Market grains
A cookbook author is sold on quinoa and its kin
Teff is the tiniest grain and is often turned into the spongy Ethiopian bread, injera. Next comes amaranth; each pale dot is smaller than the head of a straight pin. The third smallest is quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wa), an important source of protein for the ancient Incas.
If quinoa spills, it falls into cracks everywhere. I know this because while Lorna Sass is toasting millet in an old cast-iron skillet at my stove -- golden millet is also minuscule and smells remarkably like corn -- bead-like grains of quinoa spill from a torn bag, cascading down the counter and all over the floor. This doesn't seem to faze the cookbook author and New Yorker, who has come to my kitchen to cook from her latest book, "Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way." She has had so many ancient and unusual grains in her own kitchen that she's had to use refrigerator space at a neighbor's.
As all nutritionists will tell you, whole grains are better for you than refined grains. Think brown versus white. All the brown grains have important nutrients intact. The question for health-conscious consumers is how to cook these grains. Sass, too, had to simmer one pot after another to learn about them. The book took her 16 months to write, even though "I'd been using a lot," she says, mostly because she has written about both vegetarian and vegan cooking. She wanted this volume to be comprehensive, offering explanations of staples like popcorn, common grains like oats and barley, and exotic ones like black and red rice.
The rices particularly enthralled her, she says. "I was really surprised. They're sexy and fun." She opens a package of China's "forbidden" black rice, which she simmers in water until the plump, intensely dark, almost purple, grains are floating in an inky liquid. "Smell this! I don't know why chefs all over the country aren't using this." The rice, striking and different looking from any other rice I've seen, has an oceany scent (am I imagining squid ink because of the color?), not the earthy qualities the brown rices have.
She likes the idea of spooning the black rice into chicken soup or cooking Bhutanese red rice, another recent discovery, in a pilaf. The book includes information charts for every whole grain imaginable, and extensive explanations of how to cook each one. Some, like kamut, are hard to find. Others, like cracked wheat, bulgur, and spelt , are sold in bulk form.
Sass begins with a brief explanation of what makes a grain whole. "A whole grain missing the bran and germ is a refined grain," she says. "Because the bran and germ are intact, you always have to refrigerate or freeze [whole grains] . On the package they don't say that. People are in the habit of putting them into the pantry forever. Unless you get bugs, [you don't think] to get rid of it." I glance at a shelf holding bulgur I bought 10 months ago. I make a mental note to toss it when she's gone. She is turning the popular Italian farro into a risotto (known in Italy as farrotto), adding grated butternut squash, chopped ham, fresh sage, and toasted walnuts. "Some people translate farro as spelt," explains the author. "It's not spelt." The Latin name for farro is different from the Latin name for spelt, she says.
Farro has enough starch to make a mixture similar to, but not nearly as creamy as , risotto made with short-grain white rice. She has added the bright orange squash and other garnishes to the farro, which looks like large long-grain brown rice kernels, so the dish will have some texture. "Otherwise it looks like dog food," she says. "This will be pretty." In fact, the dish looks hearty and appealing, though mostly brown; "pretty" doesn't spring to mind.
Sass began her career as a medievalist and has a doctorate in medieval literature from Columbia University. After dabbling in Elizabethan and historical cookbooks, she got interested in pressure cookers, first writing "Cooking Under Pressure," then "Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure," and most recently, "Pressure Perfect." She is the kind of author who delves into a subject and doesn't quickly move on to the next one. She simply takes the subject with her. The vegetarian pressure book, for instance, was written during her own vegan phase. Today, she eats everything. She describes her first "fall from grace," when she joined an ex-boyfriend, who loved wine and cheese, and indulged with him. Then she went bird-watching one day. "I saw a snake eat a frog and an egret eat the snake."
Aromas from the stovetop are perfuming the room. The quinoa that hasn't spilled is bubbling in a pot with frozen corn, leeks, celery, clam broth, and shrimp. If she were to choose a grain to eat as comfort food, she says, "I think I love quinoa the best. Technically, it's not a grain, it's a weed. There's a wide range of quality." She goes on to explain that a natural coating of saponin on the outside of each seed, which turns it bitter, has to be removed. "The cheapest way is through abrasion, so the germ is removed." That makes it less nutritious. An engineer invented a machine to remove the coating without the germ. "It's like the difference between fine aged wine and table wine."
Quinoa that isn't fully cooked often has a white dot in the middle, she says. The cook has to keep tasting to make sure it's done.
She turns her attention to millet and elaborates on how important it is to check pull dates. Millet with a musty smell is rancid. "A fresh grain has no scent or a sweet scent." The millet is rinsed, tipped into a hot cast-iron skillet, and then toasted. A fresh corn smell fills the room. Toasting, she says, "makes fissures in the bran layer. Water seeps in, and it reduces the amount of cooking time." She stirs buttermilk and chives into the mixture, making a healthy substitute for mashed potatoes.
Millet can be served in place of couscous, she says, or made with milk into a breakfast porridge. "If you don't toast it, it doesn't pick up the corn [scent] as much."
She notices the bulgur I was hoping she wouldn't. Crushing quinoa underfoot, I pull it off the pantry shelf. "Let's smell it," she announces.
The verdict: "Marginal, musty."
Then this: "I was trying to be diplomatic. Your bulgur stinks." 