Tomato and quinoa soup

Quinoa is a versatile grain (that's really a seed). It’s light enough to add body and protein to a soup without making it stodgy. A little goes a long way, so only add more if you’d prefer a stew rather than soup.

This seedy-grain comes in different colours, but they all taste pretty much the same. Always rinse quinoa well before using.

Tomato & quinoa soup recipe.

All new recipes are on my naturopathy website, check out the resources section for my recipe archive.

quick update from the trenches

There’s been some cooking

Accidental sorrel soup.

How to turn an average end-of-the-week-leftover-veggie soup into a stellar meal? Just add a handful of sorrel and blend. The base combo of alliums/cauliflower/zucchini/potato simmered in stock got the zing it needed when blended with the lemony green herb. A little goes a long way.

Oranges are not the only fruit.

But certainly the most abundant one in our house at the moment due to the arrival of two boxes of home-grown citrus. A batch of orange and spice vegan truffles were scoffed with alarming speed and with zest added to every conceivable dish, the fridge is full of lemons and oranges devested of their skin. As always, there’s large batch of preserved lemons on the go.

Quinoa for breakfast and dinner.

Cooked in orange and ginger juice. A superb breakfast that can be dolled up with a drizzle of maple syrup and some toasted almonds for a deceptively healthy dessert.

Speaking of dessert.

You know I’m not the queen of cooked desserts, right? But my oh my, I had a brilliant idea and minutes later dessert gyozas were on the table. I’d call them a work in progress but really they’re so simple they don’t need work. Three batches down I can’t stop long enough to photograph them before they’re gone. Will share soon, blogging mojo willing.

What’s rocking your kitchen?

tabbouleh with quinoa

In celebration of the return of my kitchen mojo I finally got around to concocting a gluten-free version of this Middle Eastern classic. Tabbouleh is a salad best eaten freshly made, with green herbs straight from the garden. It really zings!


Tabbouleh with quinoa

2 cups cooked quinoa*
2 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
2 tablespoon finely chopped mint
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 Lebanese cucumber, finely diced
2 tomatoes, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon olive oil
juice of 1-2 lemons
a pinch of salt, pepper and Zataar (optional) – to taste

Combine ingredients and then adjust flavours to taste. I prefer a tabouleh a little heavy on the lemon juice and light on the spring onion.

Makes a great salad or side dish that ticks all the good health boxes – vegan, gluten-free and a total detox dish.



*To cook quinoa
Rinse 1 cup of quinoa well in a fine seize and bring to the boil with 1.5 cups of water and a pinch of salt. Simmer covered for 12 minutes, then leave to steam off the heat with the lid firmly on for 5 minutes.

Cool before using in salads.

Links from the lost zone

I’ll be offline for a few days (if this delayed flight ever eventuates) and would like to leave you with a few morsels in my absence.

Reading this piece about cooking with quinoa in the NY times last month made me realise how food wise I tend to move on from one infatuation to another. I haven't made creamy quinoa for breakfast for over a year. However, I did have an amazing quinoa dessert at Mamasita recently that was sweet and orangey and delicious.

I’m impressed. The aforementioned Melbourne eatery is entirely gluten-free. More allergy-aware local dinning options listed recently in The Age. The list seems a bit sparse to me. Hellenic Republic for example asks about dietary restrictions when you book and my coeliac friends say they have lots of options. Munsterhaus, while not top end dining, also caters well for the dairy or gluten intolerant. If I was still in lecturer-mode I’d have told the author that he “could try harder” and “needs to do more research”. Or perhaps “stop cribbing the notes of your classmates and do some original work”?

When the weather warms up again can someone remind me to make Heidi’s grilled tofu and soba noodles? There’s nothing like slurping cool buckwheat noodles on a hot day.

If you’re not used to cooking soba, especially the 100% buckwheat variety, there’s quite an art to it. If you cook them the regular way in a pot of boiling water then drain and serve, they end up a gooey, sticky, tangled mess. The way that works for me is the 3 cups of cold water way. Add the noodles to boiling water. When the pot comes back to the boil add a cup of cold water. Do this two more times (boil/water/back to the boil/water etc) and the noodles should be perfectly cooked by the time the pot is boiling again after the last cold dunk.

