Farro

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, January 29, 2009

THE SEEMINGLY SIMPLEST of foods raise the most complex issues. Grains, for example: we all know about wheat, which most of us think of as our daily bread; the commonest of all the grains. For breakfast we often have two varieties, the soft white and the hard red "winter" wheat.

Then there's what we always call by its Italian name, farro, Triticum dicoccon, in English "emmer". This was well known in Rome; Pliny wrote about it, according to an interesting Wikipedia entry. I think we first tasted it near Lucca, at the memorable restaurant Il Vipore, where I understood that in fact it was the wheat of ancient Rome; the common bread wheats we know today hadn't yet developed, with their six sets of chromosomes. (Farro makes do with four; its even earlier ancestor Einkorn, the wild wheat from which all others have descended, with only two.)

More than you may want to know, but fascinating. Anyway, today Lindsey roasted sliced leeks, cut into chunks say half an inch in size, on a sheet pan in a little olive oil, while the farro was cooking in the usual way, and combined them into a tasty pottage. The leeks, some roasted nearly black, took on the texture and substance of wild mushrooms, chewy and nutty. Delicious.

Cheap côtes de Ventoux 2006, "La ferme Julien"