Liana Krissoff - Whole Grains for a New Generation: Light Dishes, Hearty Meals, Sweet Treats, and Sundry Snacks for the Everyday Cook

Published in 2012 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
An imprint of ABRAMS

Copyright 2012 Liana Krissoff
Photographs copyright 2012 Rinne Allen

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Krissoff, Liana.
Whole grains for a new generation : light dishes, hearty meals, sweet treats, and sundry snacks for the everyday cook / by Liana Krissoff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61769-001-3
1. Cooking (Cereals) 2. Grain. I. Title.
TX808.K75 2012
641.631dc23

2011053260

Editor: Elinor Hutton
Designer: Matthew Egan
Production Manager: Tina Cameron

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For Thalia

ention whole grains, and many people, even if theyve been hearing more and more in recent years about the wonderful variety of grains available today and their many health benefits, still immediately envision earnest piles of brown rice and steamed broccoli served up by do-gooder parents or radical roommates. Dusty bulk bins in medicinal, humorless health food stores on the largely unpopulated side of town. Wan slabs of tofu leaning against some sad, plain spelt berries. In other words, food thats a duty to eat, not a pleasure. I want to be one of the many new voices helping to change that perception.

Im certainly not the kind of person who eats food just because its good for me or because I need to eat to survive. Theres far too much fun to be had cooking and eating to let that everyday opportunity for subtle happiness slip by. Mealtime in my family has always been something to look forward to, to plan for, to enjoy. My parents didnt often cook fancy meals for us kids, and we rarely went to restaurants, but they were (and still are) open to trying different foods and unusual ingredients, confident that they could learn how to cook anything on the planet, and so they did. Much of it was decidedly not health food. Sure, my mom had a carob period (short-lived, thank goodnesswe all knew that wasnt chocolate), and experimented with other healthful foods that didnt gain traction with my dad and my brother and me. But for the most part, she cooked just plain delicious food for us, whether the dish grew out of an interest in Georgias lost Cherokee culture (well, that oven-dried corn wasnt delicious so much as memorable), a monthlong trek through Thailand with a notebook and a curious intellect (hence the coconut-milk pancakes and other street-food delights we devoured on her return), or challenges issued by culinary entities from Julia Child to Sunset magazine (French bread and the best sopaipillas ever, respectively).

She also cooked whole grains and served them well. I may be one of the few children of the 80s who has fond memories of wheat berries: steaming bowls of the little grains, plump and chewy, sprinkled ever so judiciously with white sugar and swimming in cold milk, spooned up on winter mornings before the school bus came in the dark. Cracked wheat porridge with a touch of cinnamonnothing elaboratewarming me and my brother after an afternoon ice skating on the snow-covered lake. Tiny whole wheat buns halved to sandwich shredded venison shoulder and red pepper relish in my lunch bag. So I suppose when I started to learn to cook more whole grains a couple years ago, I came to the project with an ingrained appreciation of how tasty they could be, but I understand if others need more convincing before they pull the trigger on that first bag of quinoa, or millet, or farro.

With a few exceptions, the food in this book is far from austere. Spices are used with abandon, as are fresh chiles and herbs, creamy Greek yogurt and homemade crme frache (so easy to make its ridiculous), bursting ripe vegetables and sweet-tart fruits, succulent meats and oily fish, and all-important salt. This is food made by someone who drinks wine and coffee just about every day, and who butters her bread. Its both homey everyday food you and your family will love and fun but super-easy dinner-party food. Its Indian, Mexican, Thai, and all-American Southernmy cooking is inspired by all thats flavorful, and I hope it serves as inspiration to you in turn.

Now lets get the fascinating grain anatomy and taxonomy and whatnot out of the way so we can dive into the recipes as quickly as possible.

A grain is, quite simply, the whole seed of a plant. True grains are those that come from plants in the grass family, Poaceae. Theyre also known as cereals: Wheat, corn, rice, oats, rye, barley, millet, sorghum, teff, triticale, and wild rice are all cereal crops, true grains. Seeds that do not come from a grass but that have culinary uses and nutritional profiles that are similar to those of true grains are called pseudograins, and they usually come from broadleaf plant varieties; these include buckwheat, quinoa, and amaranth.

Each grain or pseudograin, each seed, consists of three main parts, all of which are found inside an inedible layer called the hull. You may remember cross-section diagrams of grains from such classes as middle-school science. In all the illustrations, at the bottom of the seed near the stem and looking, very appropriately, like an egg yolk, is the germ: the tiny part of the interior of the grain that when fertilized will sprout (hence the term germinate) and grow into a new plant. The endosperm, which makes up the bulk of the interior and is the source of energy for the germ, surrounds it. The bran is the outer protective layer. Each part of the grain has different nutritional characteristics and content:

GERM vitamins B and E, essential amino acids, oils

ENDOSPERM mostly starch (carbohydrate)

BRAN fiber, B vitamins

When a grain is processed, first the hull or outer husk is removed. At this point its a fully edible whole grain. If processing continues and the germ and the bran are removed, the grain is no longer wholeonly the starchy, carbohydrate-rich endosperm is left, and thats what were eating when we eat refined grains. There are some good reasons for doing this: Refined grains, like white flour, degerminated cornmeal, and white rice, keep longer in storage than whole grains because they lack the oils that can turn rancid on the shelf over time. Refined grains also tend to taste lighter and more delicate than those made with whole grains. And, at least in the case of white rice and fine degerminated cornmeal, refined grains cook more quickly than whole grains.