The creative process we are teaching here is to recognize that there are infinite possibilities for cooking dish grains, maintaining their energetically whole form.

This process includes learning how to manipulate the elements of texture, taste, and color to create original dishes with quinoa, millet, rices, buckwheat, amaranth, oats, and others that we may not know about.

In 1980 USA, eating grains in their energetically whole form was rare. It was easy to find white rice on a restaurant’s menu, and “brown” rice was starting to appear in Chinese restaurants and health food stores and restaurants. The possibility of manipulating color, texture, and taste was not yet even a thought for cooks preparing rice, with a label of ‘boring.’  Rice  showed up to be a background for something more colorful, more “meaty.”  Rice was a filler.

And I, as a consumer interested in health, was not supposed to notice that brown rice was usually bland, pasty, or dry—because it was “healthy.” But…I did. And for me, it was never boring.

A few years later, I worked for The Quinoa Corporation, the company who first brought Quinoa to the USA. My responsibilities included managing the scheduling and training of people to set up demonstrations in every kind of grocery store—both health food stores and regular, large chain supermarkets.  In this position, I created recipes for the demonstration staff to cook and offer samples to each customer that had enough curiosity to step up to the table. “Cook quinoa like rice, boil it” we told the customer. But my cooking experience checkmated the standard answer that “boiling” is the only method.  Words started to organize in my mind for more interesting ways to prepare dish grains.

Highlights

Understanding the anatomy of a dish-grain and a bread-grain

Selecting and Storing Grains and Beans and Vegetables

Rice Family, Buckwheat, Quinoa family, Oats, Millet, Amaranth, Teff, and Job’s Tears

Creating textures

Boiling and Steeping

Excellent method for whole grain pasta

Grain salad technique

Shaping

Croquettes

Patties

Free form color infused