Mapuche Wheat

Mapuche women harvesting wheat; unknown photographer and date.  On line at flickr

 As Alfred L. Crosby’s book The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 demonstrates, the interchange of plants, animals and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia changed the world.  American maize, potatoes, beans, cassava and sweet potatoes, adopted as staple foods from Ireland to China and Africa, led to tremendous dietary and demographic changes.  But while old world food systems were transformed by native American food plants, few indigenous American cultures adopted Old World crops as staple foods.

There are several reasons.  The reduced and disheartened American populations seldom needed new food sources; within the first 100 years after contact old world diseases combined with war and slavery killed 50 to 90% of American Indians, depending on the region. But climatic differences were also important; Amerindian population centers—Mesoamerica and the Andes--were in the tropics, areas with summer or year-round rainfall, and frequently, high altitudes.  The crops the Europeans brought were domesticated mainly in the temperate zone from Southwest Asia to the Mediterranean, with dry summers and winter rainfall.  Wheat, the Europeans’ most important crop, is not well suited to tropical America, and in spite of the conquistador’s insistence that their native workers plant it, successful production was, and is, limited to temperate areas: northern Mexico and the south western United States;  and Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

In the north, Pueblo Indians adopted wheat and barley, but they never supplanted maize as staple crops.[1]  In Chile things were different: the indigenous Mapuche adopted and came to depend on a large number of European crops, especially wheat, along with barley, broad beans, peas, and flax.

The Mapuche homeland, stretching from the Rio Bio Bio to the island of Chiloe in south central Chile (map), has a temperate oceanic climate similar to Western Europe’s.  Average summer temperatures, which decease toward the south, are in the 60s and 70s, and winter lows are usually above freezing. Rainfall is concentrated in the winter months, and increases toward the south, reaching 120 inches in the higher elevations of Chiloe Island.  Prior to the Spanish conquest, the Mapuche were a riverine people, dependant on hunting, fishing and collecting wild foods and cultivating maize, potatoes, quinoa, lima beans, chilies, and squash; all plants with tropical origins and, with the exception of potatoes and quinoa, summer crops not especially well suited to the increasingly cool and rainy climate of the south.

When the Spanish arrived, on horseback and with steel weapons fresh from the conquest of Peru, they quickly ran roughshod over the Mapuche, defeating and decimating them in battle after battle and building fortified settlements as far south as Valdivia.  They found the country to their liking.  In 1558 Jerónimo de Vivar wrote:

Wheat and barley yield very well… all the vegetables and legumes of our Spain yield very well.  And grape vines do very well, and fig trees.  And all the other plants of our Spain will yield very well, because the climate is very good. [2]

But within a generation, the Mapuche obtained horses and developed military strategies that matched and frequently surpassed those of the Spanish, and by 1600 they had destroyed the Spanish settlements, taken thousands of prisoners, and driven the Spanish north of the Rio Bio Bio, which was to be the frontier between the two peoples for the next 300 years.  In the process however, the Mapuche way of life changed drastically.  They were forced to abandon their riverside communities and take up a highly mobile way of life based on their herds of cattle and horses and shifting agriculture based largely on wheat.

In his History of the Ancient Mapuches of the South, José Bengoa, a Chilean anthropologist who has written extensively on Mapuche history, explains why: 

The war led to an economic transformation in all aspects of indigenous society. The need for mobility encouraged herding over agriculture for subsistence, and the burning of fields, commonly done by the King’s soldiers during the summer campaigns, broke the back of indigenous agriculture.  It no longer made sense to plant maize in open areas.  This was one of the reasons for the early and rapid incorporation of wheat into the indigenous economy.  In southern Chile wheat has a short productive cycle. It can be harvested in December, whereas maize is harvested in February or May, which left it highly vulnerable to summer attacks.[3]

Cultivation of wheat posed no problems from the Mapuche.  They already cultivated maize, quinoa and madi (or made, a small oil seed) and those who had been captives of the Spanish would have been familiar with wheat cultivation, as would the Mapuches’ own Spanish captives.  While there are no records of early Mapuche cultivation methods, the Spanish planted by sowing broadcast and the Mapuche probably followed the same practice.

