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.

Bulgar Wheat Porridge

If you love oatmeal then you have to try bulgar wheat porridge. It is similar to oatmeal, but less filling (in a good way) and maybe more nutritious (look it up if you are interested; I was told it had more vitamins or something---I don't care because it is delicious).

Here is how I made it this morning (serves 2):

1 cup milk (we use whole)
1 cup water
3/4 cup bulgar wheat
pinch salt
1 tbs coconut oil
splash vanilla extract
three shakes cinnamon
4 strawberries, sliced
Extra milk and a few tbs brown sugar for serving

Put the bulgar and milk and water and salt in a small/medium pot and bring it to a boil then take it down to a simmer for about 15 minutes. I kept and eye on it and stirred frequently because I was worried about it bubbling over. When it was getting close to done I added the coconut oil, vanilla and cinnamon and started tasting it. The bulgar soaked up all the liquid before it was fully cooked so I added a little more water and let it cook until I was happy with the texture. When we had bulgar for the first time at my husband's cousin's farm she soaked the bulgar for a few hours in the milk/water, which probably cut down on cooking time.

Serve with milk and brown sugar and top with sliced strawberries.

It is a lot like oatmeal, but better in taste and texture. The coconut oil gives it a divine silky texture that screams delicious, which it should since it is basically saturated fat. You can probably leave this out if you are scared of saturated fats, but my jar of coconut oil says that "doctors know, athletes know, the beautiful people know... [that saturated fats are awesome]" (emphasis added).

We found bulgar at a natural foods store on the Italian market in Philly. I have never seen it in the regular grocery store, but I haven't really looked for it.