Keen on quinoa? You will be after making these

VANESSA’S WAY: TIAN OF QUINOA, BEETROOT, RED ONION AND MOZZARELLA

I’ve been cooking with quinoa for more than 10 years as I love its nutty flavour and light texture. It is known as a supergrain as it is packed full of protein, fibre and essential amino acids.

It is infact a seed and it’s pronounced Keen-Whah. I treat it like rice, except, I always rinse it to remove its bitter outer film.

For this recipe, if I want to save time, I often use vacuum packed cooked beetroot, chopped up to colour the quinoa.

GARY’S WAY: QUINOA BLINIS WITH WILD MUSHROOMS AND DILL LIME YOGHURT

It’s 2017 and the 10th anniversary of my one and only Dublin Marathon. As I sit down to write this recipe, I’m reminded of my brief for this week’s column, “no butter and no alcohol Gary”.

It got me to thinking that maybe chef Gary does like too many of the finer things in life and even when I’m dabbling in the occasional healthy recipe, I still tend to focus on flavour over health and lose the run of myself by, sometimes unnecessarily, adding an ingredient too many.

But one thing is for sure, I have learned over the years that healthy food doesn’t have to be bland. Quite the opposite in fact.

I use quinoa in many dishes. I use it with pink grapefruit and avocado in a salad with hot smoked salmon, and to coat pan-fried fish (no butter, I promise).

Here, I’ve gone with blinis. Normally you’d have yeast in a blini but I’m using self-raising flour and sparkling water for my lift.

This is a proper energy giving breakfast, brunch or lunch… Now where are my Asics Gels?

See you all at the Dublin Marathon starting line. I’m back. (I swear.)