Don't think.. just DO IT!

As I said before.. I really missed my own cooking.. I know I can't complain about travelling to all those beautiful places I've been lately for my photography work, it's a luxury problem for sure.. to go and eat outdoors all the time..but really .. cooking is like therapy for me..I just love it to be all by myself preparing delicious food.. experiment and take my own time for it.. cooking is everything BUT thinking to me... I just do it.. and lucky me it always turns out great! :D

At work we've got this thing that each Thursday we go and have lunch with all our colleagues together so once in every 3 months it's my turn.
Let me tell you one thing.. my colleagues always look forward to whenever I have my shift .. (duh)..As you can see on the images below I made 2 different types of quinoa salads!

Ingredients:

- quinoa (boil the quinoa in mushroom broth, you can buy mushroom broth in any supermarket now a days, I used an organic broth cube, this way the quinoa is super flavourful)
- beet (I bought mine precooked cause I love the sweet taste it has, but you can eat them raw too. I used a special slicer to get them really thin like beet-carpaccio)
- goatcheese
- peas (cook them in water)
- dried figs (slice them up)
- wild spinach (leave it raw)
- mushrooms (grill them shortly with some salt and pepper)

What now?!
There's really no rocket science about this dish, just stash all the above ingredients together and you are done!
what I do is: first lay down the wild spinach over the whole plate, on top of that comes the beet, then the quinoa, peas, goatcheese and the figs.

There's no need for any dressing because the flavourful quinoa combined with the goatcheese will blend superb with the rest.. Damn this was so tasty! :|

Tip:
I think it's best to have the quinoa cooled of before adding with the rest.  so start with that, before slicing up the rest of the ingredients.

Ingredients:

- quinoa (boil the quinoa in water with all this added seasoning: tbs. kurkuma, tsp. cinnamon, tsp paprika powder, tsp curry powder, some salt & pepper, and 2 shredded limeleaves, this way all the spices will be soaked in by the quinoa)
- avocado
- coriander
- mixed nuts
- spinach
- tomatoes
- cucumber (I used my spiralslicer to turn the cucumber in spaghetti strings)

What's next?
Put all the ingredients in a bowl, and mix it all well, add a shot of soy sauce and some lemon or lime juice and you are done!
Now you've got your indian vs western styled quinoa salad! MMmmmm.. again.. a major success

Tip:
I think it's best to have the quinoa cooled of before adding with the rest.  so start with that, before slicing up the rest of the ingredients.

The next (leftover) day

So yesterdays lunch I decided to mix all the leftover quinoa with some fresh spinach, I added a spoon of cottagecheese, nuts and dried cranberries. MMmmm again.. this was super delish!

The Cookteaser golden tip:
Never.. and then I mean NEVER.. boil your quinoa in just plain water.. it's so boring! Experiment with different herbs and spices.. really.. it's so much tastier and this way you don't need to think about adding dressing to your salad.