Quinoa Pasta

            This is a good recipe for when you’re ready to move on to foods that are a bit more solid but don’t have many ingredients to work with. Ancient Harvest makes quinoa pasta that you can buy at the store, but it is made with corn so my daughter couldn’t eat it. I thought of trying buckwheat pasta but it is made on the same equipment as rice pasta. I really wanted something for my daughter to eat that was a bit heavier than pureed vegetables. I know that sounds funny since most people try to keep baby meals light, but my daughter (like many other FPIES children) was low in weight and needed more calories. It occurred to me that if I could buy buckwheat pasta I could probably make it. I looked online and found a recipe, well if you could even call it that since the only ingredients were buckwheat flour and water. The thing was, I wasn’t sure if my daughter could eat buckwheat and I couldn’t find the flour so I decided to just try it with quinoa flour. I had to adjust the water because quinoa flour is a bit different, but it worked. I'd guess you could try this with any flour that's safe for your child to eat. My daughter loves these noodles served with pureed squash, but you can use any safe vegetable as sauce. I sometimes also puree beef into the squash for a more substantial meal.

            Start with ½ cup quinoa flour and 1/8 cup water. Pour the water into the flour in a bowl. With your hands mix it to get a bunch of crumbles. Add a tablespoon of water more and mix some more. Keep doing this just until you get the flour wet enough to form a stiff ball like molding clay. Knead it until it’s smooth. Put it in the bowl and cover with a moist paper towel. Let rest about half an hour. Put water to boil. Take out the ball and roll it out very thinly on parchment paper dusted with quinoa flour. If it starts to crumble wet your hands and knead it again. Don’t get it too wet, you don’t want it to turn sticky. Once it’s very thin cut the pasta shapes you want. Salt your boiling water and add olive oil (or any oil safe for your child). Pour in the pasta and cook about 5 minutes. Drain, then drizzle with olive oil or with sauce.