Quinoa Salad with Black Beans

Have you ever heard of eat your beans, especially black bean?  When organic beans are on sales, I would love to grab some, mostly garbanzo bean, but now I also get some black bean and red kidney bean.  Got to have some beans in the diet right?

According to the Chinese medicine, green bean, red bean and black bean can detoxify the body.  Green bean is cooling so it is not suitable for women during their menstruation, but red bean and black bean are both considered a neutral food.  I have a recipe for these beans detoxification soup which I will share later.  Stay tuned!

This quinoa salad is pretty easy.  Like my recipe here, except added some black bean and cucumber and top it with shrimps instead of mixing it together.

Ingredients:

10 jumbo shrimps, cut into half and season with spices of your choice (I used Penzey's Spices Arizona Dreaming)
1 cup organic quinoa 
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup frozen peas
Few romaine lettuce leaves, thinly sliced
1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
1 can of black beans, drained 
1/4 cup dried cranberries
3 Tbsp. sunflower seeds
2 green onions, washed and chopped

Method:

Rinse quinoa under running water until it is clear.  Boil the chicken stock and when boiling add in the washed quinoa and frozen peas, turn the heat to low, cover and let it simmer for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes if it is still watery, uncover and let it simmer until dry.  Stir the quinoa and let it cool.

In the meantime, washed and cut the lettuce and cucumber.  Set aside.  In a non-stick grill pan, spray with a little oil and pan-fry the shrimps on both sides until cooked through. 

In a big glass bowl, add in the quinoa with peas.  Add in the drained black beans, lettuce, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds.  Mix well.  You can add a little black pepper if you like.  No additional salt needed as the quinoa absorbed the flavor of the chicken stock.  Top with cucumber, chopped green onion and shrimps, serve!