Asian inspired dish with quinoa, chicken and vegetables… and quenching Mother Nature’s thirst

It’s been much too hot to do a lot of cooking these past weeks, dear neighbors… But here is a dish that will not warm up your kitchen too much, I promise: the protein (quinoa and chicken breast) is cooked together in one single pot, and the vegetables quickly sauteed.

This dish keeps VERY WELL in the freezer; once defrosted, you don’t need more than a few minutes to warm it up in a skillet, even less so in the microwave. Very handy.

Ingredients (for 4 good-size portions)

– 150 g / 5.25 oz white quinoa

– 2 chicken breasts, preferably organic or at least raised without any antibiotics

– ½ tsp coarse natural sea salt, untreated and 500 ml / 2 cups good quality water for cooking

– 1/2 sugarloaf cabbage ( between 400 and 500 g / 14 and 18 oz)

– 1 pepper, red, yellow or green, the color is up to you (roughly 250g / 9 oz)

– 1 or 2 carrots (up to 150g / 5 oz)

– 1 TBSP olive oil, preferably mild in taste, for cooking

for the final touch:

– 1 tsp tamari + 1 TBSP sesame oil per serving + gomasio* to taste (optional)

*gomasio is a mix of ground salt and sesame seeds; I make my own in my trusted electric coffee grinde. For more flavor, I add dried seaweed flakes.

How to:

1. Cut meat into strips and set aside. Start preparing vegetables: pepper should be seeded and cut into long strips, and half cabbage chopped rather thinly.

2. Wash and rinse quinoa thoroughly several times – do not throw away the water: depending on where you live, your indoor or outdoor plants might need it!

3. Cook quinoa and chicken together in salted water, on low. This should take about 15 minutes after boiling point; when the germs pop out of the quinoa seeds you can turn off the heat and strain.

chicken and quinoa ready to be cooked

4. Meanwhile, sautee cabbage and pepper in heated olive oil, between 5 to 10 minutes. Cut carrots into thin julienne strips (I use a special julienne knife) , add to other vegetables, stir and cook a little longer, just enough for the carrot to “relax”.

5. Stir in strained quinoa and meat. Serve hot or warm, seasoning with tamari and sesame oil (and gomasio) in each individual plate.

This may seem like not much meat per person, but quinoa being already laden with protein, why overdo it? And then with the recent heatwave I haven’t felt particularly hungry. Feel free to change the amounts, dear neighbors! All recipes on this blog are only here to inspire you, and can be adapted, tweaked… If it weren’t for my husband’s problem with sulfites, I would personally add some onion at step 4 – preferably Roscoff onions for those lucky neighbors who can grow or buy them!

Mother Nature around us is becoming more and more thirsty… Not a drop of rain in several weeks. Not wanting to wait until the impending restrictions that are bound to be imposed on us, I save water that would normally go down the drain, such as what I use to wash and rinse vegetables – or quinoa as in this recipe, for my flower bed. I also selflessly give some of my own blood to the little bugs that hide in the rows of beans or my revived rose bushes! My legs and arms can attest to the blunt fact that I am apparently not as high in the food chain as I thought I was 😄 !

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