Quinoa Chicken Parmesan

I love chicken parmesan. I've never tried quinoa, inside or outside of my own kitchen. But with it's sudden popularity for being ridiculously healthy, I decided I would give it a whirl. The recipe I used can be found here. For starters, I didn't even know there are different kinds of quinoa. There was white quinoa, traditional quinoa, and quinoa with some different flavorings thrown in. I decided to buy the traditional.

First, I cooked the quinoa. I babysat it, since I've never made it before and really wasn't sure of what I was doing. There are so many tutorials about how to cook quinoa online, that I was convinced there was going to be some sort of learning curve. But honestly, it's no more difficult than cooking rice.

The recipe calls for two chicken breasts cut in half crosswise, but I totally mutilated one in the process of cutting it, so I ended up with three pieces of chicken instead of four.

I heard once that if you're not making a mess, you're not cooking. Well, this recipe is definitely cooking. Evidenced by my dredging set up and the fact that quinoa is like the glitter of dinner ingredients. If it's wet and uncooked, it sticks to everything. If it's cooked, it still sticks to everything. You've been warned.

I got my pieces of chicken coated and stuck them in the oven. The recipe says to bake the chicken pieces for 20-25 minutes, I baked mine for 20. I pulled them out and sprinkled some mozzarella on the top of each one. I didn't measure because there's no such thing as too much cheese in my book. Also, I forgot the parmesan. Thought we had some, but it turns out we didn't. Oops. I baked them for another five minutes, and they came out looking like this:

They smelled amazing. Seriously. I did things a little differently here. Rather than putting sauce and cheese on top of the breasts and putting them back in the oven, I only did the cheese and put marinara on the plates, and placed the chicken on top. I also sprinkled some dried basil on top rather than the chiffonade of fresh basil. Comme ça:

It was really good. Not as good as an Italian restaurant, but still really good. I was hoping for a little bit more from them, but they definitely weren't a failure. Husband gives 4 stars, I give 3.