Ancient Grains for Modern Meals - Maria Speck [10]
This traditional convenience food is vital to many cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire, including those of Armenia, Turkey, Greece, Syria, and Iraq. For its versatility and countless preparations, some refer to it as Middle Eastern pasta. Bulgur has an appealing mild wheat flavor and pleasing texture. One of its best-known uses is in tabouli, the famous Middle Eastern salad, made with lots of parsley, mint, and tomatoes. It is also added to soups and meatballs, and cooked into nutritious pilafs.
Bulgur is most often made from durum wheat, but other kinds of wheat can be used as well. Bulgur is often confused with cracked wheat, which is exactly what the name says: cracked but uncooked wheat.
WHEN YOU SHOP Bulgur comes in fine, medium, and coarse varieties. All kinds are great for a speedy dinner, as precooked bulgur can be on the table in 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the grain. Some cooks just reconstitute bulgur by soaking it in cold or hot water for as little as 10 minutes, or up to 1 hour. I prefer the chew of coarse or medium-coarse bulgur, but fine varieties are an interesting starting point. Middle Eastern stores often sell bulgur in packages that label the different grinds with numbers from 1 to 4, fine to coarse. Now, here is the puzzling part: You might have a batch of bulgur that a company identifies as “fine to medium,” but whose kernels resemble a “coarse” grain to a T. In addition, those two kernels, which look absolutely alike, might cook up differently, in anything between 10 to 25 minutes. What is a cook to do? It’s easy. Just check your grain after 10 minutes or so. If it is still slightly chewy, add a little more water to your pot if needed, and cook it a bit longer. Done!
CORN, GRITS, AND POLENTA
Corn, more accurately called maize or mahiz for its indigenous roots, is a kind of grass native to the Americas. According to recent DNA profiles, the “cradle of maize evolution” has been located in a river valley in southern Mexico. In this region, archaeologists also found milling tools with maize residue that date back almost nine thousand years. Corn grows in many colors, from white and yellow to bluish gray, purple, and red.
Columbus brought maize to the Old World from which it spread rapidly around the globe. While delicious as a staple, its protein is of lesser quality because it lacks two essential amino acids. Serving corn together with beans, dairy, or meat compensates for this shortfall.
The Aztec, Maya, and North American Indians treated corn with an alkali, a process called nixtamalization, which makes an important amino acid available to the human body. However, this traditional knowledge never made it across the Atlantic. As a result, impoverished southern Europeans who relied on a diet of cheap corn became sick with pellagra (from Italian pelle agra, literally, “sour skin”), a deficiency of vitamin B, or niacin. The disease, still common in Africa and China, also reached epidemic proportions in parts of the American South in the late nineteenth century.
Today corn is eaten around the globe, in countless variations from freshly grilled sweet corn on the cob to cornbreads and porridge—be it as southern grits, Italian polenta, Romanian mamaliga, or Greek katsamaki (see also “Corn: Comforting and Uplifting”).
CORNMEAL For baking, I always choose stone-ground whole grain cornmeal, which comes in different grinds. Look for the term “whole grain” on the package. Stone milling grinds grains more slowly and at a lower temperature than large-scale commercial steel milling, and produces delicious, more textured flours. Supermarket products are typically degerminated. This means that the nutritious germ and the fiber-rich bran have been removed for longer shelf life. Not all companies put the grind—fine, medium, or coarse—on the package. Sometimes you have to play