Speletto

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The rice had a previous engagement, so the spelt stood in (Rcp# 40)

Ingredients for ‘Speletto’

  • 50 g dried yellow peas (yes, must be yellow, not green)
  • 200 g spelt grains (see side notes below for further explanation)
  • 150 g carrots or parsnips (3 – 4 smaller carrots, about 100 g without ends and skin)
  • 150 g kohlrabi or yellow beets (this equals about ½ of a medium kohlrabi or a medium yellow beet without the skin)
  • 140 – 150 g bush/runner beans (or any other green beans, if you use bush beans, you’ll need about 15 – 20 of them)
  • 50 g fennel (1 – 2 layers of the outer bulb, not to ‘woody’)
  • 250 g mixed dark edible mushrooms (I use cremini, king oyster mushrooms and shitake)
  • 1 – 2 handfuls of fresh herb leaves (I use fresh herbs from the balcony: red basil, bush basil, thyme, savory, lemon balm, the Greek ‘family mint’, sage and stinging nettle – careful, the last one is a bit tricky to handle)
  • 150 ml homemade broth (see [‘Vegetable Broth’],if you need instructions)
  • ¼ teaspoon smoked sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon bear’s garlic in oil (or 10 fresh standard chives and half of a fresh garlic toe)
  • 2 tablespoons apple pulp (high quality applesauce with no additives)
  • Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg and ground caraway
  • 2 teaspoons ginger in oil (or 1 medium fresh ginger toe finely minced, for ginger in oil recipe see [‘The Princess of Oil Fruit’])
  • 150 – 200 g protein source (such as basil tofu. Or, if you eat that, smoked fish or prawns from responsible fishing sources)
  • A mild canola oil (for browning)

Cooking Instructions for ‘Speletto’

  1. Place the spelt and yellow peas in a saucepan and rinse with plenty of cold water. Drain the water and refill the saucepan with three times the amount of spelt and yellow peas. Leave to soak for 30-45 minutes (at room temperature).
  2. Clean (wash, brush/peel) and dice the carrots and kohlrabi (small cubes, about 1 – 1 ½ cm side length). Wash and cut the beans into 2 cm pieces, but keep them separate from the carrots and kohlrabi. Wash and mince the fennel (small pieces, like chopped onions), but keep it separate from the vegetables.
  3. Heat the spelt and yellow peas in their saucepan and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat and simmer over medium heat for 40 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow to swell again while you prepare the rest of the dish.
  4. In a large saucepan (about 3 – 4 liters capacity), brown the carrot and the beet pieces with a little canola oil. When they are almost tender, but still have a little bite, add the beans. Saute together, until the beans are bright green and done, then turn off the heat and remove from heat. Add the broth, the salt,the apple pulp, the ginger in oil, nutmeg and caraway. If you do not have bear’s garlic in oil, add the minced chives and garlic at this stage (or the chopped fresh bear’s garlic/wild garlic). Cover with the lid (leave opening using a wooden spoon).
  5. Gently wash (and brush) the mushrooms and separate heads from the stems (you can leave the stems on the shitake). Cut the stems into equal pieces (I usually cut the cremini stems in half and adjust the pieces of the king oyster pieces to that size). Mix the minced fennel with the mushroom stems and place in a pan to saute gently (move frequently). Slice the mushroom heads to match the size of the chopped stems (meaning a medium cremini or shitake would be cut into 2 – 3 slices, a king oyster head would be cut into 3 – 4 slices …). Add the sliced mushroom heads, when the stems are done.
  6. Once all the mushrooms are cooked through (they should have lost all of their water), add the chopped protein source to the pan. If the protein source needs to be fried or cooked to be safe to eat (like seafood or fresh fish), you will need to do this before adding it to the mushrooms.
  7. Drain the spelt and yellow pea mixture from the cooking liquid (save and refrigerate the stock for up to two days, it makes a nice broth alternative) and combine it with the carrots and beans in the large pot. If necessary, reheat the spelt mixture briefly to your preferred serving temperature, but do not boil or burn it. Just before serving, add the bear’s garlic in oil.

Serve the spelt mix with the mushrooms arranged on top. If you are not sure of the amount needed, keep the mushrooms-protein mix separate from the vegetable-spelt-mix, as it will need to be used right after preparation (reheating protein sources and/or mushrooms is a bit tricky, so I avoid it completely to minimize food waste).

Makes 2 – 3 servings.

Side Notes:

  1. You will need spelt grains, which are easy to cook. Your local health food store or organic grocery probably has them in stock. Some regular grocery stores also carry natural spelt grains that can be cooked like rice. Look for grains that are labeled “spelt like rice” or have some other reference to the grain’s cookability. Also, I usually prepare the spelt and yellow pea mix a few hours or the day before and refrigerate it in the cooking liquid. This way, the grains and peas blend even better into the dish.
  2. If you are using fresh carrots or parsnips, it is usually okay to just wash them (you need to be sure of the source and that no poison was used in the growing process) and cut off the ends. If they are from storage (look a little dry and bruised), I would peel them. Depending on the condition of that peel, you can use it to make broth or add it to the compost (“green” organic waste bin, if you don’t have your own compost). Did I mention that our municipal waste services (BSR = Berliner Straßen-Reinigung) turn the organic waste into bio-gas and use it to power some of their garbage trucks? Bravo, BSR! Cool, pragmatic idea, I am very happy about it.
  3. If you want to know what the family mint is, see [‘Stowaway’] for explanations.

Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.