In a shallow plowed and harrowed field the wheat is thrown on the fly, almost without covering it and leaving it at the mercy of the prodigious quantity of birds that Chile has and shortly thereafter to the invasion of weeds that this type of cultivation allows to grow freely…  [4]

Through the 19^th century, the Mapuche’s harvest was by hand:

They cut the wheat with a sickle, tied the sheaves and tossed them with pitch forks into ox carts that took them to the threshing floor.[5]

And threshing was also done manually.  Juan Amasa, a Mapuche of the village of Collipulli explained:

After the harvest they would bring together 10 or 20 Indians, men and women, young and old to thresh the wheat with their feet.  The chief himself does not work, but is in charge of directing the threshing as a “corporal.”  Depending on the size of the pile of wheat the Indians go around it in lines of two to four people holding hands with their bodies inclined forward in a particular threshing step, executing two food movements with each step.  That is, the foot is put forward then drawn back, sliding the sole of his foot over the wheat, and then there is another step with the same foot, continuing the same sliding motion with the other foot and moving forward.  To the rhythm of the threshing they sing to entertain themselves in this monotonous work.[6]

If the amount of wheat was greater, horses were used for the threshing, a Spanish practice adopted by the Mapuche.

 Trillas   are now common summer festivals,  as pictured below at  the 2012 Trilla a Yegua Suelta (threshing with loose mares) in Aguila Sur Paine.

After the straw was brushed aside, the wheat remained on the ground. To separate the wheat from the chaff, it was winnowed—thrown into the air where the lighter chaff blows away and the wheat falls to the ground or the winnowing tray.

Mapuche wheat in a winnowing basket.

 Once winnowed, the Mapuche prepared wheat for consumption in several ways, most derived from tways that they had traditionally processed maize: 

Toasted flour: mürke (harina tostada)

Toasted flour was one of the most important Mapuche wheat products, adapted from the aboriginal toasted corn meal—an indigenous American Indian food from New England to Chile.  North America settlers called it “parched corn”[7], in Mesoamerica it is known as pinole, in NW Argentina it is ñaco, and in Chile mürke. 

The “happy captive,” Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán who was a prisoner of the Mapuche during the 1620s and who provides one of the earliest accounts of Mapuche food, mentions “toasted flour” (harina tostada) seven times, once specifically to toasted maize flour “mixed with quinoa and made”[8] although never specifically to toasted wheat flour.  (In fact, “wheat” (trigo) is only mentioned once in the text.)    

Later travelers in the Araucanía such as Edmund Reuel Smith mention toasted flour or meal frequently—and specifically to toasted wheat flour-- referring to it as a major food:

…toasted wheat and linseed ground together, of which I had already become fond, regarding the "ulpo" as not only a pleasant beverage, but almost as a necessity, in the absence of bread.[9]

José Begona describes the preparation of mürke, as follows:

The making of toasted wheat is a usually a happy family ceremony. It is a food that all apprectiate.  Earlier it was made in a clay callana, but the ones I have seen are metal.  They are like a large skillet, with a long wooden handle of a meter or more.  It is often hung from the ceiling with wire, to keep from burning oneself and to make toasting easier.  It is put over the kitchen hearth in the center of the house [and now frequently over a wood stove].  The wheat is put into the callana and stirred so that it does not burn.  A boy usually helps his mother in this task, until the wheat is well toasted and hot.  From there it is taken to the grain mill from which and perfumed smoke rises.  As it comes out of the mill it is mixed with hot water to make ulpo or allowed to cool and added to apple chicha [cider], for one of the most successful combinations of Mapuche cuisine.  The guests drink the chicha stirring the toasted flour with a spoon.  And wheat again becomes the focus of their conversations.

Traditional Mapuche milling stone

 photo:  Italo Martínez Rival

Modern hand grain mill. photo ñiyael mapuche

Toasted wheat was, and is, eaten as ulpo, mixed with cold or hot water (chercan) or was boiled in water to make a porridge.  My wife recalls having ulpo as a child, and of eating it sprinkled over watermelon.  It continues to be popular and is available in supermarkets.

