Quinoa salad with spinach, black beans and chickpeas

Have been hearing a lot about "quinoa - the super grain" lately and wanted to give it a try. Quinoa is not actually a grain. It is the seed of a plant that is closely related to species such as spinach and beets. You can read more about quinoa here. I bought them and they have been sitting in the pantry for a while now waiting for their turn. I never ate or cooked quinoa before.

I also had some left over canned black beans and canned chickpeas that I had to use.

There was also some baby spinach waiting for its turn. Before all these get spoiled I wanted to use them and combined them all and cooked with quinoa. The result was just wonderful!!!

Quinoa by itself did not have any taste, but with all the added ingredients the super grain did taste good. I served it along with some home made humus.

Ingredients:

Quinoa: 1 cup
Chick peas: 1/4cup
Black Beans: 1/4 cup
Baby Spinach(chopped): 1/4 cup
Tofu( grated) : 4 tsp
Salt as required.
Pepper: 1 tsp
Lime juice: 1 tsp
Olive oil: 2 tsp
Red pepper flakes(optional)

Procedure:

1. Cook quinoa in a rice cooker with 2 cups of water(quinoa to water ratio is 1:2)
2. Add olive oil to a pan and add the chopped spinach, chickpeas and the black beans. Cook them in olive oil  until the spinach becomes soft.
3. Now add the cooked quinoa to the pan, add salt and pepper. Mix well.
4. Add the lime juice and mix.
5. Add the grated tofu on top and serve.
6. Optionally you can add some red pepper flakes  on top to make it spicy.