Welcome to Out of the Kitchen, our ongoing exploration of the relationships that build and sustain the food industry. This year, we’re traveling the country to look at how sustainability has become a rapidly growing movement within the food world. Chefs at the forefront of this trend are introducing their patrons to local farms, fresh ingredients, and innovative dishes while farmers are educating chefs and consumers about where their food comes from and what it takes to grow the food served. Their practices and personal customer approaches provide a bigger impact to the community at large, hoping to create a better and more sustainable future for all.
Armando Garcia Rojas swears that it's the river that gives birth to the dogs.
"They come from the water," he says, gesturing with a broad smile toward a tree-covered bank past an orderly field of green sprouts that barely make it past ankle height. He's in one of his fields in Etla, a farming town on the outskirts of Oaxaca City, Mexico. "They come from there, out of the water, and then they all come out here and roll around."
Normally, Garcia Rojas wouldn't care—after all, the yellow mutts are friendly, chase small vermin out of his fields, and serve as kind of ever-present mascots. The issue is that when they're playing or lolling around with each other, they're doing it on earth-grown gold: amaranth.
"Amaranth's a good protein, easy to grow, and helps fight malnutrition," says Hope Bigda-Peyton, development director of the nonprofit group Puente a la Salud Comunitaria. "Especially when it came in the form of the triple-part meal with corn and beans. It's one of the two most nutritious cereals around, along with quinoa—and amaranth is native to Mesoamerica."
In other words, amaranth is the grain that should be grown in Mexico, a natural crop that's environmentally sustainable for the region and that yields such a plentiful bounty of protein, vitamins, and minerals that it sustained Mesoamerican cultures for centuries. Now Mexican farmers like Garcia Rojas and aid workers like Bigda-Peyton are trying to bring the ancient grain back into Mexicans' lives to improve both their health and their finances.
But it was amaranth's critical role in Aztec and other Mesoamerican cultures that doomed it in the first place. It played a key role in native religious rituals, including being used in a ceremony that involved splashing it with blood before being eaten. The invading Spaniards took one look at what they considered barbaric ceremonies and forbade the grain entirely. Natives who broke the new Spanish laws had their hands cut off. Amaranth never recovered its popularity, and even today is known in the Oaxaca region not as a staple but almost entirely as an ingredient in a sweet snack rather like a granola bar.
Since 2003, Puente a la Salud Comunitaria has been promoting amaranth as a crop, hoping it will become a regular part of Mexican meals again and help poorer Oaxacan families fill the gaps in their nutrition while giving small farmers a new way to make the money they need to support themselves. The group works with 300 farmers in 30 communities throughout the region, as well as local chefs and restaurants who have been finding new ways to incorporate amaranth into meals. Puente also runs a store near a popular marketplace, where it sells products made with at least 50 percent amaranth, all to reintroduce Mexicans to what had once been an important part of their ancestors' diet.
Getting the farmers onboard, however, hasn't always been easy. "It's a new crop, and it takes a few years for the farmers to see how it grows, for them to be convinced," Bigda-Peyton says. "Often we've found it's the women farmers who adopt it first because it isn't seen as the main crop—the husband grows corn and beans while she tries the amaranth."
Once they adopt it, they find a vegetable that's basically ready-made for organic growing in the fiercely hot clime. "Generally speaking, the amaranth has adapted really well," Bigda-Peyton says. "We haven't had any problems with pests so far, and it has adapted well to the climatic considerations."
Garcia Rojas fights the relatively few pests—besides the dogs, of course—without the aid of the chemical pesticides that commercial U.S. factory farms rely on. Instead, he uses a big batch of chile de árbol mixed with common soap and boiling water. Then he spreads the mixture on the amaranth plants to eliminate a web-weaving worm that can be a nuisance. His friend and neighbor Benjamin Ramiro Nino Mendez swears by the similar mixture made with ash. Both men use worm compost and organic cow dung as fertilizer. "I've learned how the chemicals aren't good for the soil," Mendez says, adding that he can sell the amaranth for 25 pesos per kilo, more than the price he gets for beans or corn.
In the kitchen, they find a remarkably versatile vegetable that fits in nicely with Oaxacan cuisine. The leaves, which taste like a slightly bitter spinach, can be cooked with scrambled eggs, into tamales, or sautéed with garlic as a side dish, while the seeds make a tasty risotto or porridge, or can be added to soups or beans or corn. When the seeds are popped, they add a nutty flavor and addictive texture to yogurt. "I didn't eat amaranth before, but now I put it in my cereal and yogurt, or I'll put it in milk as if it were cornflakes—it's very sweet and very smooth," Mendez says.
Back in his fields, Garcia Rojas examines the leaves of a couple of the plants for any pest damage. Even though amaranth's a native plant, growing it organically can be a fussy process akin to raising tomato plants. These days, he eats amaranth leaves with eggs and has replaced his family's white rice with much more nutritious amaranth seeds. "It's much more work than conventional growing," he says. "But it's worth it."