Lightly toasted wheat that is coarsely ground is tukun, locro in Chilean Spanish.  It is added to soups and stews.

Peeled wheat: kako cachilla (mote de trigo)

Another indigenous American technique for preparing maize was transferred to wheat by the Mapuche: nixtamalization. In this process dry maize kernels are cooked in water containing an alkali—wood ashes, lye or lime--which causes the maize to swell and the pericarp or clear skin of the kernel to come loose.  The maize, now called nixtamal in Mexican Spanish is washed thoroughly to remove the pericarp and the alkaline taste and then is either ground to make tortillas or tamales, or cooked further to make pozole (mote in the Andes, hominy in N. American English).

This process is not thought to have extended further south than Colombia prior to the Spanish conquest, but it was part of the Mapuche culinary repertory by the 1620s when Pineda y Bascuñán was a Mapuche captive.[10]  He mentions being given mote eight times; corn mote twice and barley mote once. The rest were “mote” with no modifier.  Today in Chile unmodified “mote” means wheat mote and Chilean historian Begona believes that both toasted wheat flour and wheat mote were part of Mapuche diet by this time, although bread was not.[11]

The process of making wheat mote, as Mapuche Luisa Quidel does it for sale in Temuco is as follows:

After the wheat is harvested you must obtain ashes for processing the wheat from a local bakery.  The ashes need to be cleaned and passed through a sieve to make good wheat mote.  The mote must be cooked at a suitable temperature for the best results, so it is done over a wood fire.  It is a slow process, but gas is too expensive.  Next the water is drained off, and the mote, husks now loosened by the ashes, is peeled.  It is scrubbed by hand and this is also a sacrifice; it is tiring work and there is no one to help her. The process is finished when the mote is well washed and allowed to rest until she leaves to sell it early the next morning. [12]

Mote is eaten as a boiled grain, like rice, and in soups and stews with other products: potatoes, beans, peas.  It is also the basis for catuto or mültrun, a bread like mixture of ground mote, lard or oil, and salt which is formed into oblong rolls, and eaten as is, toasted on the coals, as below, or sautéed in a little grease[13]. (It is also made of boiled wheat that has not been peeled.)

Catutos on the coals.  photo: Pablo Azúa

Wheat beer:  mudai or muday (chicha de trigo)

In South America chicha (from chichab, “maize” in an aboriginal language of Panama) usually refers to an alcoholic beverage made of corn, but it can also refer to virtually any fermented fruit cider or even unfermented maize drinks. In modern Chile it refers to lightly fermented grape wine or, in the south, to apple cider.  Mudai, maize chicha, was traditionally made by cooking ground corn in water, adding masticated maize meal, and allowing the mixture to ferment.  The chewed meal contains enzymes from the saliva which convert the maize starch into sugar, which yeasts then convert into alcohol. (In making beer “malting” or sprouting the grain accomplishes the same purpose.)  Sometimes left over muday from a previous batch with well developed yeast was added to speed fermentation.

The Mapuche quickly adapted the same process to wheat and barley.  Edmund Reuel Smith, who came to Chile as a civilian member of the US Naval Astronomical Expedition (1849-52), traveled through Araucanía to see and learn abut the Mapuche.  He found mudai  “a kind of fermented liquor, rather muddy but not unpleasant to the taste.”  Later he saw how it was made[14]:

Today’s mudai is made without mastication, and may be drunk at any stage in the fermentation process.  Lightly fermented mudai is a refreshing, milky and slightly sour drink.  When I asked why they served the “light” variety, my host said “wincas [non Mapuches] don’t usually like the strong kind.” The recipe below comes from the web site Mapuches Urbanos:

 Other recipes add yeast and substantial quantities of sugar (replacing much of the wheat) to produce a more alcoholic beverage in less time.

Bread:  kofke

Bread was not an early addition to the Mapuche diet.  Pineda y Bascuñán mentions it only once, and then in the context of a Mapuche chief with a mestiza daughter and presumably a Spanish wife

We arrived at mid day and were received with great pleasure and regaled highly as this chief was very Spanishised [españolado] and ostentatious:  his house had many chickens, fresh meat, bacon, sausages and maize and wheat bread, and above all, a lot of chicha of different types.

