I just made this for dinner tonight, with a couple of quick adjustments.

First, I live in Hawaii so we have Japanese sweet potatoes available which are a deep purple when cooked. They looked AWESOME!!!

I don't care for arugala, so I omitted that ingredient altogether, and I am alergic to walnuts, so instead I used water chestnuts (it's what I had on hand that was crunchy).

The result was quite tastey and I'll definitely do it again, though I think it'd be much better as a side dish than as a main dish.

Just my thoughts... happy cooking!!!

I will first say that, in general, I am not a fan of either quinoa or sweet potatoes. However, I liked the combination of flavors in this dish. I made this dish as a substitute for the recommended mashed sweet potatoes for the garlic chipotle fried chicken. I also made coconut milk black beans. In my opinion, this was a great combination and the colors of the salad really stood out on the plate.

Like Jennifer, I also used Japanese sweet potatoes. They seem a little less cloying to me. When everything was assembled, I still wanted a bit more orange flavor. I added about 1/3 cup of a store bought orange vinaigrette. In my opinion, the sweet/sour vinaigrette really helped to enhance the flavor profile of the dish.

I was impressed that the quinoa -- which I bought in bulk -- did not taste bitter after cooking. I did rinse the grains well before hand, but sometimes I find that I must soak the bulk quinoa for an hour or so to really get the bitterness out. I am wondering if cooking the quinoa in orange helps to cut the bitter component in this grain?

Nice recipe!

I think that the orange juice was there to add flavor and sweetness and not to cut any potential bitterness. You may also want to check out the lesson on "How to Cook Grains". Cheers!