We love this quinoa recipe, which is quick and easy to prepare and offers a well balanced meal, made using fully organic, sustainably sourced ingredients for just £4.30 for two dinners.
Ingredients:
- 75g quinoa per person (costs 90p for 3)
- Any vegetables which you can lightly fry, so definitely some onion and garlic, then we used carrots and leaf beet, other good contenders would be peppers, courgettes, mushrooms, cabbage – pretty much anything really! (cost, less than £2)
- Tin of fish – if it’s in oil you can use the oil to fry the vegetables in (cost £1)
- 0.5 lemons per 3 people – zest and juice (cost 16p)
- Herbs – mint, oregano and thyme (all growing in the garden – otherwise this would be expensive)
- Dressing made from 1.5 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp vinegar, 0.5 tsp honey (cost 24p)
- Salt/pepper
TOTAL COST: £4.30 for 2 dinners and 1 or 2 lunches (all organic ingredients). To make cheaper you could swap quinoa for couscous and/or fish for toasted seeds
Something we’ve struggled a bit with is finding reasonably priced fish, with good information about how/where it has been sourced. We use the Coop at the mo for tinned fish, which does claim to be ‘from responsibly fished sources’, but little other information.
1. Cook the quinoa by boiling in a little water for 15 minutes – adding more water as needed (you want all the water to have been absorbed at the end, like with couscous). You’ll probably need around 1 part quinoa to 1.5 parts water by volume.
2. Slice and lightly fry all the vegetables, except carrots.
3. Grate the carrots. Cut up/tear the herbs. Zest and juice the lemon.
4. Make the dressing.
5. Mix everything together!
Posted by Rosie and Tim