He also mentions empanadas, tortillas and “fried buñuelos and rosquillas and sopaipillas of eggs,” Spanish pastries made of wheat flour, but these do not seem to have been common in Mapuche kitchens until the late 19^th and 20^th centuries when they could take their wheat to mills for grinding into a fine flour.

Since that time, however, bread has been a major factor in Mapuche life.  José Begona, who has referred to the Mapuche as The Wheat People, writes:

Making bread continues to be the principal activity of the Mapuche woman.  It occupies a good part of her day.  There are several customs.  Some women prefer to leave the dough over night, ready to make bread in the morning, others like to make use of the embers of the kitchen hearth and have the bread ready.  This is the “ash bread” [tortilla de rescoldo], cooked in the hot ashes of the hearth.  Sometimes it is left overnight and the next day, on getting up, the bread is ready and still hot.  Other women rise, knead and prepare the bread for breakfast. [15]

The other common Mapuche bread is the sopapilla, fried bread.  Although individual household recipes differ, the dough for the two can be the same:  Flour is mixed with salt and a piece of dough from a previous day and/or baking powder, and in some households lard, and kneaded.  It is allowed to rise, and if it is to be a tortilla de riscoldo, buried in the ashes of the hearth.  For sopapillas the dough is rolled out into a 4 or 5 inch circle and fired in oil, or preferably (according to some) in horse fat.  (For more on Mapuche sopapillas and tortillas de riscoldo, see Mapuche Food: Ethno Tourism/Ethno Gastronomy.)

Noodles: pangkutra (pantrucas)

Humble noodles of flour, water, salt and perhaps egg and oil, cooked in a meat broth were the most commonly eaten “traditional Mapuche foods” encountered in a recent survey of Mapuche dietary habits in Temuco.[16] (The next most common were tortillas de riscoldo, merkin and horse meat.)

Links:  Arte Culinaria Mapuche contains 20+ Mapuche recipes in Spanish

More posts on Mapuche food in Eating Chilean:

Mapuche Food: Ethno Tourism/Ethno Gastronomy

Feasting with the Enemy: 17th Century Mapuche food

Eating Piñones

Chilean Corn (Choclo Chileno)

Broad Beans and Peas

Eating Chilean Horse Meat

---

[1] Vlasich, James A.  2005. Pueblo Indian Agriculture.  University of New Mexico Press.  P. 27 On line at http://books.google.com/books

[2] Torrejón, Fernando and Marco Cisternas.  2002.  Alteraciones del paisaje ecológico araucano por la asimilación Mapuche de la agroganadería hispano-mediterránea (siglos XVI y XVII)  Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 75: 729-736.  On line at http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0716-078X2002000400008&script=sci_abstract  All translations mine unless otherwise noted.

[3] Bengoa, José. 2003. Historia de los Antiguos Mapuches del Sur, Ed. Catalonia, Santiago de Chile. p. 302

[4] Gay, Claudio. 1862-1865.  Agricultura, Tomo 2. París: En casa del autor; Chile: Museo de Historia Natural de Santiago, p. 19. On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0002688

[5] Begona, José.  2002. Historia de un conflicto: El estado y los mapuches

en el siglo XX. 2nd Edition. p. 88. Santiago: Editorial Planeta Chilena S. A.

[6] Lenz, Rodolfo. 1895-97. Estudios Araucanos. Anales de la Universidad de Chile, Vol. 97. p. 115. On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0003440

[7] Houghton Mifflin Word Origins:parched corn. On line at http://www.answers.com/topic/parched-corn

[8] Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Francisco, 1608-1680. 2001. El cautiverio feliz, Tomo dos; edición crítica de Mario Ferreccio Podestá y Raïssa Kordić  Riquelme. Santiago de Chile: Seminario de Filología Hispánica, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad de Chile, p. 638. On line at  http://books.google.cl

[9] Smith, Edmund Reuel. 1855. The Araucanians; or, Notes of a Tour among the Indtia tribes of Southern Chile.  New York:  Harper & brothers. p. 269 On line at http://books.google.cl

[10] How nixtamalization arrived in Chile is unknown.  The most likely alternative is that the Spanish, some of whom had been in areas where the practice was common such as Panama and Mexico, introduced it to Peru and then to Chile.  But if this is the case the absence of corn tortillas, the food most commonly made from nixtamal, in Peru and Chile is difficult to explain.

