Pilaf revisited

Eastside Road, October 17, 2013—

I WROTE EARLIER about our friends at Kenter Canyon Farms, who last week introduced their first wheat harvest to the market. We bought a couple of pounds of their Sonora wheat Sunday morning — a soft white wheat, brought north to the California missions from Sonora, Mexico, in the late 18th or early 19th century.

Lindsey cooked it up into a pilaf tonight, beginning with browned onions and garlic, later some sliced mushrooms, then adding the wheat grains and water, bringing it to a boil, then letting it stand until done al dente. She added a few handfuls of fresh spinach leaves toward the end, and finished the dish with chopped parsley. There may have been other things, but those are the main outlines of a dish that had a lot of texture and flavor — color, too, come to think of it.

The wheat was dense and sweet, very pleasant between the teeth. Afterward, in spite of the spinach, green salad; then vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and chopped toasted almonds. A fine dinner for a cold night.

Rosé de Bobal, Albero (Murcia, Spain), 2012: cheap and pleasant