Quinoa and grapefruit salad

Name: Quinoa and grapefruit salad
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients: Quinoa, dry 1/2 cup (90 g); Grapefruit 1; Avocado 1; Baby spinach 2 handfuls (60 g); Olive oil 1 tbsp; Salt 1/4 tsp; Black pepper a little

Quinoa has to be rinsed or it tastes bitter. And if you take medication, grapefruit is the ingredient to check first.

2 servings30 min

Ingredients

Quinoa, dry1/2 cup (90 g)
Grapefruit1
Avocado1
Baby spinach2 handfuls (60 g)
Olive oil1 tbsp
Salt1/4 tsp
Black peppera little

Method

Put the quinoa in a sieve and rub it under water until the water runs clear. Skip this and the saponins make it bitter.
Bring it to the boil with 1 cup of water, lower the heat for 15 minutes, then rest it covered off the heat for 5.
Spread the quinoa on a wide plate to cool. Mixed in hot, it wilts the spinach.
Segment the grapefruit, cutting away the membrane. Keep the juice that runs out — it goes in the dressing.
Dice the avocado, and whisk the grapefruit juice with the olive oil and salt.
Toss the cooled quinoa with the spinach, grapefruit and avocado, then fold in the dressing gently. Grind pepper over.

Cooking note

Because this uses grapefruit, it comes first. Grapefruit blocks intestinal CYP3A4 and raises blood levels of some medicines — statins, some blood pressure drugs, immunosuppressants. If you take medication, swap the grapefruit for orange, which carries almost no furanocoumarins.

Cooling the quinoa is not only about texture. Hot quinoa on spinach wilts the leaves and costs vitamin C. Spread out to cool, it also loses steam and stays loose instead of soggy.

The avocado and olive oil are here for absorption. Spinach's lutein and grapefruit's lycopene are fat-soluble and absorb poorly without fat. Trials have shown carotenoid absorption from a salad rising substantially when fat is included.

That said, do not count the quinoa as your protein. There is about 6 g of it in this plate. The protein for the meal has to come from somewhere else.