Pitta Breads with Red & White Quinoa and Tuna
Total preparation and cooking time: 10 mins
Serves: 2-4 as a light meal
Vegetarian: No
Ingredients:
- 250g pack of ready to eat Red & White Quinoa
- 185g tin of tuna in spring water
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 12 black olives (only if you like them)
- 2 very ripe tomatoes
- Half a cucumber
- 20 leaves of basil, mint or parsley
- 4 pitta bread
How to cook it:
- Heat the Quinoa in the microwave, following the timings on pack. Open the pack then tip it into a large bowl
- Stir in the lemon juice and olive oil, season lightly with salt and pepper then leave to sit while you prepare the other ingredients
- Remove the little black cores from the tomatoes and then chop them into 1cm chunks
- Cut the cucumber in half lengthways then scoop out and discard the seeds, chop into chunks
- Roughly chop the olives then slice the basil
- Stir the tuna and its juice into the quinoa followed by the rest of the ingredients. Season to taste
- Warm the pitta bread and serve alongside. You could also serve this without the pitta as a lovely salad or wrap it up in tortillas to take to work
KIDS CORNER
Both of my kids love this salad. You can use the quinoa as a base for all sorts of salads for kids; it is a good starting point for getting them used to new flavours; try grated carrot, raisins, lemon and mint, a favourite from my wife’s student days is tuna and sweetcorn. For kids with just a few teeth leave out or peel the cucumber. Also leave out the cucumber if you want to puree this for the tiny and toothless.
When children are trying something new, it is often the texture rather than taste they trouble with, so start them with very small pieces, this is how I discovered that my eldest liked spinach, the leaves were too much whole but very thinly sliced he ate them all up.
We used the cooked Quinoa on it’s own to mix with purees when we were getting both boys onto more textured solids. A good idea is to freeze a packet of Quinoa in ice cube trays, and then you have pre-portioned amounts to add to each meal with no waste.
