Please Mind Your Qs

Quinoa and quorn. Heard of ‘em? I hadn’t until quite recently. They’re high-protein foods. Great for all of us, or so we’re told, for both vegetarians who want to up their protein intake, and also for meat-eaters who want their protein sans the bad stuff that meat ostensibly has, like saturated fats and growth hormones.

My acquaintance with these ‘Qs’ was through the famous Dubai-spread I was suffering from; not so yummy, but dangerous to have (my doctor’s view) and ugly to behold (my view). So I was told to cut carbs and increase my intake of protein, and these two Qs were suggested to me as an alternative to meat and lentils.

Quinoa is pronounced ‘keen-wa’, and the nutritionist said it was yummy. “Just add your faves with it — make it a stir-fry, or make it into a porridge using soy or rice milk.”

Now I understand the agenda behind her simple words. The thing has NO TASTE whatsoever.

For someone brought up on spicy gravies and spice-laden food that one can smell almost a mile away, this Q tasted like boiled beans! Actually, boiled beans have quite a unique flavor, compared to quinoa. It was just, well, how should I put it? — as bland as sawdust. But I persevered.

By adding a generous sprinkling of chillies and garam masala (spice) and colourful veggies, I could pretend it was a mouth-watering pulao gone a bit mushy. I am not born with a very vivid imagination, but quinoa really made me stretch it to its farthest degree.

I even managed to make other things with the stuff; the internet had a variety of quinoa recipes. So sometimes it was quinoa burgers or a quinoa bake and I chomped on it more with my mind than my jaws, once again letting my imagination soar.

Trial and error

However, quorn did not have a similar fate, and by no stretch of the imagination could I accept it. After dutifully buying quorn burgers in one of the pricier supermarkets, I decided to give it a shot. To my surprise, it tasted somewhat like chicken meat, but still not quite.

Was there a mistake in the packaging, and instead of quorn burgers, was it chicken? (I once had fried and eaten a mutton-mince samosa that nestled among the vegetarian ones of a well-known frozen-food brand sold in the UAE). But no, ALL the burgers tasted of chicken.

Imitation meat

A quick google-search revealed the sordid details. Quorn is supposed to taste like meat, and is touted as an “imitation meat mycoprotein”. Well, that’s OK if you’ve recently embraced vegetarianism but miss the taste of your chicken or beef sausages. But the worst was yet to come.

It seems quorn is artificially created from a fungus with a terrifying name like fungus fusarium venenatum, and actually grown in vats!

Now, who would ever want to eat something like this? Certainly not me! Well, now quinoa is part of my meal, but I’ve given quorn a wide berth. I’ve now got a new rule; I will only include in my diet one food item which starts with a strange letter of the alphabet, like Q, Y, X or Z . Q is for quinoa, Y for yams, and Z for zatar or zucchini (both of which I love).

I still haven’t found a food starting with ‘X’. The only item I can think of is Xanthan gum, a popular additive. Perhaps those scientists at the food labs will help me out and produce something that is both good for me and tasty.

Is there any food scientist reading this now? Come on, we need something X-rated!

Padmini B. Sankar is a Dubai-based freelance writer.