*  Exported from  MasterCook  *

                          Farro Or Spelt (Weir)

Recipe By     : Farro from Tuscany, by Joanne Weir*
Serving Size  : 1    Preparation Time :0:00
Categories    : Grains                           Information

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient -- Preparation Method
--------  ------------  --------------------------------
                        spelt
                        farro

*Recipe from "Going With an Ancient Grain: Resilient, nutty farro adds
crunchy accent," by Joanne Weir for San Francisco Chronicle 11/26/97 A
travel story set in Rapolano, a village halfway between Siena and Arezzo in
Tuscany.

Lunch with a friend who served big, steamy bowls of autumn vegetable soup
with farro -- an ancient wheat grain shaped like rice and colored a reddish
brown -- and cannellini beans, drizzled with her own golden-green olive
oil. The farro was crunchy, had a nutty flavor and seemed so perfect for
the day.

Farro, or emmer, is an ancient type of wheat known as Triticum dicoccum,
cultivated by the Romans, who thousands of years ago turned it into a thick
soup called puls. Today, Tuscans who live around Lucca and the surrounding
hills continue to cook the grain daily.

The tiny brown shards resemble rice with the brown hull attached; farro
cooks up like barley. It is peasant food at its best and completely natural
at that. One of the most resilient grains known to man, it isn't prone to
disease, so there's no need for pesticides in its production.

Farro may be available in your local health food store. check the bins of
grain. It is also called Spelt.

Kitpath@earthlink.net 8/28/98


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