Tonight I experimented with quinoa for the first time. The brand I bought was an Oxfam fairtrade thing but I presume that it must be around in supermarkets etc too. Quinoa is actually related to spinach but this isn't immediately obvious if you are dealing with the seed. According to Elisabeth Luard's book The Latin American Kitchen, it was known to the Incas as the "mother seed" (domesticated round 5000 BCE - McGee) and colonisers attacked it on religious and political grounds. Because grain can be so evil. One more stunning fact for you to astound your friends with: weight for weight, quinoa has more calcium than milk. I expect that to be brought up in offices all over Australia tomorrow morning. Your mission, should you choose to accept it.
I made a recipe from Elisabeth Luard's book - a quinoa and cashew nut 'risotto' she calls it, but the process doesn't resemble risotto cooking at all. The quinoa was cooked separately (like rice by absorption) and at the same time you fried some cashew nuts and set them aside. Then you fried onion, garlic and yellow capsicum and added some cream, let it bubble and then added the quinoa. Luard suggests also wilting some spinach in peanut oil and serving it on top - this rocked, frankly. It was supposed to be garnished with salt and flaked chilli but, lacking the latter, I sprinkled it with Mexican chilli powder which did the job. I was a little concerned that it would be bland but far from it!
Actually, I lied, here is my last fact for the weekend: cashew nuts in their raw and natural state are poisonous. They have to be heat-treated and shelled before they reach us. AND their shells contain a substance that irritates human skin. Ever get the feeling that that nut really doesn't want to be eaten?
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