinoa flakes
50g flaked almonds
50g sugar
25g flaked almonds for topping

Method
Mix the almond butter and egg to a slurry.
Blitz the flour and 100g apricots in blender so that you get a brownish powdery mixture.
Mix flour mix into egg slurry, stir in remaining ingredients except the final 25g almonds.  I added the sugar after tasting the mix - you may want to add more or less sugar/sweetener to meet the taste of your eaters.

Put blobs onto parchment paper/silicon baking sheets, press the final flaked almonds on top.

Bake at 170C fan for about 12-15 minutes.  If you make them thick they will need longer.


I am not too sure about the use of the quinoa flakes.  Quinoa can have a sharp unwelcome flavour from the saponin coating, which the plant uses as an insect/bird repellent.  This is best dealt with by rinsing before use.  If I want flour I tend to use whole quinoa and rinse it well, dry it in the oven then grind it to be sure to remove all of this taint.  With the flakes this rinsing was more difficult to do.  I think I would stick to quinoa flour or cooked quinoa (well rinsed) in future.

Breakfast muffins, gluten free, dairy free, high fibre

Before I started blogging all my cooking escapades I made some delicious and very nutritious breakfast muffins.  At the time I was doing an Open University Nutrition course, and I designed the muffins to be as complete a food as possible.  If you ate nothing but these muffins all day you met your daily RDAs for lots of food components, including protein and fibre.  Unfortunately, being written on a scrap of paper I can't find the recipe.

As I am due to  be on a writing course next month where I will need to take my own food to be sure to avoid contamination I thought I had better get on with recreating a version of this recipe.

This muffin has a complex slightly sweet flavour.  I haven't done the nutritional analysis of it, but it is a high fibre food with no highly processed sugars.  The sweetness comes from dried fruit, bananas, butternut squash and a bit of agave syrup, which has a low GI.  Adjust your seeds and fruit to suit what you like and have available. Almonds would also be a good addition - I read a study the other day that said a few whole almonds with breakfast kept you satiated longer.  I kept this nut free as a base recipe.

If you want to use quinoa in your baking but don't like the odd taste it can give, rinse it first.  If you need it dry for the recipe, then put it in a warm oven for a few minutes after rinsing.

Ingredients
150g mashed bananas (two small or one large)
100g roasted butternut squash (it would work grated raw, I just had some available ready roasted)
150g sunflower oil
100g flour
4 tsp baking powder
30g sunflower seeds plus 10g for topping
15g pumpkin seed plus 10g for topping
25g buckwheat
30g quinoa
15g linseed
70g raisins
60g blueberries/cranberry mix
50g agave syrup plus 1 tsp for topping

Put the seeds, buckwheat etc in a blender and grind.  I left the sunflower whole as I like a bit of texture. Add some of the flour and the raisins and grind so that the mixture looks like dark coarse flour.

Mix this with remaining flour and baking powder.

Mash banana and squash, add egg and oil.

Mix wet and dry ingredients together.

Divide mixture between 12 muffin cases.  Mix 1 tsp of agave syrup with the 10g g each of pumpkin and sunflower seed and sprinkle this on top of the muffins.  It isn't necessary but looks inviting and gives a sweet crunchy texture to the top.


Cook at 180C for 25 minutes in muffin cases.

gluten free spaghetti test

Pasta test: Biofair organic fair trade rice and quinoa spaghetti (goodnessdirect.co.uk) and Le Veneziane corn spaghetti (Lavidafood.com)

I made two types of spaghetti to test this evening. I had intended to test three, but the Tesco organic wasn’t available in the shop when I went yesterday (unless I am imagining I have had their spaghetti? I usually buy their penne etc as it works very well). I served both with a Bolognese sauce made with a tub of mince and mushrooms from the freezer and a jar of Seeds of Change tomato and chilli sauce. After baking so many fruit cakes yesterday I didn’t feel like cooking, and I am still struggling to tidy up after the focus on the step-daughter’s wedding last week. My sister, Joy, had complained that her gf spaghetti tended to stick even if she used a bit of oil when cooking, so, of course, I immediately had to set out to find her a suitable product.

The corn pasta is bright yellow. The quinoa and rice psta is a pale brown.

The dishes are a bit splattered - I mixed the pasta in a dish that was a bit too small for elegance.

I know some of you out there can't eat quinoa, and some can't eat corn, but if you have a choice the comparison might be useful.

