Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries II - Nigel Slater - Страница 52

A certain calm comes over the kitchen when there is any sort of grain simmering on the stove. The steam from brown rice, spelt or pot barley brings with it a quiet benevolence that I am grateful for on a grey-brown day like today. With a house in turmoil (I remain holed up in my tiny study while the plasterers plaster, painters paint and welders weld) the homely smell of boiled rice is somehow reassuring.

All the grains appeal to me but I am becoming partial to the quiet pleasures of pearled spelt (think pearl barley but made from wheat). The pale-brown wheat grain makes a pleasing change from Arborio rice in a risotto and adds a chewy note to a herb salad, but is something to consider for bulking up a casserole, too. The small, oval grains plump up like Sugar Puffs with the aromatic cooking liquor from a stew, taking on a velvety texture whilst making the dish both more substantial and more economical.

The mushroom stew on the hob today is rich and earthy enough but is hardly going to fill anyone. A couple of handfuls of spelt, boiled in lightly salted water and drained, will help turn what is essentially an accompaniment into something resembling a main course. Mushroom sauce becomes mushroom stew.

Spelt is said to be easy on the digestion and I have to agree. Some of us who find modern wheat heavy and soporific have no such trouble with the modern versions of ancient strains such as spelt. The ancestors of this mild, nubby grain spread across central Europe during the Bronze Age and were in common use in southern Britain by 500BC. Available for years in the sort of food shops that smell of brown rice and massage oil, spelt has recently taken a step towards the mainstream.

The sense of peace and humble bonhomie you get from simmering grain (akin, I think, to Chinese dumplings steaming in their bamboo baskets) is slightly lost when pearled spelt is stirred into a risotto but is there in spades when it is simmering in water, its steam rising in soft clouds. Like brown rice, it has an affinity with mushrooms, onions and the more earthy spices, but has less of the hardcore ‘wholemeal’ character.