See you when I'm back for the land of the wrong white crowd.


Very bored at Melbourne airport, drinking bad coffee and wondering if my plane will ever show up.

Creamy quinoa with banana, cinnamon and almonds

I’m in love!

Well, not just sneakingly with Bret from Flight of the Conchords but another foreign import.

Quinoa is a seedy/grain with when cooked is soft yet yields a subtle crunch. I have previously explored red and white quinoa in savoury recipes such as stuffed artichokes and a simple pilaf but thanks to a recent post from fellow quinoa-lover Heidi at 101 cookbooks I realised it was time to explore what this grain could offer with a little sweetness.

There is a delightful evolution that occurs through the sharing of recipes. Heidi’s starting point was a quinoa berry breakfast featured in Dr John La Puma's “Chef MD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine”, which she shared with us as her version of a warm and nutty cinnamon quinoa recipe. Being the opposite of blackberry season in this part of the world I changed the fruit, nuts, sweetener and milk to what was on hand. The method is the same, yet each combination creates another possibility of flavours.

The second star to this mighty breakfast (or healthy dessert) is a little cassia bark. I’ve always preferred the flavour of the bark found in my favourite Asian grocery store, over the dusty, milder quills of cinnamon from the supermarket. The tougher, gutsier cassia is easily grated with a microplane or grater, so sprinkling is over this cereal is dead easy. Cassia lifts this dish onto an even higher plane, not just in taste but also in health benefits. Latest research shows this versatile herb not only eases digestive upsets but is very promising in lowering blood glucose in diabetes as well as neutralising a few rogue triglycerides.



I see no need for 1% or low fat milk as the original recipe calls for. Basically you are diluting your white fluid of choice 50:50 with water, which inherently renders it lower in fat. Soy milk, if you are not allergic to it, is a pleasant way to get a dose of phyto-oestrogens (a preventer, rather than promoter of breast cancer as it has often been mis-reported), rice or oat milk would do but only resort to cows milk if you lack imagination or resources. While keeping to the original quantities there is one other variation, this made a hearty breakfast for 2 rather than 4 and kept us going all day! Every mouthful was met with mutual groans of joy. This is my new favourite cereal for breakfast, making it a great gluten-free and dairy-free way to start the days

Tip: Always wash your quinoa before using it. If you don’t the bitter residue left on the grain will make you wonder why people rave about this rather expensive addition to the pantry.

Creamy quinoa with bananas, cinnamon and almonds

1 cup soy, or other milk of your choice
1 cup water
1 cup quinoa (red or white, it doesn’t matter which but I made this with red quinoa because it looks so pretty) rinsed well
1/2 – 1 tsp cassia bark or cinnamon, try grating it yourself for freshness
a handful of almonds, cut into slivers with a sharp knife
1 banana
a drizzle of maple syrup

Combine the milk, water and quinoa in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. While doing this if you have a gas cook top, warm a heat diffuser mat on another burner. Once boiling stir well, cover and transfer the pan to the heat mat (if not just turn the heat down to low). Simmer for about 15 minutes or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Add slices of banana and a generous sprinkle of cassia/cinnamon, stir through the quinoa, turn the heat off and leave the pan covered for another 5 minutes. Meantime, toast the slivered almonds in a hot pan until they begin to turn brown. Shake frequently and remember to remove from the pan from the heat the moment the almonds are done to prevent burning.

Spoon the quinoa into the bowls, garnish with another slice of banana, toasted almonds and a drizzle of maple syrup.

Take a deep breath and dive in!




This week’s Weekend Herb Blogging is hosted by Laurie at Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska. Check out her site in a couple of days to see the full round up of herb and vegetable recipes from around the globe.

A simple quinoa pilaf

While my diet has headed back to ‘normal’ which for me isn’t that far off a health freak’s, the significant eater is in a phase of more austere eating. This is a very conscious way of consuming – vegan, no salt, minimal oil (that only returned this week). I was very happy to see some grains back on the menu and celebrated with a pilaf. The beauty of this dish is in the simplicity - of both the ingredients and the cooking method. For it to cook without fussing use a heat diffuser (sometimes called a flame tamer) which is great for cooking other grain dishes like porridge/oatmeal. Once all the ingredients have been added you just set it on the mat and leave it alone. Improvise with your own choice of vegetables and seasonings. This is a dish with as many variations as you wish.

