The Splendid Grain: Robust, Inspired Recipes for Grains with Vegetables, Fish, Poultry, Meat & Fruit - Hardcover

Wood, Rebecca

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688097669 ISBN 13: 9780688097660

Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks, 1997

Synopsis

With 250 luscious recipes, along with eight pages of color photographs, The Splendid Grain dramatizes how you can incorporate extraordinarily healthful grains into your life without changing your lifestyle.

Grains can transform taste and texture in unsurpassed ways like these:
--Nutty, sweet oats form the delicious crust of fried chicken
--Piquant quinoa heightens and absorbs the savory juices of gingered lamb
--Hearty buckwheat becomes a sweet, delicate, Parisian-inspired crepe
--Thai black sticky rice flavored with coconut makes unforgettable exotic banana dumplings.

The natural and native history of each grain is also explored along with its health benefits.

About this title

About the Author

Rebecca Wood, teacher, lecturer, student of Oriental medicine, author of five cookbooks, including "The Whole Foods Encyclopedia," and educational consultant to the natural food industry, runs the Naturally Grand Cooking School. She lives in Grand Junction, Colorado. http://www.rwood.com

Grains can transform taste and texture in unsurpassed ways like these:
--Nutty, sweet oats form the delicious crust of fried chicken
--Piquant quinoa heightens and absorbs the savory juices of gingered lamb
--Hearty buckwheat becomes a sweet, delicate, Parisian-inspired crepe
--Thai black sticky rice flavored with coconut makes unforgettable exotic banana dumplings.

The natural and native history of each grain is also explored along with its health benefits.

Reviews

This generous volume expands on other grains cookbooks by embracing such unusual grains as sorghum and mesquite and by offering an exhaustive collection of recipes for the grains it covers. Wood (Quinoa: The Supergrain) organizes the grains by origin (e.g., rye and oats fall under "Native European Grains"). Each grain discussed comes with a history and basic cooking and storage instructions. The section on wheat includes an impressive list of unusual and lesser-known flours (including Kamut and bolted flours) and a riff on pasta. Recipes like Yellow and Purple Bean Tabbouleh (with hazelnuts), Barley Poppy Bagels and Vietnamese Spring Rolls offer new takes on ethnic favorites. Others, such as Chinese Greens with Quinoa and Peanuts, Mango and Wild Rice Salad and Greens and Herbed Cornmeal Dumplings with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce combine flavors in unusual ways. Breakfast choices are particularly strong, encompassing Buckwheat Waffles with Peach Butter and Oat Groat Pancakes. Short notes give tips on techniques (for example, how to french cut string beans) and commonsense substitutions for exotica like buffalo meat.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

There have been a number of recent titles on grains, but none as ambitious as this one. Wood, a cooking teacher in Colorado and the author of several other cookbooks, offers more than 200 recipes featuring grains as familiar as corn and rice and as unusual as mesquite and Job's tears. The grains are categorized by "bio-region," from native American wild rice and quince to native African teff; each section opens with a history, including folklore and other esoteric facts, along with information on availability, selection, and storage. Wood has taught macrobiotic cooking, and some recipes are vegetarian or vegan, but she does use fish, some meat and poultry, butter, and other such ingredients in her creative recipes?Strawberry and Blue Corn Waffles, Basmati Rice with Sour Cherries, Salad of Quinoa, Duck, and Greens?which are inspired by cuisines from around the world. Valuable as a reference as well as a cookbook, this is highly recommended.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Health-conscious eaters value grains in their diets for their low-fat, high-fiber merits. In the quest for new flavors, grains once unknown or obscure have begun appearing on restaurant menus and in gourmet cooking. Wood's latest cookbook sums up the current state of grain cookery and presents dozens of recipes featuring grain as a principal component. Wood includes familiar corn, wheat, rice, and barley, as well as newly available ancient grains, such as amaranth, kamut, and quinoa. Those who normally bypass cookbooks such as this one, assuming that they are for vegetarians only, will be pleasantly surprised to find that Wood readily uses meats in conjunction with grains to create dishes attractive to palates not exclusively vegetarian. Wood sorts recipes by the grains' continent of origin, and she records both historical and cultural backgrounds for each grain. Cooks without access to a natural foods store can use Wood's catalog of mail-order sources. Mark Knoblauch

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688097669
• ISBN 13: 9780688097660
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448