[11] Bengoa, José. 2008. Historia del Pueblo Mapuche (Siglos XIX y XX). 7th corrected Edition. Santiago: Lom Eds.

[12].  Aguilera Vega, Eugenia. 2007. Mote: Gusto para unos, vida para otros.  Centro de Medios Independientes Santiago, on line athttp://santiago.indymedia.org/news/2007/06/70390.php as quoted in Eating Chilean: Mote con huesillos, Chile’s favorite summer sweet. October 19, 2009. On line at http://eatingchile.blogspot.com/2009/10/mote-con-huesillos-chiles-favorite.html

[13] Mapuche, Gente de la Tierra. Comidas. Receta de Catutos. On line at http://www4.biblioredes.cl/BiblioRed/Nosotros+en+Internet/Gente+de+mi+tierra/Comidas

[14] Smith, op. cit. p. 302 quotation and illustration

[15] Begonia 202, Chapter 7

[16] Schnettler, Berta et al.  2010 Diferencias Étnicas Y De Aculturación En El Consumo De Alimentos En La Región De La Araucania, Chile.  Rev Chil Nutr Vol. 37, Nº1, Marzo 2010

On line at http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/rchnut/v37n1/art03.pdf.

Chilean Quinoa

In 1551, 10 years after taking possession of Chile for Spain Pedro de Valdivia wrote King Charles V concerning the new colony:

I can tell you truthfully of the goodness of this country….. cattle like those of Peru [llamas, vicunas] prosper, with wool that drags on the ground; it abounds in all the foods the Indians plant for their subsistence, such as corn, potatoes, quinoa, madi, chili and beans.  The people are large, tame, friendly and white, and of attractive faces, men as well as women, all dressed in wool in their style, although the clothing is somewhat crude.[1] (all translations mine). 

This was the earliest mention of quinoa, (or quinua, from the Quechua) Chenopodium quinua, the “mother grain” of the Incas, and although Valdivia wrote enthusiastically, if not always truthfully (the native Mapuche were neither friendly nor tame—they killed him two years later), of the country’s blessings, he didn’t mention quinoa again.

Quinoa. Photo: Cancosa

Quinoa is not a grain; member of the grass family like the wheat, barley, oats and rice familiar to the conquistadors, or the American maize (corn) they found and readily adopted. It is an “herb,” a leafy plant with no woody stem and abundant small seeds, unlike any plant cultivated for seeds in Spain.  While the conquistadors ate it, comparing it to rice, it remained stigmatized as low status “Indian food,” and did not become part of the colonist’s agriculture.[2]

Today, 450 years later, quinoa is finally achieving recognition beyond indigenous communities. And while it has been subject to the usual levels of marketing hype (at left) quinoa’s high levels of protein, balanced amino acid composition, pleasant taste, and easy cooking qualities have made it popular with both the health food and foodie communities.  And its potential for improving diet in high altitude and dry environments has led the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN to name it as “one of the crops destined to offer food security in the next century.”[3]

Quinoa Super Diet

Quinoa origins      

Photo: Quinoa Wikipedia

The earliest evidence of quinoa in archaeological sties is from Peru in levels thought to date to about 7,000 years ago. In northern Chile quinoa seeds were being collected by 5,200 BP (before present), and they were found in an archaeological site on a tributary of the Rio Maipo near Santiago from about 3,000 BP. Quinoa was attractive to hunting and gathering people both because of its nutritional value and because it could be stored without suffering losses from rodents and insects: quinoa seeds have a bitter soap-like saponin coating which makes them unpalatable unless they have been washed.  Domestication probably occurred by 3,500 years ago in the area surrounding Lake Titicaca where the plant’s greatest genetic diversity is found.[4]

