Summery Quinoa with Shrimp and Broccoli

Quinoa may be my new favorite grain of the moment. I can add it to my repertoire of go-to dish staples that include rice, risotto-y dishes, pasta, and couscous (more about couscous later). After watching it being used on the Food Network for years and struggling over how to properly pronounce it in public, Chris’s mother got some for us from the local grocery store and we finally had a chance to experiment with it.

Here’s a quick, fun, and light dish with ingredients that can easily be exchanged to make it unique to your taste preference. As a main dish it would serve approximately 4 people. The best part of this meal? Serve hot OR cold! (When cold it functions almost like a pasta salad). 15 min prep; 25 min cooking time


Quinoa- 2 cups (red or white will do)

Cucumber/Onion- approximately 1 ½ full cups once combined. Easily add your favorite no-non-sense veggies, like carrots, celery, etc.

Shrimp- 1 cup of raw, uncooked shrimp (ours started off as the frozen but ez-peel kind). As you see, ours is generally larger- aesthetically it looked more appealing. Also, as the quinoa was the focus of this meal, we kept our protein limited to 1 cup between the 2 of us, but your mileage may vary.

Oil or butter – (minimal) to cook the shrimp.

Summery Zest- We used orange zest as well as lime to help bring out the clean flavors of the veggies and the grain.

Herbs to garnish- We picked Thyme, but anything that could be grown backyard in a garden should evoke the same outdoorsy nostalgia. Rosemary would probably be great (especially if you substitute the shrimp with some lamb or chicken).

4 cups of water- See ratio of water to quinoa below.

Chicken stock- in our case, we used chicken bouillon because we had run out of stock. Read the instructions on how many cubes to put in. Ours was 1 per every 2 cups.

Seasonings- Minimal as to not obstruct natural flavors. Salt/Garlic salt and pepper to taste.

This meal was created in the middle of winter. Granted, it’s not like this winter has been particularly cold or devastating…but in a season filled with overeating and being cooped indoors, this meal left us feeling full but amazingly light.  Great for dieters who still want a satisfying meal.



Add four cups of water to a medium sized sauce pan and turn the heat on high.



Add two cubes of your favorite chicken bouillon to the heating (boiling) water.

Feel free to make as much Quinoa as you please, we decided on two cups (Quinoa to water ratio should be 1:2). Add once water/chicken stock is boiling, and keep an eye on it. Took us twenty minutes to cook. You can tell the quinoa will be done when it becomes clear and you can kind of see the germ within.  

Chop up 2-3 cups of your favorite vegetables, we had onion and cucumber. Mmm.

Make sure to buy raw shrimp! Thaw, peel, and pat them dry before cooking.

We only needed a little bit of oil for flavor. Lay the shrimp in the hot
pan away from you so none of the hot oil splashes at you!

You only need to cook the shrimp for a couple minutes on each side
with medium-high heat. Feel free to season them to taste.

Your Quinoa should be done by now! start layering your fresh veggies on top.

Lay your shrimp on top of everything and start seasoning. We used some fresh orange zest.

We were feeling crazy so we added some lime juice to the equation.

The final product was crazy awesome. Light, fresh, summery, and easy!

Sometimes nothing is better than blanched broccoli. Go ahead, let loose. We had broccoli on the side, but it would be a great addition to the actual meal as well.

By the way, you can pronounce quinoa two ways: KEEN-WAH or KEEN-OH-WAH. So there you go.

Christopher

Authors' note: This entry marks our first in our 'Silver Spoon' entries- the restaurants we visit and review that are notably higher scale than our usual diner go-tos. Who says that NJ doesn't have fine dining? Who says Philadelphia is a terrible food city? 

Located in a quiet strip mall on Kressen Road in Chris's hometown of Cherry Hill, is the appropriately named Christopher restaurant. With the spotlight on their famous crab cakes, the restaurant focuses on three areas- seafood, steak (angus, certified) and pasta. The menu is no frou-frou with those as the only options. The decor, at least on the side where Chris and I were seated was also succinct as we pull up and see (or not see) that all of the curtains were let down and we could not even hope to glimpse inside. Intimidated, we walk in and are eventually greeted by a nice man who would end up being our host, our waiter, and then the floor busser.

