Recipe: Easter Wheat Pie

04/25/14 • 4 min

Last Chance Foods

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Last Chance Foods: Forget the Midwest, Wheat Finds a Home in Long Island

The image of rolling wheat fields calls to mind sprawling Midwestern farms, but that may be changing. Just look at Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett, Long Island, where farmers Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow are growing wheat on 16 acres.

They started their farm in 2009, bucking the then-emerging, now-rampant, gluten-free trend. “For every customer that we sell wheat berries or our whole wheat flour to, there is a customer that is really excited that we’re working to close the gap in the foodshed in the Northeast by bringing grains back from the Midwest,” said Baldwin.

In addition, Merrow said, there’s a growing interest in the nutritional benefits of whole grains like wheat berries. “Wheat berries are wheat seeds,” she explained. They are what farmers plant in the fall, and the young sprouted seeds quickly grow into wheat grass. Put wheat berries through a mill and the result is flour. In their complete form, they can be cooked for use in numerous applications — as a breakfast food or in salads and soups.

Baldwin and Merrow use an electric table-top stone mill that they’ve named “Milton” to grind wheat berries into flour. Their customers have also used Vitamixes and food processors to tackle the job. There’s a notable benefit to locally grown wheat and freshly milled flour.

“You can imagine a tomato being a fresh tomato, an heirloom tomato picked from your garden, and the burst of flavor that that has and its freshness,” said Baldwin. “Grains also have a terroir. We’re by the beach, so it picks up traces of flavor in the soil and elements there. And bread should have a lot of flavor characteristics.” She adds that the wheat grown at Amber Waves Farm has a nutty flavor with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg.

(Photo: Katie Baldwin and Amanda Merrow/Courtesy of Amber Waves Farm)

New York City farmers markets have been key in creating the demand for locally grown wheat. Bakers who sell at the greenmarkets use as much as 65,000 pounds of local flour each month.

Turns out that New Yorkers aren’t the only ones appreciating the local wheat. “Really our primary challenge on the East End, in addition to expensive land, is that there are a lot of deer on the East End who also love wheat berries,” said Merrow. “And so that’s really our greatest challenge, is trying to keep the deer away from the wheat.”

What the deer don’t realize is that cooking wheat berries make them even more delicious. Below, check out instructions from Amber Waves Farm on how to cook wheat berries. Then you can use those prepared wheat berries in the spring salad recipe below or in this Easter Wheat Pie recipe.

Cooking with Wheat Berries

Ingredients

1 cup wheat berries (makes approximately 3 cups) 1 tbs salt

Cooking: Add 1 cup wheat berries, 3 cups of water and a tablespoon of salt to a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and bring to a simmer, then cook for 50 minutes or until wheat berries are soft and chewy. (For faster cook time and softer wheat berries, soak wheat berries in water overnight prior to cooking). Drain any excess water and transfer to a bowl to cool. Toss with a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Storage: If not using immediately, store the cooked wheat berries in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator for up to a week. To reheat, put wheat berries in frying pan with splash of water, stirring over low heat until hot.

Simple Spring Wheat Berry Saladby Amber Waves Farm

1 cup cooked wheat berries 5 sliced radishes 1 cup chopped arugula or spinach 1 tbs of chopped chives 1/4 cup of chopped parsley 3 tbs extra virgin olive oil 3 tbs lemon juice Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation: Add vegetables and herbs to the wheat berries and mix in the olive oil and lemon juice. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve at room temperature.

Next Episode

Last Chance Foods: Say Yes to Nopales

Some people like a shot of espresso to get the morning started. How about a quick slug of cactus slime instead? That’s the drink of choice at some juice stands in Mexico.

“A lot of people think that the slime is really nutritious,” said Lesley Téllez, a food writer who runs the culinary tourism company Eat Mexico. “I’ve seen some places where... they just sell the slime, you know, on it’s own. You can take it to go, and... have it for a quick morning pick-me-up.”

Known as “baba,” or the Spanish word for “drool,” that clear ooze comes from nopales, or prickly pear cactus paddles. That type of cactus is a popular in Mexican cuisine, and tastes slightly acidic, with a raw texture that’s slightly crunchier than green beans.

Nopales are available throughout the city in grocery stores and bodegas catering to Mexican communities. Téllez likes to get her nopales and other Mexican staples from Corona’s Farm in Queens. She admits that she prefers to get the ones that have already been cleaned, since getting rid of the cactus spines can be a tricky operation.

That’s not to say it can’t be done at home. It just takes a fair degree of caution and patience.

First, Téllez wraps her non-dominant hand in dish towels. Then she hangs on to the nopales at the narrow end. “You definitely need to hold onto it, for sure,” Téllez added. “You don’t want to be whacking away at it with a knife while it’s sitting there on the cutting board. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Then with a very sharp knife in her dominant hand, she gingerly begins shaving off the nopales spines. “You want to slice away at the spines as easy as you can without having thorns sort of flying around, so I go very slowly,” Téllez said. Do that until it’s prickle-free — or just buy the nopales that have already been cleaned and save yourself the trouble.

(Photo: Lesley Téllez/Courtesy of Lesley Téllez)

Once relieved of its spines, there are a number of ways to prepare the cactus. Boil it lightly and put it in taco. “Another really simple way you can cook them is to grill them,” Téllez said. “So you just take a cleaned paddle, and you score it. And you sprinkle it with some salt and pepper and some olive oil, and you grill it in on a really high heat.”

If you’re wary of the slimy texture, Téllez has an entertaining, if messy, method of de-oozing the nopales. It involves cutting up the cleaned cactus and rubbing salt into the flesh.

“It’s actually really fun to do if you have, like, 10 minutes in your kitchen,” she said. “So you rub the salt into the flesh and what it does is it unleashes all of this slime from the cactus so your hands get really slimy — which is fun, for me.”

The result of that salt scrub is a raw vegetable that can be added to salads or as a garnish. “You’re left with this really crunchy, raw, bright green, beautiful vegetable,” Téllez said.

For those who enjoy the texture of cooked nopales, check out Téllez’s recipe below for Stuffed Nopales with Black Beans, Cheese, and Roasted Red Pepper.

Also, if you’re interested in a drink to serve for Cinco de Mayo on Monday, check out this recipe from Saveur for Prickly Pear Margaritas. Get started now, since you need to find prickly pears (the fruit of the same cactus that produces nopales) and soak them in tequila for two days.

Stuffed Nopales with Black Beans, Cheese, and Roasted Red Pepper Recipe By Lesley Téllez, The Mija Chronicles (Photo: Stuffed nopales/Lesley Téllez)

Makes: 4 servings

Note: When buying cactus, make sure the paddles are bright green and not brown in spots. Many grocery stores sell them already cleaned, but sometimes upon further inspection, they’ve got a few spines. You’ll want to remove those with a sharp knife — the LA Times has a good tutorial on how to clean nopales. It’s best to use the cactus as soon as you can, and don’t store it in a plastic bag in your refrigerator as that will create moisture and make the paddles go bad. The cactus can be boiled a day ahead of time and stored in an airtight container. If you don’t have bean broth, you can use water or chicken/vegetable broth.

Ingredients

For the cactus:

Kosher salt Half a red onion, peeled and cut into large chunks 1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed 8 medium cactus paddles

For the beans:

2 cups cooked black beans (or a 14 ounce can), with about 3⁄4 cup bean broth 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper About 1 tablespoon canola, grapeseed, or peanut oil 1/4 red onion, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, minced 2 teaspoons finely chopped canned chipotle pepper in adobo For the toppings: 1 1/4...