Last weekend we took a mini vacation to the Sun Valley area. After two days of eating out, I realized that I had managed to eat almost no vegetables (with the exception of veggie pizza). On our way out of town, we stopped to check out the new Main Street Market. I bought some quinoa salad, as well as some raw kale salad from the deli. The quinoa salad had corn and onions mixed in and was pretty standard, but the raw kale salad was really, really good. It had a lemon vinaigrette, parmesan cheese, pine nuts and red peppers. Although it couldn't undo the massive amounts of manchego flatbread I had consumed, it did make me feel healthier.
Hoping to recreate the salad for work lunches this week, I bought kale at the store today. I bought one bunch of red kale and one of green, but I chose to use the red for this salad. I also restocked my quinoa supply, since I couldn't remember how old mine was (does it go bad?). I buy organic quinoa in the bulk section, making it a pretty low cost food. My original plan was to cook and cool the quinoa, then add the raw kale, taking inspiration from the two grocery store salads. However, even after chopping it into very thin strips, the kale was still pretty tough. I ended up lightly sautéing the kale in some olive oil, sea salt and garlic, then tossing with the cooked quinoa. I forgot to buy pine nuts, so I added some chopped walnuts. I had half a bag of organic dried cranberries in my fridge, so those went in too. Instead of making a dressing, I drizzled the salad with olive oil and the juice of half of a lemon. The result was really good while warm, and I think it will be equally delicious as a cold salad. I didn't measure anything but the dry quinoa (one cup), but I think this recipe would be very flexible. I did a search for quinoa and kale salads and found quite a few actual recipes. I think these sound good: with avocado (yum!), with apple, and a nice wintery version. Which do you think sounds best?
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