Quinoa Mac & Cheese aka Cheesy Quinoa Casserole

I skipped a day talking about my book club dinner to celebrate my 100th post but now it's back to business.  I've been seeing recipes for mac & cheese made with quinoa for a while and pinned this one months ago.  Book club offered the perfect reason to make it.

The picture in my head of this mac & cheese looked like mac & cheese just without the noodles.  The sauce in my head was very much cheese sauce.

This recipe is certainly cheesy (especially since I added more cheese than the original recipe called for) but it's more like a cheesy casserole than straight up mac & cheesy. 

If I really just wanted mac & cheese with quinoa subbed for the mac, I'm not sure why I didn't just use a mac & cheese recipe and make the substitution.

Anyway, the process of making this dish is pretty easy.  Saute up leeks, red pepper, tomato and garlic.  Add the quinoa and cook until toasty.  Add the broth and cook the quinoa until it's cooked through.  The cooked quinoa gets mixed with eggs, milk and cheese and baked.

The resulting mixture, before it's baked, is pretty darn soupy.  I was glad that the original recipe warned me of this because I might have freaked out and started trying to strain it or something.

Once the mixture is baked it thickens up nicely and has the consistency of a rice casserole - still moist but it holds together when you scoop it out.

The flavor here is good - I like what the addition of the leeks bring to the table and it had a good, strong cheese flavor.  The ladies liked it but agreed that it was no mac & cheese.  CA liked it too, probably more than the girls did. (Yes, I let him eat the book club food, he just has to do it in a different room.  Trust me, he likes it better that way.)  As he was eating leftovers today he said that it tasted like cheesy grits and we should eat them for breakfast.  That's probably the best description of this dish - cheese grits with the nutty flavor you get from quinoa.  He's so smart.

Quinoa Mac & Cheese
Adapted from Moni Meals

Ingredients
2 tsp Olive Oil
1 medium Leek, halved and sliced
1/2 of a Red Pepper, diced
1/2 of a large Tomato, diced
1 1/2 cups Quinoa, rinsed
2 cloves Garlic, minced
3 cups Unsalted Chicken Stock (you can use salted, but reduce or eliminate the salt in the recipe)
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Pepper
2 large eggs
1 cup milk of choice (I used 1/2 cup regular milk and 1/2 cup buttermilk)
8 oz. Cheddar Cheese, grated


Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Coat a 13-9 baking dish with cooking spray.

Heat the oil in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add leek, red pepper and tomatoes.  Cook until tender, about 5 minutes.  Stir in the quinoa and garlic and cook an additional 3-4 minutes until the quinoa just begins to turn a light golden brown.

Stir in the chicken stock, salt and pepper.Cover and reduce the heat to medium-low.  Summer for 20 minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed. 

Whisk together the eggs and milk.  Stir the egg mixture into the cooked quinoa mixture.  Stir in the cheese.  The mixture will look pretty soupy but it will set up when it's baked.  (I made the recipe up to this point and then refrigerated it overnight.  If you're baking it straight out of the refrigerator you'll need to add about 15 minutes to the baking time.)

Bake for 30-45 minutes until it is browned around the edges.  Serve hot.

Enjoy!

Julie