Recipe: Quinoa Cakes with Lemon-Caper-Yogurt Sauce

One of the things my wife and I like about travel is tasting (discovering) new foods and food combinations. (Well, new to us anyway.) And it's always gratifying to be able to recreate those items in our kitchen when we return home.

The back-story for this recipes starts in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Earlier in June we were in the City for a few days. (More about our trip later.) One of our favorite things to do in SF is to walk through Haight-Ashbury. Sometimes we shop; sometimes we just enjoy people-watching. (Side note: Now that marijuana is legal in California, I half expected the Haight to be engulfed in a permanent haze of smoke. It wasn't. In fact, I think I smelled more marijuana on the streets before it was legal.)

This time, we were there around lunch. So we kept an eye out for a nice place to eat. That's how we happened to wander in to the Sparrow Bar & Kitchen. It was friendly and clean. It had an attractive patio in back, and the menu looked interesting. My wife and I split the Quinoa Cake with Lemon-Caper-Yogurt Sauce.

It was great! So when we got home, I decided to see if I could replicate it. I was sort of surprised to discover that, in fact, quinoa cakes are an actual thing. I found several recipes online for them. The recipe below is adapted from one I found on Epicurious. (Here's the link to that original recipe.) My version has a couple of modifications. I'm pretty sure that the quinoa cakes served at Sparrow are made with shallots whereas the Epicurious recipe calls for white onion. So I made that change. Also, one of the variations I found called for baking the cakes rather than frying in oil. That appealed more to my wife and me, so we baked them.

The lemon-caper-yogurt sauce is from a recipe posted on the Food Network website by Giada DeLaurentiis. She posted it as a sauce to accompany salmon cakes. I did not modify the sauce. (Here's the link to that recipe.)

These are my leftover cakes with sauce

At Sparrow they serve the dish with the sauce spread on the plate and the quinoa cakes on top. They also topped the cakes with roasted Brussels sprouts. Also, the Sparrow version of the cakes were more rectangular, and as you can see in the photo, I made mine round. I made the recipe for dinner and had 2 cakes left over, which I reheated for lunch. I didn't have any more roasted Brussels, so my lunch was just the cakes and sauce with some raw veggies on the side..

Quinoa Cakes with Lemon-Caper-Yogurt Sauce

INGREDIENTS

·         1 1/2 cups cooked quinoa, at room temperature

·         2 large eggs, beaten

·         1/4 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

·         1/4 cup finely chopped fresh chives

·         1 medium shallot, finely chopped

·         1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

·         1 clove garlic, finely chopped

·         1 cup whole grain breadcrumbs, plus more if needed

·         Water, if needed

PREPARATION

Combine the quinoa, eggs, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in the chives, shallots, cheese, and garlic.

Add the breadcrumbs, stir, and let sit for a few minutes so the crumbs can absorb some of the

moisture. You should have a mixture you can easily form into six 1-inch thick patties.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Generously oil a rimmed baking sheet and place the patties on the sheet, being careful not to overcrowd them. (At this point, I also put the Brussels sprouts, trimmed and split in half, on the baking sheet.)

Bake the quinoa cakes and Brussels for 12-15 minutes, until the bottoms are starting to brown. Carefully flip the cakes and bake 5-7 minutes longer until baked through. Serve the cakes topped with sauce and roasted Brussels sprouts.

SAUCE

·         1/2 cup full-fat plain (not sweetened) yogurt

·         1 1/2 tablespoons capers, rinsed, drained and chopped

·         1 tablespoon lemon juice 

·         1 tablespoon lemon zest

In a small bowl, mix together the yogurt, capers, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.