Friday 1 May 2009

Experimental Porridge

With red quinoa!

Our regular Easter houseguests bring us presents, because they are lovely polite people. And since they are friends and know us, they bring good presents. I now have a selection of interesting ingredients to play with, once of which is a bag of red quinoa.

I've eaten this in a lovely tabouli-like salad at Satis, but the weather took a change for the cold recently and I fancied something hot. So I went off googling and found this quinoa porridge recipe at Feasts and Fotos. It's not a regular read of mine, but it looks like a good blog. Nice pics: her photo skills put me to shame.

There's another quinoa recipe there that I'd like to try: quinoa with kale and walnuts. I'd have to make it almonds instead, for the sake of the bloke, but it seems nicely seasonal. Choku Bai Jo had some great black kale in stock last week. And if you are wondering about the quinoa, there was some at Choku Bai Jo, and also the Dickson health food shop stocks both red and white varieties. I'm sure it won't be too hard to find.

So, anyway, back to the porridge. I put it off for almost a week, because cooking something for half an hour in the morning before breakfast is not usually on my agenda. (Weekend and holiday brunches are different.) And then I had an idea: make it for lunch one day, and make enough to see whether it would reheat successfully next morning in the microwave. And the answer is yes, it will - with a caveat. Read on for my recipe variant and notes.


Recipe: Red Quinoa Porridge
1 cup uncooked red quinoa
1 cup water
2 cup milk
1 stick cassia cinnamon
2 tbsp chopped dried apricots
2 tbsp dried cranberries
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 tbsp plain yogurt

Put quinoa, water, cinnamon and 1 cup of the milk in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until most of the water has been absorbed.
Add the remaining cup of milk and the dried fruits.
Simmer for about 15 minutes or until it reaches your desired consistency.
Add the syrup and the yogurt and stir to combine.

Notes: This quantity made three servings for me. It's not creamy like an oat porridge, but it does have a pleasant slightly chewy grain texture. It's a good winter breakfast; I'd make it again.

It reheated just fine in the microwave, so that made for a good quick weekday breakfast. But a small warning: the original author says "Adding some yogurt might seem odd to some of you, but trust me, it provides a lovely silky consistency." Yes, it does. But I'd advise adding it to your bowl, not the saucepan. I think this texture effect is lost on reheating.

I've doubled the quantity and used different dried fruits and sweeteners from the original. I also found that the time needed to be longer - whether that is because my taste differs, or it's the difference between red and white quinoa, I do not know.

7 comments:

brazen's crafts said...

you need a thermomix to do the mixing for you :)

infoaddict said...

I like quinoa. Jill Dupleix has a nice reliable recipe for it in "Lighten up" and I tend to cook it like couscous and serve with things like rice.

It's not cheap but the health food shop in Belconnen Fresh Food Markets has it in bags that's cheaper than buying the boxed stuff. This is useful because these days, I don't buy small quantities of things. It's 500g minimum or nothing ...

Unknown said...

I bought some quinoa from the Co-Op a few months back but have done nothing with it, this has inspired me, thanks Cath.

Bells said...

last year I found out that you can make porridge over night in the slow cooker. You need to use heavy stuff like steel cut oats. I am giong to try it with quinoa too.

fanfop said...

Look for quinoa in the health food aisle of larger supermarkets too. I've seen it at Coles in Jamison.

Good tip on porridge in the slow cooker Bells, I might try it!

Cath said...

I do wonder about the slow cooker - mainly because I'm cooking it for just me. The Bloke hates porridge with a passion (bad childhood experiences in Scotland), so I make small quantities. I confess I mostly do the quick oats in the microwave method, though I occasionally lash out into proper oats.

Susan said...

Thanks for the shout-out! Hope you tried (and liked!) my quinoa recipes. Great site, by the way.