More of an idea than a recipe

Still keeping up with those New Year’s resolutions of cleaner eating and more exercise? Ha! I knew you couldn’t do it. (Kidding.)

Here’s an easy dish for packing in the nutrients and the flavour. It’s kind of a take on couscous, though instead of being made with that wee pasta, it features one of my favourite superfoods, quinoa.

To make it, all you do is cook about 1.5 cups of rinsed quinoa in double the amount of water (if I had stock on hand I would have used it instead for an extra flavour boost.) While it simmers away, drain and rinse a can up chickpeas, slice and dice some veggies (green onion, grape tomatoes, orange pepper and the like, plus loads of fresh parsley), and juice a fat lemon into some olive oil.

Once the quinoa is cooked, fluff it with a fork, let it cool, then toss everything together in a bowl and season the lot with sea salt and black pepper and chili flakes. Then let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours before eating so the flavours marry.

This stuff has legs: Pop some into a Tupperware and you can call it lunch, side it will some broiled fish or chicken and you can call it dinner, or, stick a spoon into it and you can call it a snack.