Two years ago, when I was in a native village in the Ecuadorian Andes, I noticed pigweed planted in gardens. What? No, it was quinoa! Pigweed and quinoa are cousins, both members of the chenopodium (goosefoot) family.
Envision the Andean altiplano, the cold, 12,000-foot-high plains around Lake Titicaca, on the border between Peru and Bolivia. It’s home to the highest concentration of natural chenopodium variants, and the birthplace of quinoa. Thousands of years ago the Quecha people selected, domesticated, and cultivated these weeds, creating quinoa in hundreds of specialty cultivars, including chullpi for soups, coytos for flour, reales for grains, and dozens more.
Quinoa and potatoes were the nutritional base of the powerful Andean and Incan civilizations.
The nutritional value of quinoa is astounding. The leaves are edible and delicious, like spinach (also in the chenopodium family). But quinoa is mainly grown for seed. Quinoa seed is the only natural vegetable source of all nine essential amino acids (the building blocks of protein) necessary to support human nutrition. Quinoa is an excellent substitute for meat or dairy products and a rich source of minerals (calcium, iron, and potassium), vitamins, antioxidants and fiber. It is low in fats and naturally gluten-free. For more information check out "Quinoa 101, Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits" at healthline.com.
In all their variants these tall plants with colorful, six-foot-high plumes were the sacred Mother Grain, the chisaya mama, of the great Andean civilizations. Before the European conquest, quinoa and potatoes were the nutritional base of the powerful Andean and Incan civilizations. After the wave of plagues and conquests brought by the Europeans in the 16th century, European crops pushed out quinoa. The Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro destroyed quinoa fields as a tactic to crush indigenous power.
The Quecha protected the sacred quinoa by growing it in small plots. Five hundred years later quinoa has made a comeback. In the 1990s the UN Food and Agriculture Organization surveyed neglected crops of the Americas and identified quinoa as a potential food for development.
The United Nations General Assembly designated 2013 as the International Year of Quinoa, “… in recognition of ancestral practices of the Andean people, who have managed to preserve quinoa in its natural state as food for present and future generations, through ancestral practices of living in harmony with nature,” and encouraged worldwide dispersal and development.
Now quinoa is growing in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. You can buy it practically everywhere — Costco, Whole Foods, Safeway, Target. The internet is afloat with a gazillion recipes in publications ranging from Good Housekeeping and Martha Stewart to The New York Times and Vegan Heaven.
Quinoa is exceptionally easy to use. It comes in a variety of colors — white, red, black, mixed. The darker colors are a bit firmer and nuttier, but they all work the same. Quinoa cooks up in 15 minutes and holds well refrigerated or frozen.
In its simplest incarnation quinoa is embarrassingly easy to prepare. Basically rinse (see the note on saponin below), simmer, then steam like rice. Use two parts water to one part quinoa; yields three cups cooked for every one cup dry.
Quinoa is universally adaptable and neutral-flavored, a seamless substitute for rice or other grains, easy to add to stuffed mushrooms, work into soups, salads, breakfast cereal or cookies. It can be toasted, ground into flour or flaked. New quinoa products are steadily coming on the market — cereals, chocolate and energy bars, chips, pasta, even whiskeys!
Chef Molly Beverly is Prescott's leading creative food activist and teacher. Photos by Gary Beverly.
