Chef Abra Berens turns her attention to grains and legumes | Seattle Times

NEW YORK (AP) – Chef and writer Abra Berens once mistakenly ordered 10 pounds of split peas. The problem is, she doesn’t really like split peas.

At first she kept making pea soup and winced every time at the muddy, unexciting taste. Then she came to a realization.

“I figured, wait, there are actually other things about split peas. If you spice up the soup with other things, it doesn’t have to taste muddy, “she says.” You can make split peas donuts, you can add sour dressing – it all felt so revolutionary to me. “

Your in-depth knowledge flows through “Grist,” Berens’ fascinating new guide to cooking grains, beans, seeds, and legumes that features 140 recipes with more than 160 variations.

Berens is the head chef at Granor Farm in Three Oaks, Mich., And her previous vegetable guide, Ruffage, was nominated for a James Beard Award and named Best Cookbook for Spring 2019 by The New York Times and Bon Appetit.

As in “Ruffage”, Berens puts the house husband in the driver’s seat, introduces and describes each category of grain and legumes and offers techniques for their preparation – including steamed, fried, boiled, marinated, mashed and sprouted.

Then she lets the reader combine them with various dressings, oils, relishes and other spices, mixing and matching saltiness, acidity and creaminess, depending on what is at hand. No goat cheese? Swap feta.

As an aid, there are grids for building a bowl throughout the book. For example, you could start with two cups of fava beans and then add shaved asparagus or cucumber or pieces of spinach and orange, then add mozzarella or feta or ricotta and then add a sauce, maybe a rosemary-lemon-chilli-mojo or a mint-almond Relish.

“For better or for worse, that’s how I cook. And that’s how it feels very intuitive to me, ”she says. “I think it’s because I’m just bad at memorizing. That’s how I’ve adapted and learned how to improvise. “

“Grist” is a comprehensive guide to 29 different types of grain and legumes – including amaranth, barley, black-eyed peas, buckwheat, bulgur, chickpeas, corn, cowpeas, farro, fava beans, lentils, lima beans, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, sorghum, soybeans and wheat berries.

“I would say that ‘you do you’ is a lot of Abra’s motto,” says Sarah Billingsley, editor-in-chief of Food & Lifestyle at Chronicle Books. “These books have an invigorating or just lovable quality. You think, ‘Okay, I don’t have to do exactly what she tells me to do. I trust this author.'”

Berens describes grains and legumes as “underrated staples” in the book and hopes to lure readers back to ingredients that many home cooks overlook when raving about meat, poultry, or fish. She includes some meat in dishes, but advocates eating it “on purpose”.

“As a global society, we tend to prioritize and flatter the things that are the stars or the special things. And so these other staples seem to be some kind of outsider or they are used as filler material, ”she says.

The entire book contains question-and-answer columns with farmers who grow or produce the crops, from a seed cleaner in Niles, Michigan to a wild rice collector in Cass Lake, Minnesota.

“Only about 3% of our population are farmers,” says Berens. “Fewer and fewer people interact with these breeders. And so I thought, ‘How do we tell these stories?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I think we’ll just ask them and let them tell their own story.’ “

The farmer profiles show how complex and economically vulnerable tillage can be, even before you add pressure from environmental changes and supply chain complications. Although it is not a monolith, farmers often talk about being forgotten and talked down.

Billingsley credits Berens for leaving behind the kind of farmer profiles that have been filled with some cookbooks that paint a rosy picture and romanticize farmers like California boutique growers. “Abra really set new standards there,” she says.

In contrast to “Ruffage”, Berens, herself a former vegetable farmer, often learned from “Grist”. She and her husband got to know and appreciate buckwheat, farro and bulgur, and today they praise the grain Fonio, which is light, fluffy and gluten-free.

“I like the idea of ​​helping people feel more secure in their own kitchen. I think some parts of the food media are there to make people feel like they are less than, and I hope these books help people internalize some of the ingredients they have like in a restaurant kitchen ” , she says.

What’s next after vegetables, grains, and legumes? Fruit, of course. Fruits grown in the Midwest. Stay tuned.

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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