 Photo by Rachael Brugger |
If you use a 1½-inch, open-topped, round cookie or biscuit cutter to form your quinoa cakes, they’ll have nice, neat edges. The tomatoes and cucumber provide a nice, salsa-like sauce for the quinoa cakes.
Yield: 16 to 19 quinoa cakes
Ingredients
Quinoa cakes
- 1/2 cup quinoa
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 1 leek, thinly sliced
- 3 to 5 T. vegetable oil, divided
Sauce
- 2 tomatoes, diced
- 1 cucumber, seeded and diced
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 serrano pepper, seeded and minced
- 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
- 2 T. olive oil
Preparation
Quinoa cakes
In small saucepan, combine quinoa and water. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer, cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from heat, and stir in Parmesan. Let mixture cool; then stir in egg.
In medium-sized skillet, sauté sliced leek in 1 tablespoon oil until it becomes soft. Let leek cool, and stir it into quinoa mixture.
Form mixture into 1½-inch-diameter, 1/3-inch-thick patties. Allow patties to cool in refrigerator for approximately one hour.
In a nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil until shimmering but not smoking. Fry quinoa patties until golden—about 4 minutes per side. Set aside to cool.
Salsa
In medium-sized bowl, combine tomato, cucumber, salt, serrano pepper, cilantro and olive oil. Mound salsa mixture on top of cooled quinoa cakes, and serve.
Excerpt from Tasty Tomatoes, part of the Popular Gardening Series, with permission from its publisher, BowTie, Inc. Purchase Tasty Tomatoes here.
