Question
KAREN SOO
What are your favourite dishes to make with buckwheat and also with millet?
Answer
Buckwheat and millet are great grains that a lot of people don't use too much. For buckwheat, probably my favorite is a kasha. I basically use it like a grain. So it's basically like a rice. So it's like a cup of buckwheat to two cups of water. I usually soak the buckwheat beforehand, and then I'll just put in a little bit of salt and a little plant-based butter, and then I'll cook up some mushrooms and tamari, a little avocado oil, some green onions, and maybe even a little olive for a little acid or fermentation kind of thing to do other, like a kimchi or something into it as well would be nice, too. But that's probably one of my favorites for buckwheat. For millet, I do kind of like pilaf-style ones with those, too, like a kodo millet. Umpa is probably one of those that I'd probably do. Again, you want to soak off your millet beforehand, and then just do a quick sauté on your spices, your mustard seed, and you could put other spices into it as well, too. Maybe just a little bit of dal, some salt, carrots, onions, some fresh curry leaves if you can find them, some fresh chilies, and then mix all that together, and then, I think it's, again, like a one-to-two ratio in the same way. Just put it on the top of a pot, bring it to a boil and down to a simmer for about an hour-ish. Makes a really nice kind of pilaf. This one in particular is kind of a curry style, curry being an American-style curry, but works really well. So those are probably my two favorite ways to do that. Of course, buckwheat pancakes are really popular in the plant-based world as well, too. But yeah, a lot of varieties of things to do, but those are probably my two favorites.
