We too have made the perfectly reasonable mistake of asking for "kwuh-NO-uh" and "KWIN-wah".
But the correct pronunciation of this "pseudocereal" is "KEEN-wah".
Recipe: Lemon Quinoa With Asparagus And Feta (Cookthink)
Recipe: Simple Quinoa (Cookthink)
what you should know
Eons before humans knew what Omega-3 fatty acids were, our species was hip to walnuts.
food of the gods Fossilized walnuts dating from Neolithic times have been found, and written references stretch back into B.C. The botanical name for walnuts, juglans, is derived from the belief that the ancient Roman god Jupiter lived off of them. Depending on where you are in the world, walnut consumption has long been linked with a healthy heart, healthy bones, longevity, fertility, intelligence and libido.
nut cases Modern science continues to show that the walnut is one of the healthiest foods we can eat. Still, it's too often relegated to dessert. Try working walnuts into your diet by putting them in salads, spreads, soups and sandwiches. (Or sprinkling them with sugared bacon, a food for which modern science has shown little regard.)
break out of the shell Nut crackers abound, but buying shelled walnuts makes cooking with them much easier. Because walnuts are so fatty, they can spoil without the right care. If buying in bulk, stay away from shriveled or rubbery walnuts. Smell them to make sure they smell nutty and not rancid.
keep it cool At home, store walnuts in an airtight container in a cool, dry place. If you're going to have them for a while, put them in the fridge.
what you need
One of Chip's favorite things to do in the winter is sit on the sofa late at night with a glass of port, a book and a mound of walnuts, which he cracks with his Stanley hammer. (No joke.)
The roasted walnut oil made by California-based La Tourangelle is in the San Francisco Chronicle's Taster's Choice Hall of Fame.
what you do
When making pesto in the colder months, we like to replace the pine nuts with walnuts. We used basil in this one, but you could just as easily use spinach or arugula.
Brys riffed on hummus back in May for our root source on chickpeas. Recently, we've been taken with this lemon-walnut hummus.
Walnuts are perfect for winter salads like this grated beet, frisee and goat cheese salad.
Upon returning to Chicago after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Al Capone supposedly ate something similar to this spaghetti with garlic-walnut sauce.
Finely chopped walnuts can make a more flavorful and textured coating than bread crumbs. To see what we mean, try this walnut-crusted chicken stuffed with spinach and feta.
Claire's family has been making holiday walnut rolls for as long as she can remember. Once you make them, you'll know why.
Technically a fruit of the Chenopodium family, quinoa packs more protein than any other grain, yielding more than twice the protein of rice and five times more than corn. Quinoa is high in lysine, an amino acid widely deficient among vegetable proteins, and is a good complement to the amino acid structure of most legumes, being naturally high in both methionine and cystine. It has less carbohydrate than any other grain beside corn, and a 6% fat content which gives it a pleasant nutty flavor.
In Peru and Bolivia where most of the quinoa in the world is cultivated and eaten, it is boiled whole, like rice, ground into flour for breads and cakes and simmered as a cereal. The leaves of the plant are eaten as a vegetable. The stalks are burned as fuel, and the water leftover from washing the grain before it is cooked is used for shampoo.
The quinoa plant is extremely hardy, thriving in agricultural environments where corn and wheat normally perish. Cultivated in the U.S., mostly in Colorado, quinoa continues to grow year after year in the Andes despite low rainfall, sub- freezing temperatures, high altitude and poor alkaline soil. Its only drawback is the laborious processing it requires once it is harvested.
The small round seeds of quinoa, which resemble something between sesame and millet, are covered with saponin, a bitter resin, which forms a soapy solution in water. In order for the quinoa to be edible, the saponin must be removed by washing the grain in an alkaline solution. By the time you purchase quinoa the saponin is largely gone, but it is a good idea to wash quinoa well before cooking to insure that no bitterness remains.
Before processing, quinoa seeds are brilliantly colored raspberry red, dark violet, blue black or burnt orange, but once the saponin is removed all quinoa is a uniform pale yellow (with the exception of red quinoa). Each flat disk-shaped seed is framed with a white band around its periphery. During cooking, this band unravels into a tiny sprouted spiral, giving quinoa a beautifully textured appearance and a chewy resiliency.
Quinoa's mild flavor has an affinity to everything from onions and mushrooms to sugar and cinnamon. It is equally good as a side dish, a stuffing or baked into bread and is a good substitute for rice in rice pudding.
