Chilean Quinoa Salad Recipe: Straight From The Source

Quinoa seeds were enjoyed by indigenous Andean cultures for hundreds of years before becoming famous in the United States. Now, you can’t walk down a Whole Foods’ aisle without running into a quinoa-carrying health nut.

After a recent trip to the world’s driest desert, however, the Active Junky team realized that most folks aren’t doing the complete protein justice. A chef at the Alto Atacama Desert Lodge & Spa whipped up a delightfully simple vegetarian salad for us, using tri-colored quinoa, mushrooms, tomatoes, cilantro and a couple more key ingredients. The icing on the cake (in this case the dressing on the salad) was the petroglyphs the chef painstakingly painted on the plate using a wooden skewer for a brush and balsamic reduction for paint. 

How’s that for presentation?