Harvest Quinoa with Apple and Walnuts

As my next dish as I count down to Thanksgiving, I made this meal this past weekend to celebrate fall flavors. And it only takes one pot and one pan! While you are making the quinoa, you can essentially finish off the rest of the stuff and just mix together- or do everything but the apple and fresh sage which you can add while re-heating the rest. You can also serve it cold too! It’s a great vegetarian (and gluten-free) option instead of stuffing, but also is a great side dish for any entree. I filled a 2 1/2 quart dish with this, so can serve a nice group!

This dish is inspired by the Webicurean’s Harvest Rice with Apples and Pecans, but I changed out the rice for quinoa and swapped pecans for walnuts (basically because F ate all the pecans so all I had were walnuts)! I also really upped the amount of apple, and added sage.  If you’d like, you can throw in some extra brightness with cranberries, or pomegranate seeds, etc. I mention walnuts or pecans, but hazelnuts would work, or you could roast some chestnuts to add a more earthy base, and/or add celery with the onions for crunch.

This is the second of a series of posts of recipes I am going to cover on dishes to consider for Thanksgiving! They will all be vegetarian, so you might consider it for a side dish or if you have a vegetarian at your table like I do, be a way to provide something more hearty than the usual sides of rolls, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Check out my Recipes Index page for other dishes that I have covered in the past.

Harvest Quinoa with Apple and Walnuts

Ingredients::

• 2 1/2 cups broth – for my purposes I used vegetarian broth
• 2 cups quinoa – or you can choose to use wild rice if you’d like
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts or whatever nut you’d like
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 cup chopped onion (approximately 1/2 an onion)
• 3 cups chopped granny smith or any kind of apple- sweet, or tart, or mix up both?! (approximately 2 apples)
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon of fresh chopped sage (optional)

Directions:

1. In a large pot, bring broth to a boil. Add quinoa and salt and simmer for 40-45 minutes, or until done per whatever package might instruct (I like TruRoots quinoa because it is organic, gluten-free, and . The one I used is from Costco and is a sprouted wild rice, brown rice and red rice and quinoa blend. Besides being good for you and tasty, their Enray Foundation works to educate and invest with quinoa growers in Bolivia. I am going to ignore the debate that because quinoa is in demand that the global economy is pricing South Americans out of eating it themselves because it’s such a good living – quinoa is hard to grow and perfect for their environment. At least the foundation helps make sure that this new boom in agriculture does not come at the price of their ecosystem. The idea of driving down the price of quinoa by us eating less to drive down demand so they can eat it but then they have less financial and economic growth sounds idiotic to me. Ok, off the soapbox.)
   
2. Anyway, while the quinoa is in progress, in a pan, melt the butter, then sauté the nuts in the butter until the nuts are golden brown. Remove your warm, golden brown nuts from the pan and set aside. Don’t turn your back on them because you don’t want burnt nuts!
   
3. In the same pan, add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, and sauté the chopped onion until the onions are translucent. Remove and set aside.
   
4. In the same pan, add the last tablespoon of the olive oil and sauté the cut apple. Sprinkle with nutmeg, salt and pepper.
   
5. When the quinoa is done, stir in the apple/onion mixture as well as the nuts and the tablespoon of fresh chopped sage.
   

Summary of the Vegetarian Thanksgiving Sides Series 2013:

• Mashed Brussels Sprouts
• Cauliflower with Brown Butter, Pears, and Hazelnuts recipe
• Four Greens with Garlic Saute
• Harvest Quinoa with Apples and Walnuts recipe
• Butternut Squash Lasagna in Béchamel sauce recipe

Thanks for reading!