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Red quinoa for breakfast, courtesy Flickr user jspace3

Quinoa (say it: keen-wah) may sound new and exotic to many Americans, but it’s actually been around for at least 5,000 years. The Inca called it the “mother grain” and considered it a sacred gift from the gods. I have a similar reverence for quinoa: It’s close to nutritionally perfect, low-fat and full of protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals like iron and manganese. And it’s darn tasty, too!

The first time I recall hearing about quinoa was as a teenager, on a family vacation to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, where I learned that it was grown by the ancestral Pueblan people (Anasazi) who lived on those high plateaus about 1,400 years ago.

Colorado is also where the seeds of a quinoa comeback sprouted in the 1980s, when a couple of farmers there brought it back into cultivation. Within a decade, quinoa was available in health food stores (at least where I lived in Vermont, which is admittedly not the greatest barometer for national trends), but it didn’t really go mainstream in the United States until the past few years. (Perhaps not coincidentally, there’s also a burgeoning demand for gluten-free grains, which quinoa happens to be. Sort of.*) Now even Walmart sells it.

You can eat quinoa as a breakfast cereal, a healthy lunch, a hearty dinner, or even dessert. For a quick, filling meal, I like to toss cooked quinoa with a bit of Italian salad dressing, diced tomatoes and steamed broccoli florets.

Until now, I’ve been cooking my quinoa on the stovetop, like rice, which works just fine and takes about 20 minutes. But as previously mentioned, I’m gaining some cool kitchen gadgets this year, one of which is a countertop food steamer (love it!). The instructions say this can be used to steam rice, so I tried steaming quinoa according to the same timetable (40 minutes, using one cup dry quinoa in two cups of water).

The result was, well, sticky. That probably means I overcooked it, but it turned out to be a great consistency to shape into quinoa burgers! I won’t call this a recipe, per se, but here’s what I did if you’re interested:

I mixed the cooked quinoa with a bit of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic powder, a drizzle of Tabasco, maybe 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese, some sundried tomatoes and a handful of leftover green beans (chopped small). While heating up about two tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet, I used my hands to roll the quinoa mixture into balls, and then patties. I fried these in the oil over medium heat, until they got brown and crispy (I think it was about 5 minutes per side, but wasn’t keeping track).

They didn’t hold together quite as well as your average veggie burger—I think adding an egg to the mixture would have helped—so I decided to use wraps instead of buns. To mix in some different textures, I also threw in some fresh guacamole and raw kale. Delicious!

I’ve since looked up a few recipes for quinoa burgers, and this one from Hello Veggie sounds worth a try. Martha Stewart’s veggie burgers incorporate quinoa with portobello mushrooms, and I’d also like to try these Greek-style quinoa burgers if I ever find myself in possession of a food processor.

Do you eat quinoa?

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*From a botanist’s perspective, quinoa is actually the seed of a plant in the goosefoot family (like spinach and beets). But from a culinary and nutritional perspective, it’s considered a whole grain.

Even zee French maids like zee free grilled cheese handed out at the Grilled Cheese Invitational in Los Angeles. Photograph by Lisa Bramen

I like grilled cheese as much as the next guy, or so I thought until I took part in the 1st 7th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational this weekend, during a trip to Los Angeles. It turns out that the next guy likes grilled cheese a lot. Thousands of hungry and lactose-tolerant sandwich connoisseurs converged on a park in downtown L.A. to crown a new “Grilled Cheese Champion” Saturday afternoon, some waiting in line for hours for the chance to taste and judge. Before the gates opened, a chant of “Grilled Cheese! Grilled Cheese!” periodically rippled through the line.

Once inside, the event had a Merry Prankster vibe, albeit drug-free. The founder, Timothy Walker, kicked off the competition by saying, “We are here today to separate the curds from the whey,” and pronouncing that the Grilled Cheese Champion might be the “next step in human evolution.” While hundreds of grillers vied for the title, grilled cheese poetry was recited from the stage. Costumes were de rigeur, ranging from a guy dressed as a giant, surreal nose and lips to a trio of young women in berets and handlebar mustaches.

