Asia Red Amaranth Breakfast Nog

If you put the words “vegetable” and “tea” into a search engine what will likely come up are recipes for tea sandwiches with vegetable stuffing or ads for colorful teapots in the shape of vegetables.  We give compost tea to our plants to make them happy, so why is more attention not given to vegetable tea? 

To their credit, Ashtrayrecipes.com features one recipe for a boiled tea made with tomatoes, carrots, leeks, and all sorts of other wonderful vegetables and herbs:

http://www.astray.com/recipes/?show=Vegetable%20tea

But it takes about three hours to make, and I have something simpler in mind that can be enjoyed in less than five minutes:

Unfortunately, I drank half a cup before thinking to photograph this, but you can see the striking color my organically grown Amaranth leaves give this drink.  Tender Swiss chard or beet leaves would probably give the same result. 

This is Asia Red Amaranth which thus far, I have only found seeds to buy from EvergreenSeeds in Anaheim, CA.  They sprout indoors in as little as four days and grow fast enough to start harvesting the leaves for tea within a month.  I grow mine indoors in water (hydroponically) since that keeps the leaves clean and close by and because I love having pretty plants in the kitchen.  Since my windowsill garden also had oregano, sweet basil, Thai basil and scallion tops ready to cut back this morning, I put these fresh seasonings in the mug along with four or five sliced amaranth leaves and water, then heated it in the microwave a few minutes to steep until the leaves softened and the rich color came out.

The glass straw is a called a wisdom wand, and has a blown glass strainer at the bottom, somewhat reminiscent of the bombillas used to strain yerba mate from a gourd.  It is perfect for use with this kind of tea, but any tea strainer will do, and if the leaves are strained out before drinking, they can be added to vegetable soup and enjoyed later instead of going to waste.

Although amaranth grain is gaining recognition as an ingredient in trendy breakfast cereals and baked goods, relatively few people yet realize that the leaves, too, are edible and highly nutritious.  A cousin to purslane, a nearly forgotten English potherb that is now making a come-back due to the public’s awareness that it is rich in Omega-3 and other vital nutrients,  amaranth also contains phytosterols as well as other beneficial compounds.  It is also rich in calcium.  The small young leaves can be added to a salad or when they get a bit bigger they can be cooked in broth or soup, or sauteed in butter like spinach.

Grown together, the Tender Green Amaranth and the Asia Red with its brilliantly colored stems make wonderfully lush fast-growing edible houseplants.  When the plants mature, the stems of each can be cooked and eaten like asparagus.  I do this after harvesting the seeds, however, as the seeds are edible too.  Or they can be stored indefinitely and used to grow more plants. 

One note of warning to dirt gardeners, however:  if grown outdoors, amaranth can be highly invasive.  Like purslane, the seeds are tiny and when mature they pop out and scatter by the thousands, taking root almost anywhere and growing rain or shine, even in the cracks of your sidewalk.   When tended, amaranth plants are as beautiful as they are delicious, but if neglected, the flavor is not as good, they can get rather ratty looking , and they are impossible to control.