Quinoa Raisin Muffins

I've been watching a lot of Martha Stewart Living lately. About a week or so ago, she did a segment on quinoa muffins and it looked really good. So off to the store we went over the weekend and I picked up some quinoa. I actually got 2 kinds, a white and a black quinoa. Supposedly, black quinoa is nuttier in flavor. I opted to use the white since that's the version Martha used.

Here's what the quinoa looked like after cooking.
Below is Martha's recipe with my modifications added.

Ingredients:

1 C quinoa, rinsed
1/4 C vegetable oil (I used canola oil), plus more for pan
2 C all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
3/4 C packed dark-brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 C raisin (I added about 3/4 C)
3/4 C whole milk
1 large egg
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium saucepan, bring quinoa and 1 C water to boil. Reduce to a simmer; cover, and cook until water has been absorbed and quinoa is tender, 11-13 minutes.

Meanwhile, brush a standard 12-cup muffin pan with oil (I used 24-mini cup muffin pans), dust with flour, tapping out excess. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt raisins, and 2 C cooked quinoa; reserve any leftover quinoa for another use (we added this to some leftover pasta fazool).

In a small bowl, whisk together oil, milk, egg, and vanilla. Add milk mixture to flour mixture, and stir just until combined; divide batter among prepared muffin cups. (I filled mine up just to the rim--had enough for 2 batches, total of 48 little muffins.)

Bake until toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. (It took about 17 minutes in the mini pans.) Cool muffins in pan, 5 minutes; transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container up to 5 days.

A note on cooling muffins in the pan for 5 minutes. I only

cooled for about 3 minutes in the pan since I noticed that the bottom of muffins from the first pan was starting to get a little moist from condensation.

As far as taste, it was really good. Better than I had anticipated. Maybe it's because I wasn't sure what the quinoa would taste like baked but it gave the muffins a really nice nutty flavor. For me, this is good because I can get the nutty flavor without the nuts because I usually don't like nuts in my dishes. Why? I don't know, just one of those odd eating ticks, I guess. I think it's really because some nuts get soggy or chewy when cooked in dishes. And I prefer a crunchy bite when eating nuts. The subtle sweetness was just perfect for a breakfast muffin. Or even a little snack when you just want a little something.

There's a lot of recipes for quinoa. Martha has one for a quinoa and corn salad that I like to try, as well as Kirk's salad at mmm-yoso!! This is good because I have 1 1/2 bags of quinoa to make.

Have a wonderful week. Stay dry and eat well.

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A Meatless Lunch

Having had the next 4 month's worth of meat servings all in one weekend, thought I'd give my system a break. I took my friend, Jazzy, to Sipz Fusion Cafe for lunch today. He's been wanting to try this place ever since he became a vegan last year. The restaurant is known for its Asian style vegetarian dishes, note that a not all dishes are vegetarian or vegan. You can check out the menu on the website, but it's not inclusive of all the dishes on the actual menu.

Once again, sorry no photos. I had planned on bringing my camera but completely forgot. Jazzy suggested using my cell phone camera but it doesn't take very good pictures at all. Not even worth trying. I tried that once before and it was just bad.

Back to Sipz. The restaurant is in the strip mall across the street from Buga Korean BBQ. We were surprised by the size of the restaurant. Much bigger than I had expected. By the time we sat down and ordered our food, the place was starting to get packed (about 11:30 am). I ordered the House Special Tofu in medium heat and Jazzy ordered the Garlic Tofu in hot heat. Shortly after our drinks was served, our meals came out. We each got a large Asian noodle-style bowl that contained our tofu dish and a decent scoop of rice. They smelled good.

Both dishes were in a thick brown sauce. Mine came with snow peas, carrots, baby corn, black and straw mushrooms, onion, celery, green peppers, bamboo shoots, and green onions. Jazzy's came with baby bok choy, straw mushrooms, onions, carrots and a few other things. There were lots of large pieces of firm tofu (what I would refer to as bean curd). In my family, tofu and bean curd meant 2 different things. Tofu is the white stuff, like those chunks you get in Miso soup. Bean curd is the more spongy-like soy items, often a brownish or tan color. Bean curd jerky is one of my favorite snack items.

