A simple but tasty lunch salad with a lemon-soy vinaigrette from Bryan Picard.
By Bryan Picard
Salad Dressings, Vinaigrettes – sure, you can buy them; Ranch, Italian, what have you. But then the total number of ingredients in your salad bowl will jump from, say, ten to well over forty and include a bunch of long, scary ones you’d never want to pronounce. Making your own salad dressing is easy and it will beat the store-bought kind. (Ranch dressing is basically mayonnaise with sour cream, a couple of herbs, garlic, salt+pepper and thinned with a bit of water or milk.) I won’t bore you with vinaigrette mixology; this is all to say that you should check for recipes for your favorite dressing before just going out and buying a bottle. You’ll be amazed at how simple it is to make at home. 
The vinaigrette for one of my favorite salads has only 3 ingredients; oil, lemon juice and soy sauce.
The salad part also has 3 ingredients; baby spinach, quinoa and sesame seeds.
It’s so easy, but trust me, it’s all good.
I usually make this for lunch, but it could also go very well with any meat or fish.
Spinach and Quinoa Salad
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 6 1x
Description
Simple salad with a lemon-soy vinaigrette.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (1.25dl) sunflower oil
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2–3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 6 good handfuls of baby spinach
- 3 cups (7.5dl) cooked quinoa (that’s about 1 cup uncooked, cook in stock for more flavor)
- 1/4 cup (0.6dl) roasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- Cook the quinoa in water or stock for about 15 minutes and leave to cool.
- Mix the spinach, cooked quinoa and sesame seeds together.
- Mix the oil, soy sauce and lemon juice.
- Stir in the vinaigrette with the salad only a couple of minutes before serving, to keep the spinach crispy.
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 15 mins