A simple quinoa pilaf

A touch of vegetable oil to sauté
Finely diced onion
2-3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Diced vegetables – celery, carrot, zucchini
Shitake mushrooms – I only had dried so I rehydrated in water for an hour and reserved the liquid for the stock
1.5 cups of well rinsed quinoa (this was a pretty mix of red and white because that was what we had left)
2-3 cups of water or good quality vegetable stock/mushroom soaking water
slivered toasted almonds (dry roasted) to serve

Sauté the onion, then add garlic and your vegetables of choice in a large, heavy bottomed fry pan. When they have softened a little, spread the quinoa in an even layer on top of the vegetables and pour on the stock/water until the quinoa is covered. Don’t stir! Bring to the boil, then cover and transfer the pan to a heat diffuser mat and let it cook on the lowest setting. Once again, don’t stir – just set the timer for 25 minutes and leave it.

When the time is up, turn off the heat but leave covered while you dry roast your nuts.

Serve the pilaf, top with the almond slivers and enjoy.

* I do prefer to add a bit of salt to balance the sweetness of the vegetables. Other than the toasted almonds (which were delicious) fried cubes of tempeh with a dash of tamari can also be a nice addition.

a week in food – from the lurgy zone

We’ve been behind the 8 ball this week – pesky colds, the odd bit of oral surgery, sick cats – none of this adds up to a great week in the kitchen. Despite that a few stand out, vegetable based meals found their way to the table and are worth a mention.

It began well with the Significant Eater whipping up yet another variation of his stuffed artichokes. The artichoke is a hardy thistle that is a quintessential spring green and a Mediterranean staple. Unfortunately, most recipes paradoxically laden this liver friendly herb with lots of fat. A great legacy of a North Italian ancestry, his family favourites have bought a variety of new foods into my life, however being a meat and dairy-free woman has meant a lot of adapting. Instead of parmesan, bacon, parsley garlic and breadcrumbs - the new stuffing has become parsley, pine nuts, garlic, anchovies and quinoa. A vegan version could easily swap salty sun dried tomatoes for the anchovies. Rinse the quinoa and whiz the other ingredients in a food processor, season and then stir in the grain (actually it's a seed but that's another story). The fun part is packing the stuffing in between the tight leaves of the artichoke. It can take a lot more filling than you would imagine. This is then steamed for about 45 minutes or so, the longer the better. Traditionally the stems are chopped up and included. Just check the inside of them as they cook, when the stems are soft enough to eat the artichokes are ready.

The SE also came up trumps with a delicious vegetable soup, which included spinach and rice, to nurse me through a particularly nasty visit to the dentist.

Later in the week I was back in the kitchen. Silverbeet (chard) is not the sexiest of veg but at this time of year its dark green leaves make a promise of healthy goodness. Wanting something gluten and dairy free, but full of flavour, I settled on a vegetable bake. I sautéed onion and garlic with the silverbeet, then added grated carrot, chopped green olives stuffed with semidried tomatoes (another yummy market find this week) and a can of tuna. Binding the filling slightly with 2 eggs I created a bake, with thin layers of firm streamed potato on top. With a little olive oil and salt, the potatoes crisped up in the hot oven, giving the dish a bit of a lift. For a vegetarian version, I'd replace the tuna with some cooked brown rice to add a bit of bulk, or just more vegetables. Both versions are gluten-free.

Friday was another variations of cooked vegetables and a back up can of fish. The cold night called for baked vegetables – I found potatoes (winter’s comforting treat), pumpkin, beetroot, onion, cauliflower (cut into large chunks) and garlic, which I tossed with a dash of oil, sea salt, pepper and fresh rosemary and backed til slightly crunchy. I mashed the roasted garlic with mustard, lemon and olive oil to make a thick, creamy dressing, which I tossed through the baked vegetables, more of the delightful stuffed olives and some canned salmon.

Sure, there were a couple of restaurant take aways too. There’s something medicinal about a spicy tom yum soup when you’ve got a cold and our local Thai will load it with extra hot herbs if you ask for it. But I think we did well for a couple of invalids.

What’s getting you through winter?