Quinoa is a seed that'll grow on you

Let us now praise quinoa, sacred crop of the Incas.

The seed of a leafy plant grown for centuries in the Andes, quinoa (keen-wah) cooks like a grain and tastes like a nut.

Known in scientific circles as chenopodium, and as a "super crop" in United Nations parlance, quinoa is a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids.

Vegans embrace it as an alternative to meat, eggs and cheese. Celiac-sufferers, who cannot digest wheat, love quinoa's gluten-free nature. With a score of 35 on the glycemic index, quinoa is great for diabetics. Low in calories and fat, quinoa is high in magnesium and riboflavin, which combine to stave off migraine headaches. High in iron, which helps delivers more oxygen to the brain, quinoa fights senility. For Jewish families who keep kosher, quinoa is a good wheat substitute at Passover.

What's not to love?

Quinoa is versatile and easy to prepare, inexpensive, and does not require refrigeration until it is cooked. Like kasha and couscous, quinoa has an exotic, almost esoteric cachet that feeds into the yearning for authenticity among today's foodies.

Introduced on our shores a mere 20 years ago, quinoa is finally gaining ground with chefs, cookbook authors and caterers.

"In the beginning, we were lucky to sell $10,000 worth a month, and now we're selling millions of dollars of quinoa a month," says Dave Schnorr of whose California-based Quinoa Corp., is one of the largest importers. "In the last year it seems quinoa has become the darling of the food industry. Everybody wants to get into it."

At Chifa, the new Peruvian-Cantonese restaurant in chef Jose Garces' stable (Amada, Tinto Distito), you'll find ginger-infused quinoa with spicy barbecued lamb and picked cucumber. But it's also been a dessert there.

"When we opened Chifa, we used quinoa on top of a dessert called Flexible Chocolate that was a milk chocolate custard served with quinoa "chicharrones," our play on traditional fried pork rinds," Garces said.

"We made it by overcooking the quinoa for an hour until it was mushy, then we dried it out overnight and fried it until crispy."

Quinoa has made the menu at stalwarts such as La Croix, Le Bec-Fin, 10Arts, and XIX, too.

Mark Smith at Tortilla Press in Collingswood serves quinoa salad with his black bean and artichoke burrito, and in vegetarian wraps and chile rellenos.

Lucky 13, a gastropub on Passyunk Avenue, serves quinoa in a black-bean salad with scallions, tomatoes and cilantro.

Terence Feury at Fork creates a pilaf of quinoa, parsley, mint, and cucumber and serves it with an eggplant caponata, grilled vegetables, and kalamata olives. Jon Weinrott of Peachtree & Ward catering pairs quinoa with artichokes and wild mushrooms.

And Chip Roman at Blackfish in Conshohocken, poaches, dehydrates and deep-fries quinoa to create a finger-food that can be salted for use as savory bar snack or sweetened as a dessert topping.

Still, the possibilities remain relatively unexplored, says chef Kelly Cook of Uncommon Catering. She's eager to incorporate quinoa in pastas and desserts.

"The biggest drawback, actually the only drawback, to quinoa," Cook says, "is that people don't know what it is."

You have to say it and spell it to the uninitiated. But after a taste test, most people are sold.

"Two years ago, we served red quinoa with leeks at the wedding of a foodie couple," Cook said. "I think it was a bit off-putting at first to the non-foodie guests, but their plates came back clean."

Laura Schenone, author of the James Beard-award winning book, A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, says she searched cookbooks for early America through the 1970s and found no mention of quinoa.

Those who are familiar with quinoa have most likely seen the "regular" yellowish version. But Schnorr's Quinoa Corp., which sells under the Ancient Harvest brand, also offers a red variety, which some say has a slightly earthier taste, as well as quinoa flakes for breakfast cereal, quinoa flour for baking bread and cookies, and quinoa polenta that can be sliced and grilled. Up next: black quinoa.

Home cooks should look for quinoa (it comes in boxes and is available in bulk) that is organically grown and has been pre-washed to remove it's inherent bitterness.

"Some people who've eaten quinoa think they don't like it because it's under- or overcooked," says Rich Landau at Horizons. "I've even been served bad quinoa in restaurants."

Like many grains, quinoa has a relatively small window of perfect doneness, Landau says. Undercooked it is chewy and hard to digest; overcooked, the grains burst into mush. A rice cooker may be the way to go, he says, or 12 minutes on a stove top.

(Quinoa cooks virtually the same as rice: add 2 cups of lightly salted water (or chicken, beef or vegetable broth) to a saucepan, with 1 cup quinoa. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and cook at a gentle simmer for 12).

"It's not indestructible," Landau says, "But if you get it just right, it's fantastic."

He's served quinoa fried as patties bound with carrot, and his wife and pastry chef, Kate Jacoby, is just starting to dabble in quinoa flour. Horizons, is, of course, a vegan restaurant. Is Landau's perspective slanted?

Not so, says chef Charles Ziccardi, who runs Drexel University's culinary arts program.

"It's gotten a rap as a vegan food and that's unnecessary," Ziccardi says. "Maybe that's what kept it from going mainstream until now."

Schnorr says quinoa, like polenta, was once eaten only by the poor.

"It was an almost extinct grain eaten by peasants in the mountains. When I started in this business, you could stand on a street corner and ask people all week long and still not come across anybody who knew about quinoa," says Schnorr. "Even in South America, you could go to La Paz or Lima and most people on the street wouldn't know what it was."

So far in 2009, sales are up 40 percent, Schnorr says. And therein lies the possible danger: as demand grows, some Andes farmers are tempted to sell all they grow, instead of keeping enough to feed their own families.

"We're trying to work with the farmers on that problem," Schnorr says, "so they don't end up feeding their families a diet of cheap white rice and sugar."

Versatile as it is, Schnorr says, quinoa can't do everything.

"We tried it in rice cakes but it just crumbled," he said. "I think what you'll see next is more products that contain some quinoa, for the marketing value - but not enough to make a difference nutritionally."