Red quinoa stir-fry

Every year, we attend Melbourne's Vegan Day - the last Saturday in October. Last year I picked up a 2008 vegan calendar, with a recipe for each month, by Leigh-Chantelle of vivalavegan.net. Unfortunately I only discovered the calendar in my recent spring clean up! So I'm now going through the recipes and they all look appetising.

Last week I popped into Wholefoods on Smith St, Collingwood - next door to a favourite of mine, Soulfood (veg cafe). I picked up some normal and some red quinoa, and I knew it was destined for this stir-fry recipe. Red quinoa tastes pretty much the same as the standard variety, but it is quite striking in its appearance as you can see in these photos of what I created.

Ingredients
1 cup red quinoa
2 cups water
a little olive oil
as much garlic as you like (recipe said 2, I put 4!)
1 eggplant
4 yellow squash
1 zucchini
1 red capsicum
1 bunch bok choy

The whole thing was pretty painless. I prepared the vegies by slicing them thinly. I salted the eggplant slices before making them match-stick size. I washed the bok choy in the sink with salted water before roughly chopping them up. I finely chopped the garlic.

Cooking quinoa is easy. It takes about 10 minutes of boiling. You know it is ready when you can see the white outer rim has separated from the rest of the grain.

The stir-frying went something like this: saute garlic in a little oil under low-medium heat, add all vegies (except boy choy) and stir-fry until tender, then add boy-choy and cook until wilted, then add the cooked quinoa, toss and serve!