Friday, June 01, 2007

i liked wheatberries five years ago

i lie. i've never cooked wheatberries, or even given them much thought, before this week. however, they seem to be everywhere lately (kind of like no-knead bread -- are wheatberries the new no-knead bread?), including on this blog, which david showed me. since then, he and ellen have cooked the recipe mentioned there; and i have sworn off ruhlman since his anti-vegan rant. sample lines:

"veganism is a colossal arrogance, a refusal to admit to our own nature, a denial of our humanity. sometimes it kills people. and it's not very much fun, besides."

i tried two recipes, the barefoot contessa's wheatberry salad, and a wheatberries with pecans recipe that's more like a warm side dish. the salad is delicious, although the instructions call for cooking them over low heat for 45 minutes, and i cooked mine for more like an hour and a half, and they still weren't quite soft enough. the balsamic vinegar with the warm sauteed red onion and warm wheatberries and olive oil -- yum. and it's all crunchy and good, and sweet and savory. the second recipe is delicious too, if more plain and unadorned. this time i soaked the wheatberries overnight and then cooked them about an hour, and they came out perfectly.

i think i've broken the record for number of "wheatberry" references in one post. and my spell checker doesn't like it one bit.

2 comments:

Ellen said...

Did you use hard or soft wheatberries? We used the soft ones, and they cooked pretty quickly. They were a lot like barley.

Liz Woodbury said...

i used hard wheatberries, and i'm pretty sure that's what both recipes called for...maybe i'll try soft ones next time!