Quinoa Lentil Autumn Salad

For a few months now, I have been greeted by colourful rows of neatly packed summer berries as I enter the grocery store – and I never resist the temptation to fill my basket with at least a box of deep red strawberries. Did you know most supermarkets follow the same layout, with fresh produce and flowers in the front to draw you in and get you salivating? Apparently it’s working on me (for anyone fascinated by supermarket profit-maximisation strategies in store layout, follow this link)

I had been reminding myself to do a big haul of strawberries one of these days, so I could freeze them and eat summer sweet strawberries throughout the winter. Unfortunately I missed my window: last week, the entire berry section had been taken over by rows and rows of figs – heavy, deep purple, slightly cracked and bursting with honey sweet fruit goodness.

And so the figs started making their way into our autumn recipes, from these sweet apple tarts to this refreshing protein packed quinoa and lentil autumn salad. This is the perfect recipe to make the night before as a packed lunch for work, and still tastes delicious cold from the fridge several days later (we may have slightly overdone the quantities for a 2 person meal, and ended up eating this salad for 3 days – it was worth it!.)

Quinoa Lentil Autumn Salad

Author: Cloudberries and Spice

Recipe type: Salad

Cuisine: Vegan, Gluten-free

Prep time:  10 mins

Cook time:  40 mins

Total time:  50 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

For the salad:

• White quinoa, 100g
• Beluga lentils, 100g
• Butternut squash, ½, diced
• Lemon thyme, a few sprigs
• Pea shoots, 50g
• Figs, 4, quartered
• Pomegranate, seeds from ½
• Fennel, 1, thinly sliced
• Red grapes, 20g
• Hazelnuts, roasted, 30g

For the herb sauce

• Lemon zest, from 1 lemon
• Orange zest, from 1 orange
• Orange juice, 1 tbsp
• Olive oil, 1 tbsp
• Fresh mint, ¼ cup, chopped
• Fresh basil, ¼ cup, chopped

Instructions

1. Put the butternut to roast in the oven (200C) with the lemon thyme, a few sprays of olive oil (you do have an oil spray, do you?), salt and pepper (or your favorite spice mix). 40 minutes should do the trick.
2. Boil the quinoa and the lentils (use separate pots to avoid the mushy/crunchy mix).
3. Seed the pomegranate (just cut it in half and hit it on the skin side with a wooden spoon, the seeds will pop out very easily).
4. Mix the ingredients for the sauce.
5. Once all the cooked ingredients are ready and are cooling down, just assemble everything and you’re set!
6. The salad keeps well in the fridge (we ate it for 3 consecutive days)

We hope you enjoy our recipe – if you try it out, leave us a link below, we’d love to hear about how it turned out!

author:Julia and Michael