 Quinoa, corn and potatoes were the principal crops of the Inca and their predecessor from Columbia south to northern Chile and Argentina. Quinoa’s remarkable ability, shared with potatoes, to grow at altitudes over 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) made it the dominant seed crop at high altitudes.  In Chile it was grown from high altitudes to sea level, and from dry northern valleys to wet Chiloe Island, off the south-central coast. This great adaptability to differing climates and altitudes is the result of indigenous farmers’ selection of the most promising varieties for their particular location, producing thousands of local varieties in five major categories:  Chilean sea level quinoas adapted to low elevations, long days and high rainfall; Andean valley quinoas that grow at 2,000 to 4,000 meters; subtropical quinoas from the eastern Bolivian Andes; salar quinoas adapted to soils with high salt content; and Antiplanic varieties from around Lake Titicaca at 3500-4000 feet which are adapted to a short growing season and are frost resistant.[5]

While quinoa continued to be cultivated by many indigenous Andean communities after the conquest, in Chile  constant war with the Spanish south of the Mapuche frontier disrupted the traditional Mapuche way of life and cultivation of many traditional foods, including maize and quinoa, was greatly reduced; replaced by wheat and other European crops.[6]  In the 1620s the Spanish soldier, Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, whose account of this captivity by the Mapuche is full of discussions of the food he was given, mentions quinoa only once, when he was given bags of “toasted corn flour, mixed with quinua.”[7]  By the 19^th century it is rarely mentioned except as an historical oddity: as in “Quinoa still existed in Chiloe in the year 1875”.[8] Even Mapuche chief Pascual Coña’s dictated Indigenous Araucanian Life and Culture in the Second Half of the 19^th Century, which provides an extensive discussion of Mapuche food and agriculture, mentions quinoa only once: “quinoa in olden times replaced cereals.”[9]

By 1997, only 435 acres of quinoa were under cultivation in Chile (in the highlands near Iquique) down 30% from 20 years earlier.[10]

Quinoa in Europe and North America

While quinoa cultivation was declining in Chile, it continued (and continues) be cultivated in Indigenous Peruvian and Bolivian communities, and was observed with interest by a number of European visitors.  In 1838, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine published an article on quinoa, including the drawing to the right, a botanical description, discussion of its varieties and their uses, and its introduction to Europe:

 

Father Feuillée, in his travels in Peru and Chili, seems first to have brought this plant to notice. Dombey, in 1779, sent seeds to Paris, but they did not succeed; nor are we aware that it was know in a living state in Europe till within these last few years, when it was in cultivation first in Paris, and since in England.  Mr. Lambert directed public attention to it in 1834: and we are indebted to the Glasgow Botanic garden to John McLeal, Esq., of Lima for seeds which have increased most abundantly in the course of a single year. [11]

It was also discussed by Dr. J.J Von Tschudi,[12] who visited in 1838-42.  He noted that while only a little wheat and barley were cultivated by Andean communities:

Quinoa continued to receive notice throughout the 19^th and 20^th century in books and journals including Popular Science Monthly (1893), National Geographic Magazine (1916),  The Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1931), The Farm Quarterly (1950), and etc.,  Then in the 1980’s quinoa imported from Peru and Bolivia began to appear in US health food and specialty shops, and to be widely discussed in magazines and books. In 1986 an article entitled “Quinoa, a Legacy of the Andes, Arrives” extolling it’s virtues and providing recipes appeared in the New York Times; a sure sign that it had arrived.[13]

Today quinoa is widely available in North America through the original importer The Quinoa Corporation and others, and is being grown in Canada.  It is also available in the UK and Australia and in Europe.

Quinoa Corporaton’s Ancient Harvest brand

Back in Chile


Beginning in the late 1990s, interest in quinoa has grown in Chile. In 2007 quinoa was being produced on 3,640 acres, over 90% by indigenous Aymara in the area of Colchane in the far north, an 800% increase over 1997.  Quinoa is also cultivated on a small scale in the central valley south of Santiago.  Most producers there are elderly, and much of the production is for home consumption, but a little over half is sold regionally or is destined for European and North American markets. 


