Picture this: Your patchouli stanking, co-op diving hippie friend (she’s really an acquaintance) tells you there’s this miraculous new “indigenous” South American food. It’s cheap, it’s versatile, it’s barely perishable, it’s nutritious as hell, in fact, it’s nature’s only single-source complete protein around. Wait! Wait! (she can see you having wheatgrass flashbacks) It’s also delicious. In between the scoffing, eye rolling, and the yelling of bullshit, she shoves a vegetal-green smelling spoonful of GKW (that’s God-Knows-What) into your flapping mouth and holds your lips shut.

You’d chew, but it’s just disintegrating into your mouth in a mushy, meaty, asparagussy, completely UNSALTED , HORRIFYING, WASTE OF EXISTENCE IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM! She brought a couple troughs of it over, and you’d feed it to the dog, but let’s be honest, he’s used to your mid rare sirloin and mashed sweet potato scraps and has a penchant for honesty. He also knows where you keep your Bordeaux.

Enter: Quinoa. The ovo-vega-breatha-shootmeintheface-arians had a shot at redemption, but they sucked so badly at cooking anything, that they could butcher something as wonderful and as easy to make as Quinoa. Everything they said was true. It is even (wait for it,) delicious. If you avoid two of the most common home cooking problems, undersalting and overcooking, you too can eat quinoa and be Lake Titicaca skinny, and strong like Alpaca.

Grab the mind-numbingly easy recipe here.

It took some super-religious Israeli college chicks serving it to me on a seriously hungover Shabbat morning in Jerusalem for me to find out what I had been missing. They made a painfully simple quinoa, cucumber, tomato, onion, avocado, parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, and for the love of everything holy SALT – salad; one of those dishes you could eat everyday.

Some notes: Quinoa has this bitter resiny crap called Saponin (here, go to wikipedia) that you have to either soak or rinse off. I’d advise a solid three rinses, and you’re good to go. I happen to think soaking makes it mushier, but it could be the other way around for you. I suggest experimenting. Oh, yeah, if you’re paying more than $2 a pound, you’re getting ripped. It really should be $1.20 to $1.80 a pound in the bulk section of your co-op. I never said there was anything wrong with shopping in co-ops/Whole Foods.

I like it at the al dente texture. You want to be able to see these little spiral things coming out of them, because that means it’s actually cooked. I suggest tasting your food as a means of knowing when it’s done. The pot won’t bite you if you briefly lift the lid and take a bloody spoonful.

Serving

Hot: It’s great with black beans, chili, Indian curry, basically anything hearty that you could get away eating with brown rice. Quinoa is actually healthier than brown rice. So soups, stews, and sauced-up meat and fish. It’s also good with thai omelets (that’s another blog). I hear you can make hot cereal out of it, but I hate any hot cereal that isn’t served to me by an Asian lady. So you try it and let me know.

Cold: Here is where it shines.

Let’s just say it’s good. Like, with everything. Use it anywhere you’d see couscous, taboulli, rice, barley, wheatberries, hell even pasta. I’m yet to fuck it up. My personal favorite is my Bastard Chirashizushi. It’s included with the basic Quinoa recipe here.

I don’t suggest that you throw out pasta, rice, and couscous. I eat that stuff too. But give Quinoa a shot, learn how to cook it properly, and you will be pleasantly surprised that you’ll even crave it. C’mon, quinoa’tyou got to lose? (somebody, please, put me out of my misery.)