I followed the instructions for cooking on both packets. The quinoa one said cook for thirteen minutes, the other one three minutes stirring occasionally in an open pan then five minutes with lid on (though it did say turn off the heat and I forgot to). Both were mixed with same sauce and served from the same type of bowl.

Results

Views of Mr Taster, who tolerantly coped with two plates of food and quizzing…

“Both were passable, but the yellow one (corn) just was a little more chewy and took the flavour of the sauce better. The pale one was a little softer and didn’t quite hold its texture in the mouth so much though little difference, and it had a flattening effect on the flavour of the sauce – made it more neutral.”

Considering he usually doesn’t like to eat quinoa products in any form I thought this was remarkably positive.

My opinion

I thought that the corn spaghetti was considerably more bouncy. It didn’t seem to change in texture as the meal progressed, and I could still hold strands from high without any breakage fifteen minutes after the sauce went on. I liked the flavour of both though they were a little different.

The quinoa one definitely had an extra flavour level that seemed less usual for a Bolognese type dish, but it was very mild and you would probably have to be looking for it to notice.

I liked both, but the quinoa one was definitely getting mushier as the meal went on. I will check them later this evening both cold and reheated and give another view.

Preliminary test suggests that the corn retains its shape better and doesn’t stick together at all. This was the complaint I had had about other gf pasta.

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I checked a few hours later. The corn pasta was still firm and soft and could be lifted as full strands. It stayed this way after re-heating in the microwave. The quinoa pasta got steadily mushier, and could only be lifted as short strands particularly after re-heating. The flavour of both was still fine after four hours.

Quinoa - a eulogy

I have realised that many people aren't sure what to do with Quinoa. For a start they are put off by the fact that this lovely word is actually pronounced Keenwa, though I don't see why we shouldn't rise up as a people and declare that we will say it the way it is spelled.

I use a lot of quinoa as it has all the essential amino acids. It is, in effect, a complete protein, a bit like having beans on toast, or meat. It is quick to cook compared to brown rice, easier and more forgiving in technique than white rice, and goes with a wide range of flavourings. My husband is put off by the acrid taste it can have, but I have found that if you rinse it before using it this flavour vanishes. To cook it whole just put a little over twice the volume of water to quinoa (I use an espresso cup full for me) and cook over a gentle flame until it has absorbed the water. When it is cooked it will have a visible white line that seems to separate off - there is nothing wrong with it, so don't assume you have done something terrible and throw it away.

I use it on cold wintry days instead of porridge ( I don't eat oats). I serve it with apple sauce, raisins and cinnamon, with a touch or sugar, or, for preference, agave syrup.

It is great with roasted winter vegetables and a spicy tomato sauce. It is good with a vegetable curry when you want to increase the protein of the meal.

It is a good cous cous substitute, dressed with vinaigrette or other salad dressing and loaded with feta and olives or any other intense flavours you like. This works well as a lunch box salad, as it gets better as it sits.

It is also good for baking. I make flatbreads from it as well as using it in cookies and crispbread. It gives a flexible high-protein bread, especially if combined with tapioca flour. You can buy quinoa flour but this does get that unwelcome flavour I mentioned. Instead, rinse whole quinoa and dry it in the oven. Grind using a flour mill or other grinder to a flour. Mix with water to a stiffish dough and roll into flat circles. If this feels like too much work, get a tortilla press- the plastic ones work well and are cheap. To make life easier get a sheet of the silicon baking material and cut two circles the same size as the press. Place one in the press, put a floured blob of dough on, place the other circle of silicon on top and press. Open the press, rotate the dough sandwich a bit and press again if you think it needs evening out. Place on a hot griddle and cook on both sides.

If you look at websites about making tortilla they will say place the dough in a sandwich bag to make it easier to handle. This is a much messier solution that is also more wasteful as you need a new bag when they distort or tear. I am still using the same two circles of silicon as I did when I started a couple of years ago, and they were cut out of a sheet that was getting too ragged for normal baking use. The other advantage of the silicon is that you can place the breads on the griddle even if they are a bit stuck as the silicon doesn't melt instantly the way a plastic bag would - in fact the silicon makes this easier to handle at each stage.

The crispbreads I have a recipe for elsewhere on this blog are made with quinoa and urid and polenta flour. Adjust your mix to get the flavours and textures that you want.

Don't be afraid of the quinoa. It is an easy to use, nutritious food that is very versatile.