Fresh Quinoa Lemon White Beans Salad

We all love Ottolenghi, we do, too. It was pouring cats and dogs here other day and we were hanging out in the girls room a bit a Sunday afternoon and each of us had a cook book on the lap. We love to read cook books like that and to discover recipes in books we have owned for a while. I browsed through Plenty More and I realized that I hadn’t written down a recipe which again we have made on an almost weekly basis when we were leaving Sydney.

It is a wonderful salad which was first published with the Guardian by Ottolenghi. We have altered it over time a fair bit, also as we often freestyle based on what our fridge has to offer and sometimes we stick to a certain version.

So this is a crunchy (due to lots of raw veg) salad and fresh, thanks to the lemon and herbs but also substantial as there are white beans and we like to add roasted seeds or nuts as well.

Recipe:

100g of cooked quinoa (we like mixed quinoa for the looks)

1 glass of cooked, drained and rinsed cannellini beans

3 pieces of chopped spring onions

2 fresh celery stalks cut into 2cm pieces

20g flat parsley, finely chopped

20g mint leaves finely chopped

1/2 large lemon, pips removed and finely chopped

Use other half of the lemon for its juice for the dressing with olive oil, salt and pepper.

1 tablespoon of roasted sunflower seeds

Mix all the ingredients together, make sure the cooked quinoa had a bit time to cool off. Serve it as a main or on the side with some hummus for instance.