Try Something New Tuesday # 5

 

Cheesy Quinoa Cakes.

 

Welcome to Try Something New Tuesday, in previous posts I've mentioned that I've wanted to have the children try new foods and flavours. So with this in mind I made the decision to have the whole family try Quinoa pronounced 'keen-wa' as I'd heard lots of positive information about it and because it's also gluten free so mummy can also eat it without having to make any major adjustments or substituting gluten free flour in the place of flour.

 

I've decided on making the Cheesy Quinoa Cakes which I found over at Spoon Fork Bacon because I thought that I could pass the cakes off as burger patties and this would mean the children would be more likely to try them. I'm looking forward to trying Quinoa. I've recently seen flavoured Quinoa on sale at our local supermarket which I wouldn't mind trying but for this first time recipe I'm going to use the plain variety.

 

The Quinoa cakes look like fritters.



Cheesy Quinoa Cakes

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked quinoa

2/3 cup grated fontina cheese

3 tablespoons all purpose flour

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 teaspoons ground pepper

2 ½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients, except for the oil, into a mixing bowl and stir together until well combined. Season with salt and allow the mixture to sit for 5 minutes.

2. Pour oil into a large saute pan and place over a medium heat.

3. Form ¼ cup patties with the quinoa mixture and place in the heated pan. You will have to cook these in batches.

4. Cook the quinoa cakes for about 5 minutes on each side. Set aside on paper towels to drain. Repeat with the remaining patties.

5. Season with salt and pepper.

OUTCOME:

I followed the directions correctly and I have to say that my Cheesy Quinoa Cakes looked nothing like the picture above. I rested them on paper towels for 20 minutes and they were still oily and pale looking. The mixture was really wet and I was at a lose to know how to fix the problem. If I used more flour I was concerned that they would become doughy and if I added more quinoa I was worried that because it hadn't been cooked it maybe crunchy. I made a total of 4 cakes, they looked wet and not very appealing so I ditched them and we ordered a pizza. Quinlan was extremely tired and he wouldn't wait for the pizza so I cut up one of the cheesy quinoa cakes and I feed it to him. He loved it so much that he ended up eating all four of the quinoa cakes.

My sad Cheesy Quinoa Cakes.

 

Although my Cheesy Quinoa Cakes weren't successful I'm still interested in giving Quinoa a try some maybe with a little more research and practise I'll have more success in the future. Next week I'm going to try something Christmasy so that we can start getting ready for the Christmas Holiday Season. See you next week....

 

 

 

Megan