My kind of food prep is a super easy lunch and dinner recipe that you can enjoy as leftovers!
I've made various versions of this salad over the years and I love that it is so adaptable to the fresh (and pantry) ingredients that you happen to have on hand in the house and garden.
Make sure you check out the cooks notes at the bottom of this post for suggested swaps and additions!
This recipe uses cooked chickpeas. If you want to know how to prepare these yourself rather than from a can you can check out my post here and follow the steps until you use them in a hummus!
x Harry
Serves: 4 (or 8 as a side dish)
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
1 1/2 cups quinoa, rinsed & drained well
1 red capsicum, diced and seeds removed
1.5 kg (approx 8 cups) chopped veggies of choice (I used zucchini, sweet potato, pumpkin and carrot )
2 tablespoons olive oil (optional)
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon good quality salt
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas, rinsed & drained well
1 cup kalamata or black olives, pitted and sliced
1 cup (approx) fresh basil, roughly chopped
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius fan-forced. 200 degrees celsius for conventional ovens.
Peel, deseed and dice your veggies into 2-3 cm pieces. Line two baking trays with baking paper and spread your veggies on top. Coat with 1 tablespoon of olive oil (if using), garlic powder and salt and place in the oven to roast for 60 minutes, stirring half way through.
In a medium saucepan, add your rinsed and drained quinoa and 2 1/2 cups water. Bring to the boil and simmer until all water is absorbed. Once cooked. stir every now and then as it cools.
Once the roast veggies are cooked, set aside to cool with the quinoa.
Chop your capsicum and basil.
In a large mixing bowl, add all of the ingredients including the remaining olive oil and mix well to combine.
Serving suggestion: Serve this delicious salad with a generous amount of home made hummus (recipe in WHOLE + HOME by Natural Harry ) or cheesy tahini sauce (recipe WHOLE by Natural Harry) and pickled red onion (recipe in WHOLE by Natural Harry )
Or enjoy simply and perfectly just as it is.
Since this recipe makes a really large amount, I like to store it in the fridge for a delicious and very easily transported lunch the following day. It is also the ideal dish to contribute to a potluck lunch, dinner or picnic!
COOKS NOTESSwaps: Quinoa - You can swap the quinoa for so many things you might have on hand. Some of my favourites are buckwheat, GF pasta, brown rice, wild rice, black rice and cous cous. Barley works well too!
Roast veggies - These are super interchangeable. I also love eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, squash and white potato.
Capsicum - While it lends a delicious fresh crunch to this dish, the capsicum can be interchanged with fresh, sun ripened tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes or even roasted red peppers (capsicum) as well.
Basil - The basil is such a lovely compliment to this dish and I am a big fan of an abundance of herbs for flavour. You can always swap it out with a nice big bunch of parsley. Delicious!
Chickpeas - I love chickpeas. They are a hearty, plant-protein rich component to this dish. You can swap these out for the equivalent amount of cooked lentils, butter beans, cannellini beans or kidney beans. I have also tried cooked black beans in this dish before.
Olives - These are a yummy salty addition to this salad. You could swap them out for some avocado, artichokes, pickled onion, sun-dried tomatoes or any pickled veg!
Additions:
If you have any of these on hand they make a very tasty addition to this salad:
Artichoke hearts
Coconut aminos
Dash of fresh lemon juice
