Amaranth

It's a leaf! It's a stem! It's a grain! It's Amaranth!!

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

But seriously, amaranth is best know for it's uses as a grain substitute, it not actually being a grain itself but instead a toasted seed of the amaranth plant.

There are approximately 60 recognized species of amaranth and therefor it goes by a lot of names. The most common being...um...amaranth, aka Chinese spinach or Yin Choy.
I went with the only variety they had at the great Berkeley Bowl (seriously, if you live within 50 miles of Berkeley, CA, you need to go) which was called Taiwan spinach after a quick check on the ol' magic phone to make sure it was indeed a species of amaranth.

There are four recipes for amaranth in VFAZ (acronym for the book's title, get used to it) I made one today and if the rest of it is still good by tomorrow, I'll make another recipe.

Hopefully it is, otherwise I bought all this bulgar wheat for nothing.

The recipe I made tonight was for Amaranth-Hominy Soup with Chili and Cheddar. I'm not going to list the ingredients and the process because 1) it's boring (to me) and 2) I'm not trying to get in trouble for some copyright infringement nonsense.

I started with my mise en place. If you don't do it, do it. Mise en place is a pain in the ass but once you have everything you need together, cooking is super easy.

That being said I will still only put a mise en place together for the recipes in this blog...and when I'm at work of course.

The two things she repeats over and over again about amaranth is that you have to wash off the sand and you have to cook the stems first because they are tough. When I first started inspecting the amaranth I was thinking "What sand?" because I didn't feel any grittiness. But once I started to break it down I could see this super fine white sand at the base of all the stems. So soak and rinse a few times.
I separated the stems all the way up into the leaf just to make sure I was thorough. The book isn't picture heavy so some of the things she says are up for interpretation.

This is what it looked like once it was all broken down and ready to go.

The soup itself is really easy to put together. I ended up adding a fair amount of salt, although it wasn't listed, since I used homemade unsalted vegetable stock and I'm guessing she assumed otherwise. I also added extra chili powder and chili flakes because I likes it hot.

So here's the finished product. The cheese really mixed in nicely with the soup. I've never cheesed a soup before. That's right, cheesed. But this is somewhere in between a soup and a chili, so I suppose that's ok.

She refers to this recipe as "a bowlful of South America" I'm not sure what South America should taste like, in bowl form anyway, but either way this soup is delicious and super easy to make.