Quinoa Cakes

We don't have an exact recipe for quinoa cakes: I start with the list of ingredients off of a Whole Foods' label for quinoa cakes bought at their prepared foods counter. What we actually put in them often depends what vegetables we have: beets, carrots, zucchini, parsnips, corn, spinach, kale, black beans.

Making them gluten-free requires substituting the pastry flour with a non-glutinous flour, and I've mostly used gram (chickpea) flour. I also use thick low-fat yogurt (Greek style) which gives them a slight richness and added umami. Although it did not say how to cook them on the label, I started out frying them. However this required my almost constant attention, and I was only able to cook four medium size cakes/ patties at a time. I've started baking them in the oven at about 375° for 30 minutes (flipping them halfway through). M* and I can't tell a difference in taste between the two cooking methods.

When I recently made them with tahini instead of yogurt, M* and I were disappointed—the cakes were really dry. The only way to make them reasonably palatable was to drown them in lemon juice or, my favorite, ketchup. If we use tahini again, we'll certainly use a thinner paste and still use yogurt.

Quinoa cakes/ patties ready to be baked.

Here is the list of ingredients from the Whole Foods's label:
quinoa (we use 1 cup pre-cooked)
(yogurt—our addition)
cumin
olive oil (we use 2-3 tblsps)
pastry flour (we use 1/2-3/4 cup of gram/ chickpea flour)
garlic
lemon juice (very important for flavor—1 lemon)
tamari
black beans
diced tomatoes
bell peppers
carrots
cilantro
corn
sea salt

13 Dec-Day of Cooking

*Cod baked then broiled with mango (green that was never going to be ripe but wanted to use), coriander (since no fresh cilantro), jalapeno, pepper and bit of Spanish paprika. Tasty, but wow was the cod stinky. Every time we leave and return home, it still smells like cod.
*Steamed brown rice.
*Lamb loin chops rubbed with the Cool Chile Co's Achiote paste, browned on stove and then baked at 450 degrees for 10 minutes. Soooo good.
*Red wine risotto with mushrooms, onion, garlic, balsamic vinegar and homemade chicken broth. Parmesan added at end.
*Brussel sprouts cooked in same pan that I'd used to brown the lamp. I didn't even wipe the pan down, using the same oil and Achiote seasonings that remained on bottom of pan.
*Pan fried quinoa cakes-quinoa, yogurt, grated beets, grated parsnips, grated carrots, jalapeno, gram flour, sauteed onion and chili powder. Aren't they a pretty red color?

Had risotto, lamb and brussel sprouts withe Dourthe Saint-Emilion 2004. Marked as good with lamb, but certainly a bit too oaky for us. Of course, we still had two glasses a piece.