Buckwheat: Food of the gods?
 

I've recently been reading about food I'm not eating but should be. Buckwheat is one of them. Buckwheat is not derived from wheat, nor is it a grain. It's actually a fruit seed related to rhubarb. With it you can make products such as noodles that are higher in protein than regular pasta, and they don't contain gluten. I stumbled across a recipe on whfoods.com, which is one of my favourite websites. It's a Japanese dish that uses soba noodles, which are basically buckwheat noodles. The recipe was simple, so I tried it. Wow! :oogle: It is to die for! Whenever I come across a food combination that absolutely blows me away, I always have the same response: "This...is the food of the gods."

Check it out:

Tan Tan Noodles

Prep and Cook Time: Prep and cooking time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

• ¼ lb Soba noodles
• ½ cup minced scallion

Sauce

• 2 TBS peanut butter
• 2 TBS rice vinegar
• 1½ TBS soy sauce
• 1 TBS honey
• 2 medium cloves garlic, chopped
• 2½ TBS minced or grated fresh ginger
• 2 TBS water
• pinch cayenne to taste
• Salt and white pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Bring lightly salted water to a boil and cook soba noodles according to package instructions.
2. While water is coming to a boil, blend sauce ingredients together in a blender and mince scallion.
3. Drain noodles, and toss with sauce and scallion.

Serves 4 as side dish

Whfoods.com

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It says it's a side dish, which would be nice, but I turned this into a main dish by calling it 2 servings and adding some seitan strips. I'm sure tofu would make it delicious as well.

The cool thing is buckwheat has more nutrition than semolina (wheat) pasta. These noodles went wonderfully with the recipe. It didn't seem like I was eating something that is good for you but doesn't taste as good as the "real thing."

This is an amazing dish.

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/TV/9909/24/snl.25/murphy.jpg

But seriously, buckwheat is incredible stuff. Sometimes I'll have it raw for breakfast with figs, walnuts, orange pulp, and shredded coconut. It's scary delicious and I could set my clock by my colon.

And it makes a damn fine beer.

Who knew a member of the rhubarb family could be so awesome?

Find a recipe for a traditional Jewish dish called kasha varnichkas (sp?).

I bet you will love it!

Here is the recipe for "Kasha Varnishkes" http://homecooking.about.com/od/past...r/blpasta3.htm

Seriously, buckwheat (i.e. kasha) cooks much faster than most cereal grains. This makes it a prime candidate for my hot breakfasts that I enjoy even during the week. Time is an issue on weekdays.

Great ideas for buckwheat, guys, especially the beer.

Seriously, willravel, I should try your recipe for deliciousness. It sounds great!

SOBA NOODLES ARE IN MY FUTURE...

Enlightening, Baraka. I'll definitely have to try it out.

Lentils, one of the primary In His Name We Pray foods... take a zillion years to cook.

I've been on a huge tofu-kidney beans-long grain rice-lentils kick lately.

... which may explain why I'm turning into a human skeleton again.

Oh, the jokes I have now.

aberkok mentioned this to me recently, and it's something I already do: Eat more nuts and avocados.

And try willravel's thing. It has walnuts and coconut. (Gods, I'm going to try it myself!)

Oats are for bitches.
Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on Willravel's duodenum. Once the buckwheat is in the digestive system, the bomb is armed. If you shit in over 6 hours, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?!

:orly: You mustn't have had steel-cut oats before.

You want your colon cleaned out? Steel-cut oats are the .357 Magnum of grains. They are nature's steel wool. Try eating those raw.

Sir, I sincerely hope you wrote that in jest; otherwise, I do say you go too far.

I was indeed jesting, sir.

But if you really want bran, the kind of bran that gives your jejunum nightmares, try raw corn bran. You'll shit diamonds.

Love it! When I go back to clean eating, it'll be on my list.

Good carbs 'cause they're full of yummy fiber :p

PS: The buckwheat has about double the fiber of McCann's Steel Cut Oats.

I can't say I've eaten buckwheat beyond pancakes and soba noodles, but I like it, and I'll definitely be trying out your recipe, Baraka_Guru.

More evidence that buckwheat is the food of the gods, from the Wikipedia entry (and my own experience):

Rogue Ales here in Oregon makes a few beers with buckwheat (not the gluten free kind, though)--they are marketed as soba ales, given that they were co-created by Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. I've tried the Morimoto Soba Ale:
http://www.rogue.com/images/UpdatedLabels/Soba.gif and found it to be quite tasty.

EDIT: Somehow I missed that Anxst had already linked to soba-as-beer. Ah well.

That may be so, but....

Oats contain a type of fibre called beta-glucan (also found in ample amounts in barley but few other grains). Oats also have a unique antioxidant called avenanthramides. Both of these clean your bad cholesterol out real nice.

Sometimes less is more.

I'll stick to eating both oats and buckwheat. I love them both. :) Oh... that and I add ground flaxseed to each. Fiberlicious!

Is that a challenge, sir? :orly:

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snowy, there is no such thing as paying too much attention to beer, especially buckwheat beer. :thumbsup:

:D Lemme put it this way: The disarming probe is a little cold at first.

Why do you tease me with such commentary?

I'm not teasing; I'm speaking in terms you understand. ;)

For example, did you know that rye is the Luger P08 of grains?

Seriously, though, steel-cut oats should be like the .44 Magnum. I was thinking of Dirty Harry and I messed up the reference.

"It will blow your colon clean out."

BG: Thanks for the edumacation :D I didn't know about avenanthramides.

I love TFP. I learn all kinds of cool stuff here.

But dammit, it's good enough to list twice!

Buckwheat really is a great grain. The sad little list of grains used here in the US is pitiful. Seems if it's not maize or wheat people don't know what the hell to do with it here. A few weeks back I served goulash on a bed of Dehulled Barley, and got a ton of comments from people, most wanting to know what on earth it was. I've done similar with buckwheat, and even steel cut oats in the past, and it always goes over well.

I totally agree; it's a very enjoyable beer. It's so damned expensive though! I'll have to see what the pricing is at the actual Rogue brewery store--obviously it's cheaper there than anywhere else.

I'm not huge on beer, but I'm willing to try absolutely anything once.