Black bean quinoa salad with orange dressing

 

Virtue isn’t always its own reward, but it turned out OK in this case. Continuing my quest to use up what’s on hand, this recipe let me use up a lot of odds and ends: a backlog of dried beans waiting to be cooked, two partially used boxes of red quinoa, an already peeled orange and some Vietnamese cilantro growing in the basement that usually takes a dive when the temperature does in January.

All that and it helps me toward one of my other New Year’s resolutions: Make better lunches. I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit of making anything special for myself. I can get by with that in summer, but in winter, the yogurt/apple/carrot combo pack doesn’t cut it, so I find myself heading to vendoland, a source of overpriced, totally unsatisfying food that somehow then drives you to eat more of it in a vain attempt to get satisfied, like tribbles on quadrotriticale. (Yes, I'm that much of a geek.) So, onward and upward in the kitchen.

Quinoa and black bean salad with orange-coriander dressing

Adapted from thekitchn.com

Ingredients

1 cup uncooked quinoa, any color, but the red pairs nicely with the black beans

2 cups water

¼ cup olive oil

Zest of 1 orange

3 tablespoons orange juice

2 oranges, peeled, white pith removed and cut into chunks

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

½ teaspoon honey

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground coriander

¼ cup chopped cilantro

1½ cups cooked black beans

½ small red onion, thinly sliced

Method

Put quinoa and water in a saucepan. Cover, bring to a boil and simmer over low heat until all liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork. If you want to cool the quinoa faster, spread it on a parchment-lined baking pan while you proceed with the rest of the recipe.

Whisk together olive oil, orange zest, orange juice, vinegar, honey, coriander and salt. (If you use beans you cooked yourself, you might feel the need of adding more salt, since they're less salty than canned beans.) Add pepper to taste. 

In a large serving bowl, combine quinoa, orange segments, cilantro, beans and onion. Toss with dressing.

Rating: Quite nice, and definitely worth making again. Beats the heck out of those cardboard facsimiles of sandwiches wrapped in plastic.