In Chile’s  Region IX, The Araucanía, quinoa (dawe or dahue in the Mapuche language) historically formed a part of the Mapuche cultivation system and diet, and as muday (quinoa drink) and food for animals.  Some Mapuche women continue to grow it in small gardens interplanted with corn, beans, and potatoes. During the last decade the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture’s southern development center CET Sur has encouraged seed sharing, recovery of traditional uses, and innovations for new uses (including interchanges between Mapuche women and Chilean chefs), and has promoted organic production of quinoa in rural and indigenous communities.[14]  


CET Sur’s pullication La kinwa mapuche, un aporte a la alimentación[15] (Mapuche Quinoa, a Contribution to Diet) includes Mapuche women’s comments about their experiences in the program:

I have been eating quinoa since I was a little girl, prepared with milk and sugar, and also as mote…. but during the last five years I have continued experimenting and have developed many dishes; main dishes, stews, fried foods, sweet and salted beads, cookies and many deserts.  I have also made spreads to use in place of butter, salads with the leaves, and have fried the seed heads when they are tender.  Zundia Pepí

…I only knew the most traditional uses of quinoa that I heard about from my grandmother, but I never ate it as a girl because I left the village.  But when I came back… I began to love plants, flowers, birds and animals.  In 2000 I started to develop dishes with quinoa; desserts, salads and fried dishes and then I thought that instead of buying pizza I could make my own creation… Now I can recommend it; you make a dough to which you add cooked quinoa, being careful that the seeds are soft and not dry.  You spread the dough in a pan, calculating that it shouldn’t be very thick and you put it in the oven.  The filling is made with various vegetables, with egg, white and black quinoa seeds, and grated cheese.  Eris Cornado

Quinoa is now widely available in Santiago supermarkets and tostadurias, both as washed seeds and as flour.  Prices range from around 3,750 to 4,700 pesos/kg ($3.40-4.25 US/lb.), and it appears occasionally in restaurants—especially vegetarian and up-scale Peruvian. 









Quinoa and nutrition

Quinoa is the basis of the diet of children of the altiplano. It is a blessing and great privilege.  Only now is the nutritional value of this Andean cereal recognized, with its 18% of easily assimilated protein, balanced amino acid composition, and iron, calcium, phosphorus, fiber, vitamin E and B complex content  Although it is now being replaced by rice and pasta, quinoa is still present in the Aymara diet almost every day. It is the reason that the nutritional status of Aymara children is good, with very few recently reported cases of malnutrition.  Arturo Kirberg B. MD, Iquique, Chile.  “The health of the Aymara child”[16]   

Quinoa is higher in protein, with from 8 to 22%, that comparable cereals (wheat, corn, rice, etc.), and the protein is of high quality, with a better balance of essential amino acids.  It has high levels of lysine and methionine, which tend to be low in most plant protgein, and is a good source of dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals   The UDSA food values tables (via Wikipedia) provide the data at right.










Recipes


Most quinoa you are likely to encounter will have been washed to remove the bitter saponin coating, but if not, it should be rinsed under a stream of water in a fine strainer or in a pot until the rinse water runs clear.   Quinoa is cooked like rice: 1 part quinoa and 2 parts water are brought to a boil and then simmered 15 to 20 minutes until the water is absorbed. And like rice it can be sautéed in oil first for pilafs.  The flavor is slightly nutty but otherwise relatively neutral, so it is really combined with other flavors.


There are hundreds of quinoa recipes on the internet, but for a start try Recipes for Health: Quinoa from the New York Times,  Cooking Quinoa from a US mail order source, Good Food from the BBC, or Quinoa Recipies from the Quinoa Corporation. 


Meanwhile, here are two Chilean quinoa recipes, an Aymara quinoa pudding from the cookbook Cultura y alimentación indígena en Chile (Indigenous Culture and Diet in Chile).

…and a New Chilean recipe for from the bilingual cookbook Sabores de Chile para el mundo (Chilean Flavors for the World). Click to enlarge.

