Bay State Reader's Advisory

Fall is in full swing here now, and the change of seasons is reflected in the stack of cookbooks I brought home from the library to peruse. This picture doesn’t include several I’ve checked out at work but haven’t brought home yet.

While I selected recipes to try from all of these, one I’ve been cooking a lot from is Everyday Whole Grains by Ann Taylor Pittman.

In a fit of enthusiasm for fall cooking at the beginning of September, I bought soba noodles, millet, steel-cut oats, red rice, black rice, multicolored quinoa, plain quinoa, teff flour, buckwheat groats, buckwheat flour, and sorghum flour. Then I needed recipes all in one cookbook that would make it easy to use all these wholesome, gluten-free ingredients.

Everyday Whole Grains includes recipes using whole wheat flours, wheat berries, panko, rye berries, barley, and types of wheat like farro, freekeh, and spelt– which, though delicious-looking, are off-limits in a gluten-free kitchen. But I’d say about a third of the recipes are gluten-free or easily made gluten-free.

The author introduces the cookbook this way:

“‘Whole and ancient grains, huh? Why can’t you be working on a meat book,’ my husband asked when I first told him about this project. I took his skepticism as a challenge and used it to set the bar for this book: Every recipe here should be so good, so convincing, that you want to work it into your everyday life.”

Ann Taylor Pittman is the executive editor at Cooking Light, so as you might expect, each recipe includes nutrition information, serving size, and calorie count per serving, and she uses only natural, very lightly processed or unprocessed ingredients.

Q&A: Ann Taylor Pittman, Executive Editor of Cooking Light

The recipe for Creamy Broccoli-Cheese Soup, for example, contains no flour or heavy cream, but uses instant brown rice, 1% milk , and extra-sharp cheddar cheese to thicken the soup and make it creamy.

There aren’t photographs for every recipe, but there are a lot of color photographs. The recipe instructions are clear and attractively laid out.

Check out the author’s blog, Web site, or follow her on Instagram.

Here are the recipes I tried:

Bibimbop — A Korean dish that turned out to be quite involved, but delicious! Also pictured, the pickled vegetables my husband made.

Balsamic and Grape Quinoa — The recipe called for red grapes and I used Concord grapes, a mistake. Unless you like Concord grapes, which I guess I don’t.

Chocolate-Buckwheat Waffles — Substituted pumpkin powder for the cocoa powder, though, and made Pumpkin-Buckwheat Waffles.

Nutty Whole-Grain Granola — I cut the sweeteners a little, but think the recipe is already lower in fat and sugar than the average granola recipe.

Toasted Barley and Berry Granola — Substituted rolled oats for the barley flakes and forgot to add the dried fruit! This recipe yields a drier granola, good for sprinkling on yogurt. No photo!

Here are some I still want to try:

Chicken and Vegetable Biryani (stovetop)

Savory Harvest Vegetable Tart with Toasted Quinoa Crust

Double Sorghum Spice Cookies

Strawberry Tart with Quinoa-Almond Crust

Super-Fudgy Teff Brownies (The author says when they tried these, her kids told her only to use this recipe for brownies from then on.)

Cranberry-Pistachio Energy Bars

I know I have to bring this book back to the library, but I don’t want to! I know I don’t need another cookbook, but my birthday is coming up. 😉