Ruminations upon a Peruvian quinoa-vegetable stew

Usually on the weekends I make a big pot of soup or stew that can serve as lunch during the week. I was getting a little bored with some of my old favorites (Mediterranean calamari stew! Ginger-carrot soup! Cauliflower-chestnut soup!) and wanted to try something new.  I found a recipe for a Peruvian quinoa and vegetable stew that looked interesting and started working on it early Saturday afternoon.  As there are three or four places in this recipe where your instructions basically consist of waiting for 10-15 minutes for something to simmer, I had plenty of time to let my mind wander and when it wanders when I’m cooking, it’s usually considering something to do with food.

First things first, though. The stew was pretty good.  The spice combination was a little unusual but very good, the consistency of the soup was almost porridge-like from the quinoa, and it is deceptively hearty.  I’ll make it again, with some edits, and I’ll enjoy a bowl for lunch over the next three or four (or five?) days.

Now for the side trips.  The recipe came from a magazine produced by America’s Test Kitchen. They’ve been around for a while testing recipes in a kitchen/lab setting, selling cookbooks, magazines, and maintaining a website, all supported by memberships/contributions and not advertising.  For that, good for them.  I’ve found a lot of their recipes to be pretty interesting, but there’s also an occasional flash of pontification and their recipes can appear to be designed to prove a point.  In this case, they go out of their way to explain how the spice mixture and vegetables are serviceable replacements for what is really available only in the mountains of Peru. OK.

Speaking of Peru, how often do you ever encounter cuisine from South America? I have lots of cookbooks and we eat out a lot and I’ve encountered all kinds of food from Europe, China, Japan, India, Korea, various regions of Africa, Mexico, southeast Asia, central Asia, the Middle East, and Russia but I’ve never seen a South American cookbook and the only South American restaurant I’ve ever seen (outside of a couple of Brazilian churrascarias/steak houses) was Jose Garces’ Chifa, a delightful Philadelphia Chinese Peruvian place.  I can’t believe that South America has nothing to offer but for some reason, it has not achieved a culinary presence in the U.S.  Anyone have an idea why?

On to the recipe.  The second item on the ingredient list is an onion, chopped fine.  What do they mean, may I ask, by one  onion?  When I buy onions at the local big chain, they usually come in a bag and are about a size somewhat like a tennis ball.  When I buy onions at the market or the local Whole Foods, they are about the size of a softball, which probably has more than twice as much onion available as the one in the bag.  And, by the way, are we talking about yellow onions, sweet onions, white onions, or red onions?  The red onions obviously don’t work because of color, but as to the other choices…  I wound up using a softball size yellow onion and it worked just fine.

I later have the same problem with tomatoes.  The recipe calls for two tomatoes but there is such a wide range of tomato sizes available that the cook has to make an executive decision of some sort.  Since there aren’t any tomatoes in season right now, I went with the “on the vine” variety in favor of the larger, meatier, with less liquid greenhouse tomatoes.

A different kind of imprecision can infect preparation instructions.  I have a pound of red potatoes I need to cut into 1/2″ pieces. Having made the recipe, I think the author meant a 1/2″ dice and in the recipe below I’ve made that explicit.  But 1/2″ pieces could mean 1/2″ slices or, what I did, slice the potato in half and then slice in 1/2″ pieces.  My pieces were a little too big, because they didn’t cook as much as I would have liked but a dice would have worked just fine.

One last rant.  The stew is designed to have three garnishes prepared for each individual plate but two of them are problematic if you are making a batch for long term use.  There is crumbled queso fresco, a type of cheese that I found was easier grated than crumbled.  That was OK, but there’s also sliced avocado and minced fresh cilantro.  On the day I made the stew, the avocado and cilantro really added depth to the stew but once you’ve opened an avocado you have to use it right away.  If you are cooking for one (or even two, maybe) that isn’t really practical unless you’re planning on using a fresh avocado every day.  As for the cilantro, I’ve found that I can never make fresh cilantro last more than a couple of days in the quantities that are available in grocery stores.  If I stretch this stew for five days, that’s three bunches of cilantro with most of it becoming a treat for my parakeets after it’s wilted and lost its freshness.

All those complaints aside, it’s still a great dish.  In the recipe below, I’ve edited the original a little, mostly in terms of being a little more specific with the ingredients and lengthening the cooking time in a couple of places. The next time I make this I’m going to experiment a little (increase the spice level, add a little sherry vinegar for brightness, and add a little more liquid) and I’ll let you know.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 tsp vegetable oil

1 large onion, chopped fine

1 red bell pepper, seeded, stemmed, and chopped in 1/2″ pieces

salt and pepper

5 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbl sweet paprika (in future attempts, I’m going to add some smoked paprika as well)

2 tsp ground coriander

1 1/2 tsp ground cumin

6 cups vegetable broth

1 lb red potatoes, cut into 1/2″ dice

1 cup quinoa, rinsed

1 cup corn, frozen kernels

2 medium tomatoes, cored and coarsely chopped

1 cup peas, frozen

garnishes  (optional)

minced cilantro (1/2 cup if serving all at once)

sliced avocado

queso fresco (8 oz grated if serving all at once)

Directions

Heat the oil to medium low and add onion and pepper.  Cook until soft.

Add garlic and spices and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add broth and potatoes and bring to boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for ten minutes.

Add quinoa and continue to simmer for another ten minutes.

Add corn and simmer until quinoa begins to get soft and expand.  This could be anywhere from five to twenty minutes.

Add tomatoes and peas and simmer for another two to five minutes, until quinoa has fully expanded and all vegetables are cooked through.

If using garnishes, have them prepared while stew is cooking.  Place slices of avocado in the bottom of each serving bowl. Ladle the stew over the avocado, sprinkle the cheese and cilantro over the top, and serve.