Wed 03.11.09

Cracked Wheat

Even in these post-food-revolution days, blessed as we are with an ever broader diversity of ingredients, it seems at least one class of foods - the staple class, in fact - has not seen such diversity taken advantage of. So while the variety of meats, fruits, and vegetables is certainly greater now than ever, when it comes to grains, most of us still restrict ourselves to a scant handful of options. Certainly that was the case in our family growing up. At nearly every meal, we'd have a big bowl of jasmine rice, imported from Thailand and steamed in our rice cooker. For those few meals without rice, we'd invariably turn to one of two other options: common wheat in breads, or durum wheat in pasta. I'm not complaining here - jasmine rice still has a permanent spot in my pantry - but I do think this is more or less the situation among most people in America, that we limit the grains in our diets to only two or three, chosen among a rice and wheat varieties, or, in some circles, maize.

Again, it's not necessarily a bad thing - grains are so basic to a food culture that cuisines surely are built around the few that are most available - but while it's vogue nowadays to eat kohlrabi and edamame and such, why has this gastronomic intrepidness not spread to grains? It's certainly not for a lack of variety. Considering rice only for the moment, you have the Jasmine rice of Thailand, where white and black glutinous rice is also harvested, different from the sticky rice of Laos (which is different still from the sticky rice of Korea), the red rice of Bhutan, the koshihikari of Japan, and the Forbidden rice of China. There's the fragrant long, medium, and short-grained rices of the Indian subcontinent - basmati, sona masuri, and kalijira- and the slightly corn-flavored Samba in Sri Lanka; Italians have their Arborio, Vialone Nano, and Carnaroli for risotto; The Spanish have their Valencia and Granza for paella; In the US, in addition to imprecisely-named wild, or Indian, rice, there's the chewy and inaccurately-named pecan rice of Louisiana, which has nothing to do with pecans.

So that's rice. Wheat and maize comprise a similar number of varieties among them, to say nothing of quinoa, millet, barley, rye, buckwheat, teff, and oats.

This past winter I've been acquainting myself with a few of these. Each has its own perks: quinoa cooks up fluffy, with a pleasant bitter edge; wheatberries, the entire kernels of common wheat, are chewy and slightly sweet; barley puffs up to a soft but chewy texture. They're all really inexpensive if you can purchase them in bulk, and store well in the pantry if you use them up in a few weeks, or in the fridge if you want something even longer-term.

As for cooking, the most basic procedure is the same: lightly toast the grain in a pot or skillet, perhaps with oil and garlic, then add 1 to 2.5 times the amount of water, depending on the grain (quinoa needs less, wheatberries, more). Bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat to low, and wait anywhere from 12 to 40 minutes until the grain is tender. In the last few minutes of cooking, you can spread vegetables like broccoli or kale on top to steam as the grain finishes cooking. The recipe below is for cracked wheat, the crushed kernels of durum wheat (which if parboiled becomes bulgur), topped with sautéed beet greens (yep, from the beets that went into the bran loaf) and a salad of grated carrots dressed simply with olive oil and salt. It takes about 15 minutes start to finish, it's healthy and delicious, and it's become a regular in my weekday rotation.