More ur-food toasted flours
Soon I want to introduce another of these toasted ground ur-foods that is still used in parts Europe, the Caribbean and South America.
But for now, from readers, toasted ground chia, toasted ground soy beans? More ur-food toasted flours.
From Margaret Conover. But what about chia seed? Most of what I’ve read about pinole states that parched chia seed was an important ingredient in pinole.
http://www.chiativity.org/2009/03/an-historic-article-on-the-use-of-chia-seeds-by-indians-and-mexicans-in-1891.html
Also here on my blog.
From Susan Yi-Young Park.
At first glance I thought it was Korean roasted soybean powder. http://www.maangchi.com/ingredients/roasted-soy-bean-powder
I love the stuff, so does my daughter. It’s used for making drinks (more extravagant versions add a dozen or so other toasted grains, seeds and nuts. And rice cakes are also sprinkled with toasted soybean powder.
And why not boiling?
From Sandy D.
I still think that boiling the grains is even easier – saves all that pounding or grinding.
In the early history of grain use, most grains were hulled, that is they had these tight and inedible coverings around the grains and inside the chaff. Boiling would not do anything to make that edible. You’d still have to pound.
Second, in the past people had lots of needs, just like we do. Even if you could make a good boiled grain dish, it wasn’t much use to travelers. So my instinct is that they would have wanted not one but several grain dishes. Not either or.
Parched legumes are still very common. The store well and you don’t need to reduce them to a flour to eat them.
In Ladakh, northern India, part of the Himalaya, toasted barley flour was the fast food of choice. Mixed with hot tea made with pungent butter and salt, tsampa was warming and filling. The bottom of the Zanskar valley is 11,000 feet above sea level, and the passes around 17,000, which means water does not boil at 100 deg C/ 212F. Dry frying is a more efficient way to cook grain than boiling. Our work-around on a 3-week trek in 1983, was a tiny pressure cooker, and at the end of the trip, we paid our guide in part with that pressure cooker.
I would love to taste it. I’d also love a tiny pressure cooker. Most are so huge.