The theme for this week for I Heart Cooking Clubs is Monthly Featured Ingredient: Lemon. The recipe I chose for this week is Lemon-Scented Quinoa Salad Recipe, and it can be found on Heidi's blog here.
The ingredient list: quinoa, water, salt, garbonzo beans, cilantro (or parsley), red onion, garlic, tahini, lemon zest, lemon juice, and olive oil.
I've been trying to figure out quinoa and recipes using it as I'm hoping to use it more often, so when I saw this recipe that used both lemon juice and lemon zest, I figured it would be a good one for this week. (Well, a healthier recipe no doubt than the one I really wanted to make for this week, which was Heidi's recipe for Limoncello Macaroons.) I like little salads like this that I can assemble and have ready to add to a meal or eat just on their own. That said, this was not a hit for me as the raw onion and raw garlic proportions in it are just way too much for my taste. They definitely overpowered everything else going on in the salad and after a couple of bites, I decided to morph it all into a sort of "fried rice" type of thing so I could cook the onion and garlic and relieve some of that pungent taste. That worked well. Definitely not a repeat recipe as written, at least for me. At some point, I will be making those Limoncello Macaroon cookies!
Please visit I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what the others made, just click on their photo entry to link to their post. Next week: January 16-22nd: Face the Day (Choose a Heidi Swanson breakfast or brunch recipe that gives you energy to face the day!)