In a month when we're all searching for healthful food, quinoa, an ancient staple of the Andes Mountains, is a great place to turn. For those with celiac disease, it's a gluten-free grain; for vegans, a complete protein. It's a cereal, a pilaf, a whole-grain crust, a vegetable stuffer, a surprise binder in baked goods.
Quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) seems to speak the language of every cuisine. And when its germ uncoils during cooking, a batch of quinoa resembles tiny bubbles, ready to add zip rather than weight to a more healthful diet.
Quinoa is also a boon if you're just plain busy. Got a fridge full of leftovers and 15 minutes? Cook some quinoa, toss with meat and vegetables (or even fruit), a few well-chosen spices and some toasted pine nuts, and suddenly you have a harmonious dish.
With more demand from consumers for vegan and gluten-free foods, quinoa is popping up in all kinds of products, from Trader Joe's Quinoa Bread (which makes a surprisingly light and crispy piece of toast) to Quinoa Gold, a line of caffeine-free, gluten-free energy drinks. (Adding quinoa to beverages is not a new idea. According to the Web site vegparadise .com, a Los Angeles-based Web magazine, Incas drank a beer called chicha made from fermented quinoa to celebrate the quinoa harvest.)
"I like to use it because it is so balanced," says Daniela Troia, chef/owner of Zia's in Towson, a cafe and juice bar that emphasizes healthful dishes. "It's pretty much the perfect food."
Troia, of the Cafe Troia family, uses quinoa to make a salad with black beans, lime, red peppers and corn. She's also substituted it for arborio rice in a version of the Italian classic dish risotto.
"It cooks so fast, it'll cook in half the time of a normal risotto," she says. "Whatever I'm going to put in it, I will saute those things on the side and then add the quinoa to that so it really takes on the flavors."
Considered a sacred food by the Incas who cultivated it thousands of years ago, quinoa is related to spinach and chard.
In the book 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life, David Grotto writes that Incan soldiers marched for days sustained by "war balls" of quinoa and fat. Quinoa production went into decline for years in South America after the Spanish conquest, Grotto writes, and only in the past few decades has made a resurgence. Most quinoa still is imported to the United States from countries such as Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, although it is being cultivated in Colorado, he says.