My dish was very tasty but only mildly hot in heat. I would definitely have been able to handle the hot. The sauce gave it a very savory flavor, slightly sweet, and it matched the tofu very well. Jazzy's dish was even milder in heat than mine, but I think it's because my base sauce is suppose to be spicy where his isn't. But there was just enough hint of heat to compliment the garlic sauce. Jazzy liked it very much. I tried a bit of it and it was tasty. Overall, we both enjoyed our meals very much and would certainly go back (I'll remember to bring the camera next time). Apparently many people agree with us based on how many tables were occupied when we left and the amount of take-outs in just the 45 minutes we were there. Total cost for our meal including tip was just a little over $20.

Sipz
5501 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92117
858-279-3747

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Weekend Eating Fest

Okay, right off the bat, I don't have any food pictures. Why? Because I was waaaay too busy stuffing my face, all weekend. And in all honesty, seeing pictures of everything I ate in the past 2 days is just too much for me right now. hehe. Today is a special day for me and we began celebrating on Saturday. The Mister asked where I wanted to go. In the past, I've usually answered, "Anywhere for great lobster." That would usually mean The Oceanaire Seafood Room. I love that place. This year, I wanted (craved) Buga Korean BBQ. You can read a great review at mmm-yoso!!! (and there's pictures too! hehe).

I think I had Buga on the brain because a co-worker and I had a discussion about Korean BBQ earlier last week. She was telling me about her terrible experience at one restaurant and vowed never to go back again. She didn't remember the name but we kind of figured it out which place it was. I recommended Buga to her, and so started the wheel in my head. The squirrel must of been in overdrive on that wheel because not only did I want Buga, I also wanted Chinese roast duck from Jasmine's. Can you say grease overload? Nah!

So on Saturday, we headed over to Buga for lunch. To our surprise, it was already packed with people at 11:30 am. It was the first time we didn't get a booth. The Mister thought maybe it was some kind of Korean holiday perhaps. I didn't know. Chinese New Year celebration is not for another 4 weeks.

As usual, the meal was delicious! We got galbi for 2. The Mister mentioned later that he knew I was enjoying the meal because I barely said a word through lunch. That's a bit of an exaggeration because I've never been known to be wordless. But the point was made and he was right.

Shortly after our dishes came, the Mister leaned over to me and said, "what's that on their plate?" He was referring to the table next to us with a large plate of curled marbled meat. I thought it was lamb but wasn't sure. We looked around and noticed that a couple of the other tables had the same plate of meat. The Mister then said, "maybe next time we should try something different." I mentioned that maybe we should try the beef tongue. The Mister replied, "maybe we should try something different." Okay. We'll try the something "else," maybe bulgogi and something less organ-y.

So right after lunch, we popped over to First Korean Market for some essentials and then to Jasmine's take-out for duck. The Jasmine ladies behind the counter know me and always welcome me warmly. We got a whole roast duck and a pound of char siu pork (BBQ pork). You think I'd had enough of BBQ by now. Oh no. This is just the beginning. Oh yeah, on the way home, we noticed that Marukai Market has still not opened. According to Marukai's website, it's scheduled to be open this month. I think the original date was Dec. 2007.

We had the duck for dinner that night and it was awesome! Probably one of the best duck from Jasmine's in a long time. The skin was perfect and roasted to perfection. The meat was very tender and juicy and not overly oily. Usually when the duck is very fatty, one meal of it usually saturates me enough for a long time. But by next morning, I was craving it again and we split what was left for lunch.

About mid-day, we got hungry again and I threw together some char siu pork sandwiches for us on sliced King's Hawaiian Bread. If you've never tried this, it's a really good combination. I usually just have it plain, char siu and bread. Nothing else. The flavor combo kind of reminds me of a Chinese pork bun. The char siu pork was okay, not the best I've had. It was a little dry but the flavor was good. Still made a decent sandwich.

We had originally planned on going to Poway Sushi for lunch on Sunday but since the Mister was going to make his famous pork chops for dinner, we opted to save sushi for another weekend. After watching the San Diego Chargers chop the Indy Colts down to size (woohoo!), I was ready for some good eats, again. One of the eating machines (SIL) came over to help eat, I mean celebrate, so we made a double batch of chops. For the first time, I helped fry up the chops and I have to say, I did a pretty good job. The chops were thin sliced with bone, gotta have the bone in for me. And it was moist and delicious. Ah, good way to end the weekend of meat-eating fest.

Have a wonderful week! Now go and eat well.

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