It’s hard to knock the benefits of whole grains and the family of legumes that includes beans, peas and lentils: They’re good for the body and the soil, have a shelf life of many years, and can be cooked in large batches to enjoy as leftovers.
But, they don’t always elicit the enthusiasm they deserve. Abra Berens gets that, recalling how she used to “make a gallon of lentil soup and piously eat it every day, first marveling at my efficiency and then bemoaning the redundancy.”
As a chef at Granor Farm, a diversified organic farm with an extensive grain program in Southwest Michigan, Berens developed a new appreciation for these humble staples. “I started tasting the difference between wheats,” writes the former farmer in “Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes” (Chronicle, $35). “Suddenly, I wanted to use oats for more than just porridge during brunch service.”
Eventually, she found a way around that “dreaded lentil fatigue.” Instead of making a pot of soup, she preps the legumes, then spins them into speedy meals with ingredients that excite her the rest of the week. One night, she might toss them with ribbons of Swiss chard leaves and bacon vinaigrette and top the mixture with a poached egg; on another, she might embellish pureed lentils with shaved vegetables, fresh herbs and a spiced oil.
Similar in style and format to her James Beard-nominated first book, “Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables,” “Grist” is organized by legume and grain type, with profiles of the farmers who grow them, basic techniques for cooking them, and creative, seasonal variations for every recipe.
I swirled a dollop of Tomato Paprika Mayo into a bowl of Chicken and Wild Rice Soup with Kale, and confirmed the author’s promise that “within 30 seconds, it will have melted, and the soup (and life) will be better.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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