Mangia Mondays: Quinoa Salad With Pesto & Spicy Shrimp

If you're a fan of Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman, you know she often categorizes her recipes as either Cowboy or Cowgirl food. Well using her file system, today's recipe is definitely Cowgirl food, at least in my house. The mere mention of "quinoa", "pesto", and "salad" in the same sentence had Jeff turning his nose up quick. Lucky for him, i made this for 2 of my friends Saturday for lunch - husbands not included.

I'll be honest, this was really a last minute raid of the refrigerator & pantry creation. Originally i planned on making something very different & a tad laborious for my gal pals, but changed my mind in an effort to make something lighter, simpler & much faster. Good choice. And the recipe was a pleasant surprise, one that i'll be making again this week for sure. Jeff can just order a pizza ;)

Ingredients:

• 3/4 lb of shrimp, peeled & deveined
• 2 tsp canola oil + a pat of butter
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 TB fresh lemon juice and 1 tsp zest
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded & diced
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 TB homemade pesto sauce
• 1/2 cup Quinoa
• 1 cup veg broth
• 1 red pepper, seeded & chopped
• 1/2 med red onion, chopped
• 7-8 cups mixed salad greens
• 2 plum tomatoes, finely chopped
• kosher salt & freshly ground pepper

Directions:

1. Juice & zest the lemon and set aside. Heat up the canola oil & pat of butter in a skillet over med heat.
2. Once your skillet is hot, saute the shrimp, garlic, lemon zest, jalapeno, and pepper flakes in the melted butter & oil combo. Cook for only 2-3 minutes, turning once, until shrimp is pink. 
3. Place the cooked shrimp into a med mixing bowl and toss with the pesto sauce. Tip: if your pesto sauce is on the thick side, thin it out with a TB of evoo. Then set the pesto shrimp aside.
4. In your skillet, toss in the chopped red pepper & red onion. Stir and cook over med high heat for just a minute. Then add in the vegetable broth & lemon juice and bring to a boil.
5. Next, add in your prepared Quinoa to the skillet. Stir then cover and simmer for 15 minutes, or until broth is absorbed. Fluff Quinoa with a fork.
6. Place your salad greens in a larger serving bowl & toss gently with the spicy pesto shrimp, chopped tomatoes  and salt & pepper to taste. Toss in the cooked Quinoa just before serving.

For those of you whose gardens are overflowing like mine, this is yet another recipe to toss in some of your fresh backyard veggies, herbs, tomatoes, & peppers. The next time i make it though, i think i'll saute some chopped squash & zucchini and maybe even add in a little cilantro or a chopped cucumber. The wonderful part about a salad like this is that it gives you the freedom to get creative and use what you've got on hand. I hope this tickles your fancy and let me know if you manage to wrangle your husbands into trying it as well! Mangia Mangia y'all!