Heart of the Matter round up: whole grains

Grains were the subject of this month's Heart of the Matter ... and here you'll find a small number of very good ideas from some of the best bloggers around. Cooking wholegrains always seems tricky to me: there's that whiff of 70s sandal-wearing earnest hippie-dom which is hard to shake off - boring brown food that tastes like horsefeed.

Not these days. The 21st century way with wholegrains is altogether tastier, somehow less earnest. I've been experimenting with the help of a highly recommended book, A Cook's Guide to Grains by Jenni Muir. Now I'm planning to add these dishes to my staple repertoire - these are all easily achievable, mostly quite quick, all of them the kind of recipes you can fiddle with to add your own stamp.















Labelga's quinoa flakes with spinach and red chilli is ready in 10 minutes, so there are no excuses for not giving this a go. It's one of Labelga's AAP dishes - another alternative to pizza! As you can see from the picture, the flakes are spread onto the plate, then topped with this fabulous spiced mixture. Find it at Leafy Cooking.



















Christine at Kits Chow made vegetarian multigrain rice with vegetables, inspired by a Japanese rice dish, matsutake gohan (rice with mushrooms). This is something to get you experimenting - there are five grains: brown rice, black glutinous rice, buckwheat groats, oat groats and millet.





















Bee and Jai have been doing some hard thinking about what they buy, cook and eat. Their post for Heart of the Matter is interesting and inspirational - they share their personal "rules", and finish with a versatile recipe for roti: this one is sourdough Swiss chard and cornmeal. You'll find it at Jugalbandi, always a good read.

















I often think of cooking wholegrains as time-consuming, but here's another recipe that shows that wholegrains can be quick and easy. Michelle The Accidental Scientist, one of my co-hosts for HotM, makes this Mexican style rice when she's short of time, as an accompaniment to fish, tacos, beans - lots of links to these and other recipes.
























Co-host Ilva at Lucullian Delights has stuffed courgettes with kamut grains which she found when out shopping a little while ago. As always with Ilva's food, it's beautiful and packed with flavours: she calls her dish oven baked zucchini filled with kamut, olives, thyme and parsley.

Olive Oyl is a blogger without a blog, and she's sent me this variation on the traditional Greek dish spanakorizo (Spinach rice), another happy & easy meal:

Plenty for 2 hungry people, also good cold the next day

Chop an onion and gently fry in a biggish saucepan, in a good glug of olive oil. Rough chop around four heads of spinach, I often also add sorrel, baby nettles and cleavers, depending on what's growing, and add to the pan, cover and let sweat for five minutes. Next add 250gms of brown rice, 600ml of water and juice of a lemon. Bring to the boil, season,cover and turn the heat down. Check after about 20 minutes, stir, add water as needed and so on until cooked (usually around 50 minutes)you might also want to add at this point a good few fistfuls of herbs such as mint, parsley, celery leaves, dill. When cooked it has the consistency of risotto and is a beautiful emerald green. Be more or less heart healthy with a grating of cheese on top.



















Nearly forgot: I blogged two grain dishes at Joanna's Food - Skirlie, a cheap and cheerful Scots dish made with oats, and these great six-seeded rolls.

Thanks to everyone for taking part, and watch out for the announcement for December's Heart of the Matter

Six-seed rolls

I used Allinson's Seed and Grain Bread Flour for these fabulous rolls. The flour itself is white, but 20% of the mixture is made up of wheat and barley flakes, kibbled rye grains, sunflower seeds, linseed and millet. The people in this house who moan about wholemeal bread like this, and those of us that would always rather avoid white flour have something to get our teeth into.

I made the dough in the breadmaker, on the pizza setting, then rolled it into balls which I put into a cake tin. Easy - but not much more difficult to mix by hand (instructions at the bottom). This method gives the dough a great deal of oven spring, which means the rolls are light and airy ... invaluable for someone like me, who is apt to make rolls as heavy cannonballs. (Compare the two photographs, and you'll see what I mean - I put the dough straight into the oven after taking the picture.)

Seeded rolls
for 6

1/2 tsp dried yeast
300g flour
170ml water
a pinch of salt
a dribble of olive oil

Put the ingredients into the breadmaker* (these are given in the right order for a Panasonic, but some machines would like you to use reverse order). Use the pizza setting (which takes 45 minutes).


















When the dough is ready, roll it into a sausage and cut into six pieces. Roll these into a ball, tucking the untidy bits underneath. Place them in an 8-inch cake tin and leave to rise in a warm place. Bake in a hot oven. I left these to rise near the woodburner for nearly an hour, then baked them for 15 minutes in a hot oven. They would have been better with 3-4 minutes more.


