Quinois with Potatoes

For the last few years, my simple, warped view of cooking gave me the idea that if I cooked some frozen veggies and threw that in with some grain and protein, I was cooking. One pretty simple recipe from Mark Bittman has disabused me of that notion. I've cooked Trader Joe's Potato Medley with Quinois before, but I always boiled the quinois into a mushy mess that was alright, but never actually good.

Bittman recommends roasting the quinios, and it makes a huge difference. It's a little bit crunchy and far more flavorful. Admittedly, I didn't follow the recipe exactly since I already had the TJ's Potato Medley bag around, I figured I might as well use it. Although this is one of the first times I've freelanced away from the recipe, it turned out pretty good. Here's the what I actually did (let me know if you want the actual recipe):

• Grease an 8 X 10 or 8 X 8 pan with olive oil.
• Put 3-4 peeled cloves of garlic along with Potato Medley into a pot with water and bring it to a boil. I added some salt, but probably didn't it any since there's probably already plenty in the bag.
• Pre-heat oven to 400.
  
• After the water's boiling, add 3/4 cup of quinois and turn the heat down a bit, but keep it rolling for 5 minutes.
  
• Drain enough so excess water is gone and pour into pan.
• Add another tablespoon or so of oil, ground pepper, salt if you want and toss.
  
• Bake for 15 minutes.
  
• Remove and scrape around the edges and toss again.
• Bake for 10 minutes.
• Add some chile powder and cheese of your choice. I used what I had around, some cheddar cheese slices I tore up and some grated parm.
  
• Bake another 5 minutes.

This turned out pretty darn good. The cheese helped of course and the crunchy, nuttiness of the quinois definitely made me appreciate the grain more than I ever have before. I don't know if the Potato Medley is a healthy choice or not, but it doesn't seem too bad.

My personal take away, is that roasted quinois is way better than boiled.