Quinoa (or bulghur wheat) with parsley and pine nuts - it's a classic, apparently

"Serve this hot or cold – it's a take on the classic pasta dish with the same ingredients," writes Mark Hix in the Independent describing one of his recipes I cooked up this week.

Ahhh, that classic pasta dish. So classic, I've never heard of it. Anyway, I assume it's a pasta dish with raisins and pine nuts, because that's what this is. Except there's no pasta; the pasta has magically become quinoa. With me so far?

Anyway, you know the drill: I had the recipe for a while (since August last year in this case), it was taking up room in my recipes-to-make folder, and it handily featured store cupboard ingredients, allowing me to make progress on two New Year's resolutions in one go.

The recipe's a pretty easy one - boil up some quinoa, add onion and broccoli while it's cooking, then raisins, oil, parsley, chives and pine nuts once it's cooked. The recipe's here if you want to give it a go.

So that's just what I did. Except I used mainly bulghur wheat with some quinoa mixed in, as that's what I had in my store cupboard.

The results looked a little something like this:


I think I should get bonus points for preserving a Mark Hix vegan recipe for posterity. The geezer almost never cooks vegetarian stuff, let alone vegan recipes. He's the type of chef that would put steak in a fruit salad if he thought he could get away with it.

Still, the dish was perfectly edible (which is handy given it makes a metric truckload, and so I'll be taking this to work for lunch) but it didn't rock my world. It was a bit one-dimensional - it tasted like it was lacking something. 

Pasta, maybe?

Comments

  1. I've got a recipe for something very similar with pasta but it also has a tin of tomatoes in it. Maybe the missing ingredient? It's actually from the Carol Vorderman Detox Cookbook which is quite a vegan friendly book with some good recipes in it. It's not written by Carol, I think she fronted a tv programme at the time it was published, the recipes are by a nutritionist. It's probably my most used non-vegan cookbook, lots of qyick after work, one pot meals!

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  2. Maybe by “classic” he means easy peasy? Can’t say that I’ve ever heard of this combo. Sounds pretty good though, hope the leftovers are just as good since you’re going to be eating for a month :)

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  3. Ha ha, I love hearing everyone's sentiments about Valentine's day. Also I think you're the first human I've ever known who didn't like pizza. Oh man. So much pizza love from my end. At least you cured yourself!

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  4. Sorry that the dish was kind of underwhelming! Luckily, grains freeze really well, and so if you get sick of your leftovers you can put off finishing them for a while. :)

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  5. Nice! Kindda like a high protein tabbouleh. I'd add inn tomatoes for a juicier bit. That usually helps bland recipes. Or mix hummus in with it?

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  6. The dish may have tasted bland, but it sure looks great. Just add some sriracha and it will be delicious. :)

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  7. Yummy! It is a classic, and I need to make it soon. :)

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