Quinoa Mint and Feta Pilaf

 Quinoa has its own music.

Warm 1 Tbl of olive oil in a pan

Rinse 1 cup of quinoa in cold water

Stir quinoa into the hot olive oil, stir for 1 minute

Add 2 cups water (or vegetable or chicken broth) to quinoa, bring to a boil,

Stir in 1cup fresh or frozen peas

Cover, then simmer 10-15 minutes over low heat

Meanwhile, slice a small red onion very into thin arcs, and fry in a little bit of olive oil.  At the last minute, stir a large hand full of fresh chopped mint into the cooked onion.

When quinoa is done, toss with onions & mint, and add 4 ounces of crumbled feta or similar goat cheese, gently stir into the quinoa and serve.  This is a comforting dish.

Quinoa goes by another name, the Mother Grain, which makes me feel a particular kinship, like we are partners in mothering when I feed the people I love this good food. I only learned about quinoa recently, and I am newly infatuated, but it has been grown for 5000 years in the Andes and is actually one of our most ancient partners in living. While it often is sold as a white quinoa, you also can get it in a flamboyant red version, very dashing.

Quinoa has its own music -- the music of the Andes, Bolivia and Peru. These musicians have scattered all over the world, instead of just the high mountains of home they are now in subway stops, parks, farmer’s markets, where ever they can get a toe hold. Next time you run into them, don’t just hurry past, stop and listen. The Andean band Sukay taught me to listen to this music, and the founding member holds my personal lifetime the title of The Woman with the Most Beautiful Smile in the World. Her name is Quentin Howard. Her smile is like moonlight, a soft radiance that keeps the darkness at bay. I saw this in action once, in a long ago evening of music, a concert framed by the dark night and deep forest near the Russian River.  Her laughter is one of the sweetest parts of the music she makes.  Her hair a black cascade that makes light dance to the music of her lilting flutes.

Sukay weaves the air with a remarkable set of instruments. The flutes they play have accompanied quinoa for dinner for 5000 years. Sometime they are deep and full of the huff of a human breath, the flutes arc the sound of breath into the music. Sometimes they are high with notes trimmed by birdsong. The Kena is a straight flute, pentatonic, haunting. The zamponas are pan pipes, some are very deep and low, with pipes extending down to the player’s knees, and some short and sweet, pipes easily cupped in a palm; the length of each tube setting the sound that waves out and washes over the listener. The player breathes the music by quickly darting from tube to tube. The musician’s breath becomes a vital part of the music. When several people are playing these pipes at once, the different tones and pitches balance in the air between them, and they sometimes rock in synchrony while they play, a startling intimacy. Chacas are goat hoof rattles, and echo the sound of the wind in the trees. Their drums remember the pulse of the Andes, and let you find rest in the deep heartbeat of faraway mountains. The most ancient of the tunes they play are just for flutes and drum; some of this music goes back much further in time than the long centuries since the Spanish first brought stringed instruments to the Quechua.  With the Europeans came the guitar, and strings were adopted into this ancient tradition, bringing along their Spanish overtones. The Quechua made the guitar one of their own. Also, with the arrival of strings, came the charango, a wild shivery little plectrum instrument built onto the shell of an armadillo.

Now California is far away and I haven’t heard Sukay live for many years, and I didn’t know if they were still making music.  Finding Quinoa made me want to find them again.  So I did, and here they are:

Sukay performs the song "Carnavalito" in Bolivia: