The trouble with quinoa

One of the staple ingredients my boyfriend always keeps on hand is quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah, as the label annoyingly insists). The fallback dish almost every day was usually what we came to call "quinoa and beans", which was pretty much what it sounds like: a mixture of quinoa, beans, and whatever vegetables we happened to have in the refrigerator. When I was first introduced to the dish, I was completely in love, probably because we use plenty of onions and caramelize them thoroughly (yum!). I professed that I would never tire of the dish, that is until I got a nauseous migraine one evening and tasted it coming back up. Since then, whenever I have eaten quinoa I can't finish the meal.

Let me back up and explain what exactly I am talking about. Quinoa is a grain from South America which is prepared and used almost identically to rice. However the taste, unlike rice, is a sweet nutty flavor. It's also less starchy than rice and apparently is an excellent source of protein, which makes it favorable among the vegan/vegetarian crowd. The only thing that would be off-putting is that it is more fragrant than other grains, so it may take some getting used to.

So why can't I eat it if it isn't unpleasant? In short: I don't know. For a while after the migraine incident, I couldn't eat it because it brought back memories of nausea. Once I forced myself to break the habit of slightly-embedded conditioning towards associating the taste with feeling ill, I still found that I couldn't finish what was on my plate. I just didn't want to keep eating it. Even the act of chewing was difficult, so I was forced to give the rest of my meal to my boyfriend, who is, in a nutshell, a human garbage disposal.

What I think may have happened is that I simply got tired of the taste. This has happened to me before with foods that I eat too often, and since I was eating quinoa for at least two meals each week, this seems like the best possible explanation. To counteract this, we started to experiment with adding different flavors, like using a chile pepper to kick up the vegetables and boiling a piece of kombu seaweed with the quinoa to get a salty/meaty flavor. Sometimes it worked, depending on how hungry I was, but there is still some experimenting to do.

Since I haven't been able to eat with my boyfriend for a while and haven't had quinoa in nearly two months, I decided to buy a bag to see if I could at least finish a portion. As of yet, no avail. I caramelized a vidalia onion, used plenty of carrots, red bell pepper, and snow peas hoping that the vegetable flavor would help. No luck. Maybe adding new spices. I used the traditional oregano and basil, and tried a dash of tarragon because I was intrigued. That didn't work either. What resulted is a mixture of sweet and bitter from the balance of the vegetables mixing with the quinoa. Plus, the cooked pepper tasted slightly acidic and tomato-y, which isn't exactly my cup of tea. I decided that what was missing was a meaty flavor, and in having no kombu I added a leftover bratwurst. The result was a game of "find the pieces of bratwurst in the quinoa".

I definitely think that I need some saltiness to offset the overwhelming earthy-sweetness that has been established. Adding meat clearly didn't help, so I was thinking of perhaps simmering the mixture with a bit of chicken stock so that the flavor permeates rather than just sitting on top. Or I could just add more salt.

-----Edit------
It turns out that adding more salt helped immensely. Plus an obscene amount of pepper didn't hurt either. I guess when it comes to flavor, always cover the basics before you get fancy. Although eating quinoa is still slow-going, it doesn't feel like an uphill struggle after a few bites. Since I discovered the secrets of salt and pepper I have finished off the batch of quinoa and vedge I made, although I'm holding off on cooking the rest of the quinoa.

(image from here)