Recipe

Try this Quinoa Tabouleh recipe from the cookbook Levant.

While the Middle East is flush with good-for-you grains (such as that smoky powerhouse, freekeh), I only came into contact with quinoa a few years back. My son, now a Californian, visited us one summer. For dinner one night, he prepared quinoa salad, which had a wonderful, almost caviar-like texture that absorbed the dressing beautifully without getting soggy or dry. When he began to tell me about its health benefits, I was completely sold.

I immediately got into the kitchen and cooked up a plain batch of quinoa just to get a sense of how it tasted unadorned. I was underwhelmed, and found it a bit bland. What that quinoa needed was to be dressed up. Black-tie dressed up. When I considered quinoa as a flavor-delivery vessel with tremendous health benefits, my imagination took over. I used it in tabouleh instead of cracked wheat to make the time-honored salad gluten-free. This dish started my love affair with quinoa, and inspired me to incorporate it again and again in my recipes.