---

[1] Toribio Medina, José [editor].  1929,.  Cartas de Pedro de Valdivia.  Sevilla: M. Carmona Velázquez.  P. 223 On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0008846  Note that madi is Madia sativa, an oil seed cultivated by the Mapuche.,

[2] Tagle,  Blanca and M. Teresa Planella. 2002. La quinoa en la zona central de chile, supervivencia de una tradición prehispánica. Santiago: Editorial Iku p 43 as quoted in  Cocinas Mestizas de Chile: La Olla Deleitosa, Sonia Montecino Aguirre, Museo Chileno De Arte Precolombino, 2004. p. 70.  On line at www.precolombino.cl/zip_pdf.php?id=1905

[3] Jacobsen, Sven-Erik. 2000. Quinoa – Research and Development at the International Potato Center.  On line at www.cipotato.org/publications/pdf/002670.pdf

[4] Kolata, Alan L. 2009 Quinoa:  Production, Consumption and Social Value

in Historical Context.  Latin American Studies Association 2009 Congress Paper Archive. On line at lasa.international.pitt.edu/members/congress-papers/.../KolataAlanL.pdf , and  Planella O, María Teresa, Luis E. Cornejo B and Blanca Tagle 2005. A.Alero las Morrenas 1: evidencias de cultígenos. Chungara, Revista de Antropología Chilena.  37(1):57-74. On line at www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0717...script=sci_arttext 

entre cazadores recolectores de finales del

período arcaico en Chile central.

[5] Valencia-Chamorro S.A. 2003.: Quinoa. In: Caballero B.: Encyclopedia of Food Science and Nutrition as quoted in Jancurová M., Minarovičová L., Dandár A. 2009. Quinoa – a review. Czech J. Food Sci., 27:71–79.  On line at www.agriculturejournals.cz/publicFiles/06732.pdf

[6] Torrejón, Fernando and  Marco Cisternas. 2002. Alteraciones del paisaje ecológico araucano por la asimilación mapuche de la agroganadería hispano-mediterránea (siglos XVI y XVII). Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 75:729-736.  On line at www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0716...script=sci_arttext

[7] Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Francisco. 1948. El Cautiverio Feliz.  Biblioteca de escritores Chilenos.  Zig-Zag. On line at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/78039514323481684765679/index.htm

[8] Cavada, Francisco J., 1914. Chiloé y los Chilotes. Revista Chilena de Historia y Geografía, 7-14.  On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0008648

[9] Wilhelm de Moesbach, Ernesto. 1936 Vida y costumbres de los  indigenas araucanas  en  la segunda mitad del siglo xix (presentadas en la autobiografía  del  indígena  Pascual Coña). Santiago de Chile: Imprenta Universitario Estado 63. p. 102  On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl//temas/documento_detalle.asp?id=MC0008879

[10] Delatorre-Herrera, J.  2003. Current Use of Quinoa in Chile.  Food Reviews International 19(1-2)155-165.

[11] Chenopodium Quinoa. Useful Quinoa (3641). 1838. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. London. 12(new series)

[12] Tschudi, Dr. J. J. von.  1847. Travels in Peru, during the years 1838-1842. Thomasina Ross, translator. New York: Wiley and Putnam. p. 257.  On line at http://books.google.cl/books?id=J6UaAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Travels+in+peru&hl=en&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[13] Fabricant, Florence.  The New York Times; Living Desk

February 12, 1986, Wednesday  Late City Final Edition, Section C, Page 1, Column 1

[14] Bécares, Diana Alfonso and Didier Bazile.2009. La quinoa como parte de los sistemas agrícolas en Chile: 3 regiones y 3 systemas. Revista Geografíca de Valparaíso 42:61-72, on line at www.rgv.ucv.cl/Articulo%2042-6.pdf , and Thomer I., Max and Juan Sepúlveda A. 2005. Experiencia de investigación participante en la recuperación de la kinwa mapuche. Serie de Publicacionse CETSUR No. 7.  On line at www.cetsur.org/.../experiencia-de-investigacion-participativa-en-la-recuperacion-de-la-kinwa-mapuche.pdf   Note: CET Sur  is “Southern Center for Education and Technology for Development”

[15] Thomet, Max and Juan Sepúlveda  A. 2005 La kinwa mapuche, un  aporte a la alimentación.  Serie De Publicaciones Cetsur, No. 8 On line at http://www.cetsur.org/?p=226  

[16] Kirberg B, Arturo. 2006. La salud del niño aymara. Revista chilena de pediatría. 77(6):608-609.  On line at http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0370-41062006000600009