Thursday, November 5, 2009

Quinoa Upma/ Kichidi




I have never heard of this Quinoa until I started to blog. To be honest, I didn't even know how to pronounce. I now know it's called "Keen- Wa" and not kinoa as I thought.

It is a grain that has been around for a long long time with lots of goodness. It is actually a seed but we call it a grain. The good thing is it has less carbs and lots of protein and fibre and other good stuff.

I wanted to give it a try as our good old upma. Lots of recipies on indian blogs said about cooking quinoa in the pressure cooker wuth 1:2 water. i tried it first and it became all mushy. So the second time I added 1and half water and let it cook like rawa in the kadai.

There is no special recipie for this upma. It is like making any other upma, throw in as much spices of your choice and veggies of your taste.

My only tip is wash the quinoa and let it stand for 20 mins so it takes away the bitterness. This is what most of the blog sites recommended and I just followed. I didn't want to experimnet with a bitter new product.

So let's get to business now. I washed and soaked the quinoa. USed onion. green chillies, ginger, tomato, peas, carrot,bell pepper and peanuts to add t omy upma.
It tasted very good and my family enjoyed it.

You can improvise it my just ading powdered peanuts, or curd quinoa, puli or lemon quinoa etc.

Try it and test it... It's good for health and taste.