Quinoa With Cucumber And An Award

          Quinoa, it's a grain or a pseudograin, high in fiber, protein, manganese, well, the list goes on, but I am not going to bore you, copying everything from wikipedia here. Couple of years back, never heard of it, but now I simply love it. It's so easy to cook and can be had as a salad, can be used instead of couscous in Mediterranean dishes and also tastes great in pulaos, in the place of rice. This dish is very simple, needs very few ingredients, no masalas to grind, it gets it flavor from the sauteed cucumber. I added some black beans and roasted peanuts for the extra crunch and munch..
Need To Have

• Quinoa - 1 cup
• Cucumber - 1 medium size
• Cooked Black Beans - 1/2 cup
• Roasted Peanuts - 1/8 cup
• Red Chilli Flakes - 1 teaspoon
• Black Pepper Powder - 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon
• Green Part Of The Spring Onions - 1/4 cup
• Soy Sauce - 2 teaspoons
• Brown Sugar - 1 + 1/2 teaspoon

Method
          Cook the quinoa with 2 cups of water (just like you cook rice) and cool it. Slice the cucumber, don't peel the skin, if there are lots of seeds, remove it. Heat oil, add the cucumber pieces, saute it for a few mins, till they change color but are still crisp. Now, add in the chilli flakes, sugar, salt and soy sauce, mix it, add the black beans followed by the quinoa, black pepper, mix everything well. Finally add in the peanuts and the spring onions, serve it warm.

Sending this to Spicy Treats for the Show Me The Hits - Fiber Rich Foods event,
                   to Food Corner for the Midweek Fiesta event,
                   to Vegetarian Food And Me for I'm The Star event,
                   to Sara's Corner for the Women's Day Celebration event,
                   to Zesty South Indian Kitchen for the Hearth And Soul Blog Hop event,
                   to Taste Of Pearl City for the Healthy Morsels - Pregnancy event,
                   to Srav's Cooking Concepts for Vegan Diets - Only Plant Based event and
                   to Shama's Easy2cook Recipes for Sara's Cooking With Love - Granddad Series event.

Note
Do not overcook the quinoa, don't mix it when it is still hot, it'll become mushy.
Also, the cucumbers should have the slight crunch.
Increase or decrease the chilli flakes and pepper according to your spice level.

           Coming to the award, I had sent my entries to Anzz Cafe for her first event Valentine's Special. She had posted the roundups, couple of days back, it was a huge hit, one would be surprised at the number of dishes and the creativeness of my fellow bloggers. Hats off to you Anzz, you have done an amazing job with the roundups, lovely presentation. I am proud to show off my participation award here.

       
And then, moving on to the exciting part, I was thrilled to know that I was one of the three winners of the giveaway. When I received the email, saying, you have a surprise waiting for you, I was clueless, I had totally forgotten about the giveaway. Well, Iam so happy to get this cookbook, first one of India's first MasterChef Pankaj Bhadouria, and looking forward to browse through it, thank you so much Anzz, am smiling cheek to cheek.
The other happy winners of this book are Manju of Manju's Eating Delights and Rashida of Inherited Spices.

Please do check out the roundups, it's in three parts, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.