I became a fan of quinoa when living in Chile – it’s a staple thing there, just like rice or couscous. At the time, no one in Australia had heard of it, but now it is very trendy and recipes are popping up in all the foodie magazines. Quinoa is extremely nutritious, and goes equally well as a plain side dish or as a more substantial meal, such as this pilaf.
My work colleague, who writes the fabulous Excelsior literature blog, and runs the book club at our library, adores quinoa and recommended this Indian-Spiced Chicken Quinoa Pilaf recipe as one he had tried and found delicious. And I agree! I made it exactly as written and it was completely perfect in every way.
My goodness, this was sooooooooooooo tasty! There was quite a bit of chopping up and measuring things out beforehand, but the actual cooking part was easy. I thought it would be very spicy because of the green chilli and all the spices, but actually it wasn’t so much spicy as flavoursome – a great Indian blend of aromatics that works really well.
This is VERY filling and quinoa, like rice, increases hugely as it absorbs liquid, so this quantity would easily serve 6 if you had some kind of bread and salad with it.
As a variation, I’m thinking prawns instead of chicken would work really well here – added sometime towards the end maybe, as 20 minutes would be way too much cooking time.
This is definitely going in to my saved recipe files.
Happy Fooding!
Salmon & Avocado 