Cook's Guide to Grains: Delicious Recipes, Culinary Advice and Nutritional Facts

by Jenni Muir, Jason Lowe (Photographer)

Grains are one of the most tasty, versatile and nutritious food sources available, a delight to eat and easy to cook. In this work, Jenni Muir travels the world, exploring each continent's indigenous grains and the best recipes for using them. As well as established favourites such as oats, wheat and corn, there's North America's wild rice, bulghar and freekeh from the Middle East, the rye used in Scandinavian and Russian cooking, quinoa from Peru and the ancient Axtec grain, amaranth. The first part of the book provides an in-depth look at each of the grains and the second section features over 100 recipes, taking you from breakfast through to dinner. Jenni explains how to vary the dishes according to the grains you have and also recommends an exciting range of accompaniments that should transform each dish to suit the occasion.

Genres: Cookbooks

192 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jenni Muir is a British food writer who studied at both Le Cordon Bleu and the Culinary Institute of America. Her book on grains is the most complete and useful book I have ever read about grains in cookery. The first section is devoted to the stories of the grains themselves, from ancient times to modern uses. Some are common and familiar; others -- farro, spelt, kamut, amaranth, teff, triticale and quinoa -- a bit less so. The recipes which follow cover a remarkable breadth of uses for grain and its uses on all of the settled continents of the world. In addition to the obvious -- breads, pasta, soups, stews and crackers -- she offers some really unusual uses such as burgers, puddings, desserts and even drinks like the barley-lemon water served at Wimbledon Tennis Tournament. Notes for alternatives accompany every recipe, which means that each recipe will produce as many as a dozen different dishes. And she uses words like "pfaffing" which drive the American reading to a British dictionary.

[Marjanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested in getting more whole-grains into your diet, this is the book for you. There is a lot of information on grains, their background, what they go with, how to cook them, etc. The author was very thorough. I am looking forward to trying some of the recipes. On the downside though, I am not sure where to find some of the grains mentioned in the book, and a few ingredients are things I have never even heard of. I suppose someplace like Whole Foods would have some of the more unusual grains that most local grocery store don't seem to carry here.