Cheesy Amaranth

I usually eat from the fridge and countertop: meat, fish, eggs, tofu, fresh fruit and vegetables. One of my food-related goals in the new year is to cook more from the pantry, both to save money and to use up the bags of random grains that have followed me home from the local hippie grocer in idealistic moments ("oooh, spelt flour, I'm sure I can do something interesting with that!")

To that end, I decided to cook up some amaranth today. I started with no particular recipe in mind; I didn't add additional ingredients as the seeds cooked, because I wanted to get a sense of the taste and texture of the unadorned cooked grain first. I kind of expected it to be similar in texture to quinoa or cous cous, but instead ended up with a chewy, gooey mass of grain more like polenta or grits. A perfect medium for cheese!

So the upshot of the very simple recipe below is: cook a load of amaranth (might as well; you can store the rest for later use), and mix some of it with melted cheese. Result: a dense tasty bowl of concentrated protein and fiber and fat, mmmm.

Ingredients
1 cup amaranth seeds
cheese with personality (I used a garlic, onion, and chive cheddar)

To Make
1. Put amaranth seeds and 3 cups of water in a pot. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes, until the amaranth reaches a chewy consistency. Note: The amaranth package told me to cook it for 35 minutes, but mine seemed to be done in just over 15. Maybe I just ate undercooked amaranth, but it seemed fine to me.

2. Crumble a 2 inch cube of your cheese in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium for a minute or two to melt the cheese.

3. Stir about 3/4 cup of the cooked amaranth into the cheese, mixing well. Use more or less amaranth depending on how cheesy you want it to be. Put the rest of the cooked amaranth in an air-tight container and store in the fridge for later use.