due South Author Profiles

Den nya gröten av Sébastien Boudet (2025) (translation: The New Porridge)
Very inspiring book on how to use cereals! It's like discovering a whole new area of food. The author has also written a book on baking. What I've used the most is to crush whole grains of wheat (or emmer, einkorn, dinkel, barley, oats, or rye) in our mill such that you get both large fragments and a bit of what's basically flour. This happens naturally when you grind it. Then you soak it in water overnight, but importantly you should use only half the amount of water as compared to grain (by weight). The purpose of this is to shorten the cooking time next day, but also to improve nutrition as the phytates get broken down when the grain thinks it's starting to germinate. The next day, you fry the grain in fat to get a browning reaction, then slowly add liquid and salt and cook under a lid until soft. This is the basic form, like a more delicious and flavorful version of bulgur. Keep the added liquid to a minimum. The flour component contributes a pleasing slight stickiness, like the starch in sticky rice. You can also of course do it without crushing the grain first, if you don't want any stickiness, but then the cooking time will be a little longer. Or you could sift away the flour.

This basic form can be used like rice, bulgur or pasta to accompany a sauce or stew or stir-fry. But you can do a lot more with it:
- Make a more flavorful, fiber-rich, and nutritious breakfast porridge than you get from oatmeal. For this you should soak the crushed grain in equal amounts of water, rather than half, to get a wetter consistency, and also add more water in the cooking step.
- Make an all-in-one "bolognese": after the first frying step, add chopped tomatoes/passata, chopped onions, some other vegetables of your choice, herbs of your choice, black pepper, some white wine, and either fried minced meat or cooked beans. Great for feeding a lot of people.
- Make a salad: after the grain is cooked, add chopped vegetables and legumes of your choice, then mix with a dressing of tahini, olive oil, pomegranate syrup, lemon juice, salt, and chopped parsley. At the end, add pieces of feta cheese and sprinkle with toasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
- Make a "risotto": fry the grain in lots of butter, and add chopped onions and celery, and dried bolete mushrooms. Add whatever other vegetables and legumes you want (or bacon). For the liquid, use white wine and stock alternately. At the end, add copious amounts of shredded parmesan.
- Make this (but modified to use crushed grains).
- Make this (but modified to use crushed grains).

So I'm sorry to promote something delicious that requires you to have a grain mill and access to whole grains, preferably from local organic farmers! But really there are so many other good things you can do with that, like bake awesome bread! Do consider it. There are small tabletop electric mills that are a lot cheaper than the one I got. Next step: grow the grain ourselves. : D