Quinoa salad with avocado, tomatoes and roasted almonds

 

This is one of Sillas’ favorite dishes. I made it for dinner last year as a side dish to salmon steak – that I thought would really ‘sell’ the dish. But it turned out that it was the quinoa salad that he absolutely loved. I like it too, its very simple, healthy and quick.

One ingredient in the dressing might sound a bit funny, but I swear it works. It was supposed to be Dijon mustard but somehow I took the wrong jar in the supermarket and I came home with sandwich mustard-mayo. I decided to use it anyway and have stuck with it ever since.

We have served it for guests multiple times and it’s a success every time.

Here’s the recipe for 4 people;

300 ml of quinoa seeds, rinsed.

1 cup of fresh dill

1 cup of fresh flat leaf parsley

Half a cup of fresh basil

A handful of cherry tomatoes or 2 large regular tomatoes

1 avocado

1 cup of almonds

Dressing;

Juice of half a large lemon

1 large teaspoon of sandwich mayo-mustard (the one I use is from Svansø in Denmark)

Sea salt

3 or 4 tablespoons of olive oil

 

What you do;

Rinse the quinoa, and cook in even amounts of water as quinoa for about 20 minutes. Set aside and let cool.

Chop dill, parsley and basil.

Cut the avocado into bite size pieces. And do the same with the large tomatoes. If you use cherry tomatoes, just cut them in halves.

Roughly chop the almonds and roast them on a pan with a bit of olive oil until golden and fragment.

Add all the ingredients in a large bowl and toss.

Make the dressing my squeezing the juice from the lemon into a small bowl. Add about a teaspoon of sea salt and a good dollop of sandwich mayo-mustard. Now stir with a small fork as you drizzle olive oil in, making it lovely and creamy.

The last thing you do it pour the dressing over the salad before serving.

We had the salad with turkey steaks that we had cut from a large piece of turkey breast and fried on a pan. Quick, easy and yet so good.