I ordered their 'famous' crab cakes. All I can say is that I'm not sure why they're famous, because they weren't delicious and after two weeks I can barely remember any good quality about them. The crab pieces themselves were not large, and there wasn't a good crisp on the crusts. It was very soft, and eventually mushy and boring. My potato on the side frankly was more exciting- but then again what's not to love about twice-baked potato? It's difficult for me to find a vegetarian version of anything multiply-baked and I enjoyed the option. The portion was small, but not unexpectedly so.

Our busy waiter rushed over to our table after giving us a few minutes to look over the menu and we ordered our starter: fried calamari (this seems to be our bread and butter for appetizers, besides the complementary bread and butter). I need to begin with a compliment for our starter. It might have been the best cooked calamari I've been served. The outside of the rings were feather light, not very greasy, and even the rings on the bottom were crispy all the way around. The inside was, figuratively, like butter, and almost as rich. The one problem with the dish, however, was the seasoning. It was predominately salt. Actually, salt was the only thing I really tasted. Then again, that's the only downside the dish had. The marinara sauce that it came with was fresh and cut the saltiness back. When thinking about the plate as a whole instead of nit-picking, it was delightful.

For my main dish I had the "Filet Mignon With Fresh Grilled Shrimp" for $28.95. I need to lay down that the best steak that I get on a semi-regular basis is the beef from a restaurant called Famer Brown's in Waterloo, NE. I judge most of my steak off of beef from Nebraska, simply because that's what I grew up with and I honestly believe it's the best. That being said, the steak at Christopher was good. It was tender all the way through, lightly seasoned, and the chef did a knockout job of letting the quality and natural flavor of the steak speak for itself. It was a refreshing piece of meat that was well rested and retained its juices nicely. I asked for it to be cooked medium-rare and it came out more on the medium side, but I'll count that as a minor oversight since I really don't think it affected the overall tenderness of the filet. Now, the real star of the show was the shrimp. These three little guys were...perfect. If nothing else, they were the best cooked and juiciest shrimp I have ever had. They made the super market shrimp cocktail rings taste like pink rubber bands. I'm looking forward to getting more shrimp the next time I visit. The meal also came with a double baked potato. This potato had a shadow cast over it in comparison with the rest of my entreé. The only thing I really liked about it was the sour cream note really came through and added some needed zest to the rest of the plate. God, that was some good shrimp.

Riding the high of Chris's meal, we decided to order dessert. I decided that we shouldn't penalize the whole experience just because I didn't particularly enjoy my crab cakes. To be fair, I consider myself a relatively picky eater when it comes to crab just because I've been blessed to live (and eat) in the Chesapeake area of Maryland and then the Jersey Shore where blue crabs abound. Anyways, our waiter brought us out our dessert options via representations-on-a-tray instead of a menu, which I've seen at some upscale restaurants. However, instead of the deserts being perfect plastic versions of themselves or freshly cut slices, these pieces had seemed to be sitting there all day. The fluffiness of the cakes were gone; their icing starting to lose their brightness and melting off the edges. However, the power of our waiters descriptive words broke through the somewhat unapetizing desert mirage and we decided to order the red-velvet cake - an all-time favorite of mine. Like the rest of meal, there were distinct ups and downs.

The frosting? Delicious. Truly a thoughtful blend of a tangy cheese and sugary goodness. There wasn't too much that overtook the cake, and it left me wishing I could run back to the kitchen and lick some off the KitchenAid mixer. As far as the cake, I feel as if Christopher was trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I have a pretty firm understanding about how a red velvet is constructed traditionally, and the chemical reactions involved with cocoa ultimately give the desert its deep rich red color. This cake was a bright pink at most, and tasted like a pound (albeit moist) cake that had food coloring.

Overall, what a strange place with many ups and downs. Having read many mixed reviews on it, I wished we were able to, in the end, make up our minds about it. It's not as bad as some haters make it out to be - no, we didn't see any rats, and the service was good- but nothing about it changed my life. Except for that shrimp. Since Christopher, no shrimp has compared.