COUNTRY MATTERS
Mealy weeds are the stuff of dreams Joe Kennedy
QUINOA, I notice, is now an ingredient in nondairy milk or veg-milk such as soya, oat rice, etc. It has been in cereal food mixtures for some time.
Although it is esteemed by some knowledgeable folk as a five-star product with health foodie enthusiasts singing its praises — and Gwyneth Paltrow swearing by it — so far it hasn’t made me feel any closer to the top of my game.
The name, I am told, is not pronounced as in Cork’s own Roy K’s but rather “kine’wa” or “keen-wa” as the posh persons of Islington (London N1) have it. (I lived there once and had happy days of care-filled parenthood).
Where quinoa is grown, mainly in Peru and Bolivia, bitter battles are being fought by farmers over once-abandoned lands in the poorest regions. The crop has become a bonanza for peasants who have used slings of dynamite to get control of arid countryside. It will grow in the most hostile conditions of frost and heat at more than 3,000 metres above sea level — where water is scarce and soil is saline.
Quinoa is not a true cereal, not of the grass family, but rather the goosefoot group of unattractive mealy annual weeds, hard to tell apart, the best known being Fat Hen (Chenopodium album) and Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus- henricus).
Quinoa contains a lot of protein, and plants can grow from three to nine feet high with prolific yields — a half acre can produce up to 2,000lb of seeds. This is the stuff of nutritionists’ dreams and coloured varieties, especially black, can sell for thousands of dollars a tonne. This means that locals don’t eat it any more — it all goes to market.
In some ways, this looks like history repeating itself. Thousands of years ago, man consumed what grew beneath his feet. Leaves and shoots were boiled in medieval times until being replaced by cultivated spinach. Laxative properties of the wild crops probably brought this about.
Mankind has always eaten seeds as part of our diet. The last meal of Tollund Man — thrown into a bog in Jutland 2,400 years ago — had contained seeds of fat hen, goldof-pleasure, black bindweed, pansy, barley and linseed.
Seamus Heaney considered this “last gruel of winter seeds” in a poem about the man pickled in bog acid, “trove of turf-cutters’ honeycombed workings… the dark juices working him to a saint’s kept body.”
Gold-of-pleasure is a cabbage and a Stone Age refugee. Its oil was edible and eventually used in lamps. It is still around and may be found today in birdseed mixtures.
Quinoa looks like tiny ball-bearings, and when cooked, doubles in size and becomes transparent. It has a pleasant taste.
Some trend–spotters say amaranth, from another wild plant group, is the next one to watch out for. It has one arresting family member called Love Lies Bleeding with striking, tasseled, flower-heads.
I don’t think I’d fancy that in my breakfast cereal — but then you can never predict taste.