I later learned from a man in a serape (he was entering his fried spaghetti and mozzarella sandwich, dubbed “the Spaghetti Western”), Chuck Cirino, that the competition had its roots in the Burning Man festival and a challenge among friends over who could make the best grilled cheese. The first contest took place in an artist loft in L.A., and drew about 100 people, Cirino said.

The 2009 competiton drew at least a couple thousand (far more than the 1,700 judging spots allotted, which angered a few would-be cheese-eaters) and was divided into three categories: Missionary, for any combination of bread, cheese and butter; Kama Sutra, any combination of bread and cheese plus anything else; and Honey Pot, a sweet grilled cheese worthy of dessert. There were also plenty of free classic grilled cheese sandwiches handed out, courtesy of the sponsor, Kraft singles.

I had only learned of the competition a week earlier, while looking for something to do on my California trip. My friend’s husband, Doug, who earned the nickname Captain Gouda during their courtship for his willingness to plumb the depths of cheesy romance, decided to enter. I volunteered to be his “runner,” which entailed passing out samples to judges, and gave me a place in the middle of the action.

The heat is on at the Grilled Cheese Invitational. Photograph by Lisa Bramen

Doug experimented for a few days before deciding on a combination of Havarti and cheddar on sourdough with Dijon mustard. It was quite tasty, but once we got to the competition we soon discovered we were out of our league in terms of creativity (or, in some cases, grossness). While waiting for our heat to begin, we met a young couple who said they had won the dessert category the previous year. Their concoction included two kinds of donuts, Peeps, and Swiss cheese.

In the Kama Sutra category our competition included a team that served their mushroom and onion sandwiches with a Dixie cup of homemade roasted tomato soup on the side. Another couple served up sauteed asparagus and pear with gruyere. A few stations down, someone was making Parmesan-crusted quesadillas with a gastrique.

Doug’s newborn was cranky and his wife was hungry for something that wasn’t cheese, so we didn’t stick around to see who won. I doubt it was us, but Doug and I have already started plotting for next year.

I’m getting married soon, which means registering for gifts, which means much rejoicing in the kitchen. Last week, a set of Le Creuset enameled cast-iron cookware arrived on my doorstep. I have been reading and hearing great things about this stuff for years now—how evenly it distributes heat, how it lasts forever, how nice it looks, etc.—so I jumped for joy when I opened that box. (Or at least, I tried to jump. That stuff is heavy!)

The set includes four things, two of which I can figure out how to use pretty easily (a grill pan and a casserole dish). But then there’s also a Dutch oven, and, more perplexing, a braising pan. I have plans to try Mark Bittman’s no-knead bread in the Dutch oven someday soon, and I imagine that sort of pot might also be good for soups and stews.

But a braiser? I’ve honestly never seen one before, never mind used one. My fiance had the same reaction: Wow! What an awesome gift! Um…what is this thing?

After a bit of research, I think I see why. Braising pans are mostly intended for meat, and we don’t cook meat, other than occasionally grilling some fish. (We’ll also eat chicken sometimes in restaurants, but neither of us really knows what to do with it in the kitchen. Maybe this is our cue to learn.)

And so I turn to my wise readers: I’m sure you must have some tips or recipes to share. Can I braise vegetables, or even tofu or tempeh? What do you do with your braiser?

An example of some less refined food poetry (Courtesy Flickr user DML East Branch)

April is National Poetry Month (it’s also International Cesarean Awareness Month and School Library Media Month, but I couldn’t find the food angles on those), and the literary food journal Alimentum is celebrating by distributing “menupoems” to participating restaurants in New York and a smattering of other cities.

This is the second year in a row the journal has compiled a broadside of food-related poems, designed to look like a menu. Last year’s menu included a translation of a Pablo Neruda poem called “From The Great Tablecloth,” a poem by Doug Magee called “Praline To A Kiss,” and several by the “menupoem inventor,” Esther Cohen, including “Posthumous Hummus” and “He Only Wants,” which starts (PDF):

he only wants
caesar salad with chicken
although there are occasions,
rare enough, where he
will order shrimp

I tried to think of other food poems, and two quite different ones came immediately to mind. First, the simple yet evocative “This is just to say” by the American poet William Carlos Williams, which I learned 20 years ago in a college introduction to creative writing course. It begins:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

The other poem, dissimilar in both style and intent, is Robert Burns’s “Address to a Haggis.” Whereas Williams paints a quiet domestic portrait, Burns raises his homeland’s humble national dish to heroic status, a proud symbol of Scottish identity. Here’s but a nibble:

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm

Very loosely translated, that means, “you, haggis, are one gorgeous, noble ball of innards.” The poem in its entirety, along with a more thorough translation, is provided by the World Burns Club.