* If you don't have a breadmaker: mix the ingredients together and knead until you have a dough (you don't have to use a bowl for this, you can make a circle of flour to surround the wet ingredients). When it is smooth, put in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a plate; leave in a warm place until doubled in size.













This post is an entry for this month's Heart of the Matter, the subject is grains ... we'd like to hear your heart-healthy ideas for cooking with wholegrains - not only breads. All the details can be found on the Heart of the Matter website. I'm hosting this month - the deadline is Thursday 27 November, round-up over the weekend.


Related posts

Bread knots - another simple way to make beautiful and delicious rolls, using this dough, or your default dough

Yeast starter for bread - and the bread make your own sourdough starter

No-knead bread the famous NY Times recipe
Speeded-up no-knead bread and a different take on it

Yoghurt bread fabulous, easy, TRY IT
Quick oat loaf
Spelt bread - it's getting easier to buy this highly-flavoured flour

Fresh corn bread - now is the perfect autumnal moment for this
Late summer hearth bread - another perfect autumn bread, this one with grapes

Anti-oxidant tea bread - I made this for my husband for a pre-surgery boost - delicious, too!

Yeast conversion - fresh/dried/quick


Things to do with stale or leftover bread

Panzanilla
Herb stuffing for roast chicken
Grilled trout with rosemary stuffing
Baked scallops
Anchovy toasts

Links to the best blogging bakers I know

Tanna at My Kitchen in Half Cups
A Year in Bread
Susan at Farmgirl Fare

this list is not exhaustive, there are dozens of wonderful blogging bakers

Wholegrain challenge: millet loaf

Thanks to everyone for making suggestions for the wholegrain challenge. There's wholewheat pasta in the larder, waiting to be cooked, and Olive Oyl sent me this recipe for a terrific millet loaf, really delicious for lunch today, and very easy to make. More than anything, I feel confident now that I can rise to this challenge (even if I don't manage every meal!)

Millet loaf

200g millet
400g water
2 grated carrots
2-3 grated courgettes
1 chopped onion
1 crushed clove of garlic
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tbsp soy sauce

Dry roast the millet until it's smoking and just beginning to turn brown, then add the water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes, adding more water if necessary. Leave to cool for 15 minutes. You want to end up with a sticky texture which will hold everything together.

Gently fry the onions, then add the spices, garlic, carrots and courgettes. Cook down for 10 minutes or so, then add the seeds.

Mix the millet and vegetables together, and add the soy sauce. Press this into a greased loaf or cake tin. I used a lovely Le Creuset paté form I was given decades ago, but I could just as easily have used a smallish cake tin. Press it down firmly, and bake for 25 minutes at 200C. As you can see, it turned out perfectly - I left it for about half an hour, so that it was lukewarm when we ate it.


















This is delicious with tahini sauce. Olive Oyl says salsa works too, and I will try that tomorrow, as there's some left over.

Tahini sauce

Put a couple of spoons of tahini in a bowl. Add the juice of a lemon and stir. At first, it will become alarmingly stiff, but loosen it with a little water, until you get the consistency you like. Add a little crushed garlic if you'd like.


Links to related posts

Whole grains challenge
Ballymaloe brown bread
Poached barley with herbs
Quick oat loaf
Oatmeal bread
Stuffed butternut
Oatcakes (with smoked trout paté)
A plain spelt loaf
"Instant" spelt loaf from Gilchesters farm, Northumberland


Links to people who've helped with this challenge

Meg Wolff at Becoming Whole has written a really useful post on whole and cracked grains ... and thanks to Charlotte at Great Big Veg Challenge for the link, and also for this tip: quesadillas made with whole grain tortilla have a better texture than the white flour tortillas.

Olive Oyl doesn't have a blog, so I can't make you a link, but here's the whole of her really useful comment on my wholegrain challenge post:

I too shared your dread about wholemeal pasta but I PROMISE that once you start you will consider white pasta the equivalent of Mothers' Pride bread. Wholewheat pasta can take really strong flavours, lots of garlic, anchovy, strong tomato sauces, your lentil sauce. A good compromise is "semi-whole" which is good for much lighter sauces or salads.

Tabbouleh (bulgar) is very easy, fab with fish and a good salad to keep for a few days in the fridge. Millet, super grain, good as porridge, also makes a good "loaf" or burger.

Another book recommendation!...."Healing with Whole Foods" - Paul Pritchford, a HUGE tome, the recipes can be a little austere and the eastern medicine bent may not be your thing but, it is the most fantastic reference book if you interested in food, nutrition and health.


Links to the whole grain challenge

Culinate - where it all began
How to eat more whole grains - also at Culinate