Clean Out the Fridge: Fig & Gorgonzola Pesto Quinoa

Last Sunday night, I was eager to finally break open one of the tins of pesto that I purchased at the SOWA Food Truck Festival.  I first read about Pestos with Panache on Lara's blog - Good Cook Doris.  After meeting Lauren at the SOWA Food Truck Festival, the person behind all of these interesting pesto flavor combinations, I knew I had to buy some!  I've had these tins of pesto in my freezer for awhile and I finally opened up the Fabulous Fig & Gorgonzola pesto on Sunday night.

My original plan was to toss the pesto with some quinoa and black beans but with some fabulous leftover ingredients in my fridge, this pesto quinoa dish took a life of its own. 

I first got started on my quinoa.  I learned from my previous experience with quinoa and made only one cup in my rice cooker this time!

While the quinoa was cooking, I got to work on the rest of my ingredients.  I had chopped up an entire sweet potato on Friday night for my chicken tikka masala and I still had half of the chopped sweet potato in the fridge.

I also had half a large sweet onion leftover from the same dish and I sliced it up.

During the day, I made a panini with goat cheese, proscuitto and Stonewall Kitchen maple pumpkin butter.  I had a few slices of proscuitto leftover.

I roughly chopped the proscuitto up.

I warmed up a deep skillet pan on the stove top with some cooking spray and a small pat of butter.  I threw the chopped proscuitto in the pan.  While the proscuitto was crisping up, I drained and rinsed a can of black beans.

When the proscuitto was done, I removed it from the pan onto some paper towels to soak up some of the grease and then put it aside in a bowl. 

I put the onions in the pan with the proscuitto renderings.

After the onions browned a little, I added the sweet potatoes.

I seasoned the vegetables with salt and pepper.  I wanted to let the sweet potatoes cook through so I added some rose to deglaze the pan and a few sprigs of thyme.  I had some thyme left over from my cherry tomato and goat cheese tart.  I put a lid on the skillet and let the wine cook down.

When all of the rose cooked down, I removed the thyme and added the cooked quinoa.  I added about half of the pesto tin along with a drizzle of olive oil.  I took a photo of the pesto before I mixed all of the ingredients together but the photo came out a little dark.  I'm really hating how the end of summer means limited natural light for my photos.

The aroma was intoxicating and I was happy when I could finally dig in.

The quinoa had a nice sweetness from the fig pesto.  The onions and sweet potatoes definitely added to the sweetness. The gorgonzola flavor was definitely subtle but it went well with the crispy smoky proscuitto.  The use of quinoa and black beans made this a really hearty meal.

I added a simple side of Olivia's Organic's 50/50 Blend and this made for a really filling "clean out the fridge" dinner.

Do you like pesto?  Tell me about your most creative pesto dish!