Kim O’Donnel at A Mighty Appetite also served up a few tasty food poems on her blog last year, including two by a former New Hampshire poet laureate, the late Jane Kenyon.

Do you have a favorite food poem, or has food ever moved you to pen verse?

Smithsonian staff writer Abigail Tucker recently visited Niaqornat, Greenland as part of her reporting on tracking the elusive Narwhal. We asked her to share her unique culinary experiences while up in the Arctic cold.

The defrosted, chewy narwhal mattak

Knud Rasmussen, the grizzled adventurer who explored Greenland by dog sled in the early 20th century and survived all kinds of wildlife and weather, met his end at dinnertime. The deadly dish was kiviak: whole auks (small black-and-white seabirds) stuffed into a disemboweled seal carcass and buried under a stone for half a year or so, until the birds ferment practically to the point of liquefaction. Kiviak is an Inuit delicacy, rumored to smack of tangy old Stilton, but Rasmussen – though he was born in Greenland to an Inuit mother – didn’t have the stomach for it. He contracted food poisoning and died soon afterwards.

Rasmussen’s fate flitted into my mind last fall when I visited my first Greenlandic grocery store, set beside a tiny airport where I’d stopped on the way to visit narwhal scientists working in a remote Inuit village. The freezer case was full of curious meats: a snowy hunk of a fin whale’s throat, a slab of musk ox. My companion, Danish whale scientist Mads Peter Heide-Jorgensen, browsed thoughtfully in the reindeer jerky section before selecting a few pieces for the road.

I’m a meat-eater, which in Greenland was (for once) a virtue; I had been warned that vegetarians did not prosper there. Leafy things, and even grains, are scarce, and sea creatures like seals, whales and even walruses are common main courses. The scientists liked to laugh about a vegetarian visitor who had stayed at their camp, scrupulously avoiding whatever was boiling in the dinner pot. When the man could not seem to stay warm while the scientists worked outside all day, Heide-Jorgensen blamed his diet of granola and other vegetarian fare. “Out on the ice is not where spaghetti belongs,” he told me in his stern Danish accent. “It doesn’t matter how many nuts you eat.”

It turned out that many of our village meals involved that beloved American staple – frozen hamburger meat – and the endless boxes of instant bread that the scientists kept stashed under their beds. But I eventually got the chance to sample local game. During an interview I told an incredulous young hunter that I’d never tasted mattak, the layer of whale skin and subcutaneous blubber that is the favorite food of practically everyone in the village and a main prize of the narwhal hunt. Soon afterwards the hunter arrived at the scientists’ house with a plastic baggie filled with half-frozen mattak from last year’s harvest.

I thought I’d work up the courage later, but the hunter clearly wanted to witness my culinary epiphany. The scientists produced a vial of soy sauce and placed it on the kitchen table. With the tips of my fingers I seized a tiny, half-frozen piece of raw blubber, dunked it soy sauce and put it in my mouth. That first bite was exactly like chomping down on a thick vein of gristle in a great aunt’s holiday roast. It was tough as rubber, with a taste like congealed gravy. But the hunter’s eyes were upon me; I could not spit it out. In my head a chant began: Chew! Chew! Chew! Somehow, I downed the lump. “Delicious,” I murmured; the hunter beamed. The scientists mercifully helped me finish the rest.

I never braved a meal of kiviak but before leaving Greenland I did dine on a reindeer filet (actually delicious), reindeer jerky (not much different from beef) and fresh-caught beluga meat and mattak. The meat was black, dense and dry as tinder; the mattak was – well, very much like the narwhal’s.

Once or twice, I dodged offers to try more local dishes. “Oh, I’ve already eaten,” I sighed when a family offered to share their dinner of sliced narwhal mattak mixed with tiny pink shrimp. I felt rude and a bit disappointed with myself. But they seemed subtly pleased – all the more mattak for them.

– Abigail Tucker

For more pictures and insight into the remote village in Greenland, check out the video below.