Quinoa is a seed that'll grow on you

Let us now praise quinoa, sacred crop of the Incas.

The seed of a leafy plant grown for centuries in the Andes, quinoa (keen-wah) cooks like a grain and tastes like a nut.

Known in scientific circles as chenopodium, and as a "super crop" in United Nations parlance, quinoa is a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids.

Vegans embrace it as an alternative to meat, eggs and cheese. Celiac-sufferers, who cannot digest wheat, love quinoa's gluten-free nature. With a score of 35 on the glycemic index, quinoa is great for diabetics. Low in calories and fat, quinoa is high in magnesium and riboflavin, which combine to stave off migraine headaches. High in iron, which helps delivers more oxygen to the brain, quinoa fights senility. For Jewish families who keep kosher, quinoa is a good wheat substitute at Passover.

What's not to love?

Quinoa is versatile and easy to prepare, inexpensive, and does not require refrigeration until it is cooked. Like kasha and couscous, quinoa has an exotic, almost esoteric cachet that feeds into the yearning for authenticity among today's foodies.

Introduced on our shores a mere 20 years ago, quinoa is finally gaining ground with chefs, cookbook authors and caterers.

"In the beginning, we were lucky to sell $10,000 worth a month, and now we're selling millions of dollars of quinoa a month," says Dave Schnorr of whose California-based Quinoa Corp., is one of the largest importers. "In the last year it seems quinoa has become the darling of the food industry. Everybody wants to get into it."

At Chifa, the new Peruvian-Cantonese restaurant in chef Jose Garces' stable (Amada, Tinto Distito), you'll find ginger-infused quinoa with spicy barbecued lamb and picked cucumber. But it's also been a dessert there.

"When we opened Chifa, we used quinoa on top of a dessert called Flexible Chocolate that was a milk chocolate custard served with quinoa "chicharrones," our play on traditional fried pork rinds," Garces said.

"We made it by overcooking the quinoa for an hour until it was mushy, then we dried it out overnight and fried it until crispy."

Quinoa has made the menu at stalwarts such as La Croix, Le Bec-Fin, 10Arts, and XIX, too.

Mark Smith at Tortilla Press in Collingswood serves quinoa salad with his black bean and artichoke burrito, and in vegetarian wraps and chile rellenos.

Lucky 13, a gastropub on Passyunk Avenue, serves quinoa in a black-bean salad with scallions, tomatoes and cilantro.