Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Stuffed Tomatoes with Quinoa, Black Beans, and Corn

I love stuffed tomatoes so I'm always excited to find a new way to fix them. This is quite possibly the best one I've found so far! They incorporate a lot of my favourite flavours. Plus, they are fairly low-fat (well, 11 grams per serving according to the original recipe but it's mostly mono- and poly-unsaturated), cholesterol-free (yippee!), and pack quite the protein punch. Plus, they are full of superfoods!

This recipe would probably make enough for 2 or 3 tomatoes - I only made one tomato but the stuffing was so yummy that I ate it as a "side dish." :)

Ingredients:
1/4 cup quinoa, rinsed well (superfood!)
1/2 cup water
2-3 tomatoes (superfood!)
1/3 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed (superfood!)
1/4 cup frozen whole kernel corn
1/4 cup fresh salsa (tomatoes and hot peppers are superfoods!)
1/2 tbsp. olive oil (superfood!)
1 tbsp. finely chopped red onion (superfood!)
1/4 tsp. sea salt or other coarse salt
Freshly squeezed lime juice

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cook the quinoa in 1/2 cup water according to package directions (I usually give mine 15 minutes. You'll know when it's done - it goes transparent and you can see the white "germ" [I think it is] of the grain). Drain if necessary and return to the saucepan.

2. Add all the remaining ingredients to the quinoa (except the lime juice); cook and stir for 2 minutes over medium heat. Stir in the lime juice. Fill the tomatoes with the quinoa mixture and place in a baking dish. Bake for 15 minutes or until heated through. Sprinkle with additional fresh lime juice.

Reference:
Based on the Bell Peppers Stuffed with Quinoa, Black Beans, and Corn recipe from the February/March 2008 issue of Cooking Pleasures magazine.

1 comment:

Elly said...

Oooh these look yummy! Don't you just love quinoa? Mmm. I love stuffed tomatoes but I am usually too lazy to gut them and end up using peppers instead, lol.