The KitchenMaid

Really easy quinoa, bean and beetroot salad with balsamic dressing

Unless you’re careful, December can turn into a month of eating terribly – too many ‘treats’ and not enough of the good stuff. Here’s a salad to redress the balance (plus it looks appropriately festive).

RED QUINOA, BEETROOT AND BEAN SALAD

Did you know that quinoa (pronounced keen-WAH) is grown in New Zealand? For this recipe I’ve used wholegrain red quinoa, grown in the Rangitikei region by Kiwi Quinoa.* It’s got all the same nutritional benefits of ‘ordinary’ quinoa, which is high in protein and fibre, with a bolder flavour and a subtle crunchiness. Plus, of course, the colour is fabulous. Quinoa is a pseudo-cereal (it’s actually a seed, rather than a grain) so it’s fine for your gluten-free friends to eat.
This salad is also great for vegetarians, who can be a bit left out at this time of year. If beetroot in a tin gives you the horrors, use grated fresh beetroot instead. A creamy element, like avocado or feta, is another good addition.
Serves 4 generously.

For the salad:

  • ⅔ cup red quinoa
  • 1 ⅓ cups water
  • 1 x 450g tin baby beetroot, drained and quartered
  • 1 x 400g red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 large red capsicum, diced
  • A generous handful of fresh parsley and mint, finely sliced

For the dressing:

  • 1 small clove garlic, crushed to a paste with ½ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
  • ½ tsp honey or brown sugar
  • 2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 4 Tbsp olive oil

Put the quinoa and water in a pot set over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, then cover and cook for 15 minutes, until the water has absorbed and you can see the quinoa ‘tails’. Tip into a bowl and allow to cool for five minutes.

Make the dressing: put the garlic, mustard, honey and vinegar in a small bowl or jar and whisk or shake until well mixed. Add the oil and whisk or shake again until emulsified. Taste for seasoning and sharpness – add more salt, oil or vinegar as required.

Stir the baby beetroot, kidney beans and capsicum into the quinoa. Pour over half the dressing and toss gently. Add the herbs and toss again. Pile onto a serving platter and drizzle over the rest of the dressing. 

Any leftovers can be stored in a lidded container in the fridge for up to three days. Allow to come to room temperature before serving.

* This is not an ad – I bought the quinoa (and everything else) used in this recipe.

How to make fridge pickles

If you’re an organised person, you’ve probably spent the last month pickling and bottling your summer harvest. (If reports of queues outside New Zealand supermarkets were anything to go by yesterday, then you probably spent yesterday panic-buying hand sanitiser and disinfectant.) Not me, on either count. As in most parts of my life, I’m the cricket who sang all summer and then realised they should have been storing stuff away for winter. I mean, you should see my Kiwisaver.

The good news is that you can have your fun – and your pickles – without all the hassle you might think is involved in such a task. Once you learn how to make fridge pickles, you’ll be every bit as smug as one of those people who does everything in advance.

How to make fridge pickles

To make a basic cold pickle brine, use a 1:1 ratio of water to vinegar, plus salt, sugar and flavourings (whole spices, garlic, chillies) to taste. Use your favourite kind of vinegar – I think white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar are best. Here’s a sample pickling brew to give you an idea:

  • ½ cup water
  • ¼ cup white wine vinegar
  • ¼ cup cider vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp sugar

Put everything in a small pot set over medium heat. Stir well until the mixture is hot and the salt and sugar are dissolved. Add the spices/flavourings of your choice – about 1 tsp whole seeds to a cup of brine. Taste it to make sure you like the flavour – adjust the salt and sugar accordingly.
Pack whatever washed (and/or peeled) vegetables you want to pickle in a sterilised jar (cleanliness is even better than godliness when it comes to pickling – wash jars in hot soapy water, rinse well and heat in a 120C oven for 20 minutes. Soak lids in boiling water for 10 minutes, then dry thoroughly with a clean tea towel). I recommend the following, either separately or in a mixture:

  • Carrots – slice them into long strips, lengthways
  • Cucumbers – slice them into long strips, lengthways
  • Chillies – keep them whole
  • Radishes – slice them into discs or batons
  • Zucchini –  slice them into discs or batons

Make sure the vegetables take up all the room in the jar – but leave about a 2cm gap at the top. Pour over the brine to cover the vegetables, making sure there are no air bubbles (tap the jar on the bench to pop them, or poke around with a skewer). Seal tightly and store in the fridge until you’re ready to eat. These pickles can be eaten after 48 hours – and you’re best to consume them within two months.

Thanks to Amber Sturtz (of Taco Addicts fame) for an excellent pickling tutorial at a recent Welly Hospo Wahine event.

Nectarine tartines with chilli and mint

What’s that saying about necessity being the mother of invention? I apply it to what we eat on a daily basis – I am the self-appointed queen of resourceful cooking. I think I learnt this from my mother, growing up on a farm where you didn’t nip to the shops if you ran out of something, but didn’t get good at it until I was a student with a Mother Hubbard-style pantry. Now it’s such a habit I do it without even thinking, like weaving between two languages without having to translate them in my head.

Sometimes though, the cupboards are full enough that this ‘invention’ is easy. The day after making and photographing the recipes for this week’s Eat Well spread on stonefruit, I opened the fridge to discover lots of good things to make breakfast from (being home alone also helps in these situations – good things vanish less quickly and you can eat whatever you like). This simple tartine (an open sandwich – tartiner means ‘to spread’ in French) was the result.

Nectarine tartines with chilli and mint

I’m not sure this is a recipe, exactly, but a set of loose instructions. You could vegan-ise it by using cashew cream cheese, or use peaches and basil instead of nectarines and mint. Or you could go down a completely different route and use plums and dark chocolate, as in this Black Forest sandwich. The options are limited only by your fridge…

  • 2 slices sourdough or other good bread
  • 3-4 Tbsp cream cheese
  • 1 ripe nectarine, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 fresh red chilli, thinly sliced
  • A small handful of mint leaves, roughly torn
  • Extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling

Toast the bread, then spread generously with cream cheese. Top with nectarine slices, then scatter over the chilli and mint leaves. Drizzle over a little olive oil. Eat immediately. Serves 1-2.

Barbecued chicken with honey, mustard and miso

A couple of years ago we bought a fancy barbecue. We didn’t mean to, in fact we had said to each other that after spending money we didn’t really have on building a deck we weren’t going to be those people who then went and spent even more on things to put on it. Oops.

If you like chicken in a basket you’ll love chicken in a bikini!

As it turned out, the barbecue-buying experience was so hilarious that it felt like we got our money’s worth even before we left the shop. Second-hand car sales people could learn a thing or two from these barbecue merchants – they were all but doing cartwheels in order to show us everything this barbecue could do. It could cook steak! It could cook whole chickens! Buy these attachments and it could smoke fish, fry eggs and steam a hangi! After we’d succumbed to their wiles (fools and their money are soon parted), I joked to the Mr that we had better leave before they showed us that it could make cakes. Sure enough, as we waited to pay at the counter an attendant danced past with a tray of brownies – also made in the barbecue.

Anyway, to cut a long story short we have got loads of use out of the wonder barbecue all year ’round, even if I’ve never fried an egg or cooked brownies in it. Surprisingly, the thing we do the most is use it to cook a chicken (occasionally ‘chicken in a bikini’, as pictured above). Here’s another of our favourites as summer turns to autumn.

BUTTERFLIED BARBECUE CHICKEN WITH HONEY, MUSTARD AND MISO

Serves 4-6

1 x large free-range chicken

2 cloves garlic, smashed to a paste with 1 teaspoon flaky sea salt

2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoons white miso paste

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Put the chicken in a large, shallow dish, breast side down. Using a sharp knife or poultry shears, cut down each side of the backbone and discard it. Stab the chicken all over with the shears or a sharp knife, making small incisions about 1cm deep.

Put all the other ingredients in a small bowl and mix well, then pour it all over the chicken, including under the skin (loosen it with your fingers). Cover the dish with plastic wrap and leave to marinate in the fridge for at least two hours (and no longer than 12).

When you’re ready to cook, heat the barbecue to 200C. Put the chicken on the barbecue grill or hot plate, shut the lid and cook for 25 minutes. Turn it over and baste it, then cook for another 20-25 minutes, until the skin is crisp and golden and the juices run clear when you pierce the flesh.

Remove from the barbecue and let it rest, under a tent of foil, for 10 minutes, then carve and serve.

Plum, pomegranate and pumpkin seed salad

In Summer Cooking, Elizabeth David says that ‘cold stewed plums must be one of the dullest dishes on earth. Accompanied by custard it is one of the most depressing’.

I don’t mind a cold stewed plum myself (and cold proper custard is heavenly). What I find depressing is biting into a purple-skinned plum and discovering that its flesh is golden and mushy. In my opinion, a good plum – stewed or not – is a confounding blend of sweet and sour, with firm, juicy flesh in shades of pale pink, bright crimson or cardinal red.

If you’re a plum-lover – or have a tree and can’t keep up with eating them – here’s a salad we’ve been enjoying a lot in the last couple of weeks.

Plum, pomegranate and pumpkin seed salad

This is the sort of thing you can throw together very easily and people think you’re some kind of salad savant. You can add and subtract ingredients as suits your palate and pantry: some soft cheese might be good, or olives, or even some cooked quinoa (yes, really, though you might want to add a bit more dressing).

1 red onion, finely sliced

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp caster sugar

3 Tbsp red wine vinegar

3 large handfuls baby spinach leaves, washed and dried

2-3 red-fleshed plums, cut into slim wedges

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, toasted in a dry pan until golden

For the dressing:

1 clove garlic, crushed to a paste with a pinch of flaky sea salt

1 Tbsp pomegranate molasses

3 1/2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Put the onions, salt, sugar and red wine vinegar in a small bowl. Stir to combine, then cover and set aside for at least 15 minutes (longer is fine, though put in the fridge if it’s going to be more than an hour).

When the onions have steeped and you’re nearly ready to eat, put the spinach leaves and plums in a salad bowl. Drain the vinegar from the onions into a small jar. Add the crushed garlic and pomegranate molasses. Shake to mix, then add the olive oil. Shake again until emulsified.

Add the onions to the bowl and drizzle over 3-4 tablespoons of the dressing. Toss gently, then scatter over the pumpkin seeds. Toss again and serve. Serves 3-4.

Fancy more plum recipes? You could try this roasted black doris plum and coconut ice cream, these mulled plums or this blast from the past – a Black Forest plum sandwich!