I love Black garlic spelt as a lunch dish. The spelt grain is naturally very nutty, which matches great with the broccoli. It is a very healthy and filling dish. It provides good nutrition and lots of energy to continue your day.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
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🥘 Main ingredients
- spelt grain
- broccoli
- vegetable stock
- white wine
- black garlic
- thyme
- almonds, or any other nuts or seeds for topping
The black garlic used in the dish, gives it a beautiful sweet, tamarind like flavour. Together with a tasty home made vegetable stock, and a good big splash of white wine, it really gives a beautiful subtle flavour to the spelt.
💭 Cooking tips
Some people don't like the chewiness of spelt. I personally think it adds to the experience of this dish. However long you will cook the spelt grains, they will always remain slightly chewy. It will normally take 30-40 minutes to cook spelt.
You can choose to reduce all the liquid, by letting it continue to cook uncovered for the last 5 minutes. But serving it with some of the liquid is also delicious.
📖 FAQ , what is black garlic ?
Black garlic is made when heads of garlic are aged under specialized conditions of heat and humidity (not fermented). It was first used in Asian cuisine, but has now become popular in the USA and Europe.
The strong garlic flavour is completely softened after ageing. It produces a mild, almost caramel like flavour. You cannot substitute black garlic for white garlic. The flavour is incomparable. In general you will need to use a lot more black garlic then you would normally use regular garlic in a dish.
Black garlic can be eaten alone, in sauces, crushed in vegetables or you can make a vinaigrette with it. It has a very subtle flavour. You can kneed the black garlic into a paste, and dissolve it in a little bit of warm water. You can use this dark coloured water in a potato puree, or other neutral dishes.
Black garlic is used in many of the top-end cuisines.
Black garlic & spelt...
For me, black garlic is great to make spelt grains just a little bit more interesting. In this dish the spelt grain is the main ingredient, accompanied with the stir-fried broccoli.
But you can use black garlic spelt in many more ways. Sometimes I just sprinkle a little over roasted pumpkin (works wonders with pumpkin!), or I add just a little to a salad (as a topping). It is very particular in flavour and texture, and therefore more often used just as a accompaniment or topping instead of being used as a main ingredient in a dish.
You can make the black garlic spelt and keep it in the fridge for 4 - 5 days.
🍷 Wine pairing
I 'll keep it simple. This dish really just works best with a nice fruity young red. Think of a young fruity pinot noir, or a young gamay.
I hope you can find some black garlic in your local area, so you can start experimenting. It is such a beautiful subtle product to work with. Let me know what you came up with in the comments below, or add @haricoco1 to your instagram post.
📋 Recipe
Ingredients
- 200 gram 2 cups whole spelt grains
- 4 - 5 cloves of black garlic
- 500 ml 2 ¼ cups vegetable stock
- 100 ml ½ cup white wine
- 1 small broccoli head cut in small florets
- 2 sprigs of thyme
- handful of almonds or seeds toasted
- 2 Tablespoon sesame oil or other nut oil
- sea salt
Instructions
- Rinse the spelt grains very well under cold water.
- Add the 4 cloves of black garlic, sprigs of thyme, stock, and wine to the spelt and bring to the boil.
- Leave to simmer, covered, for 30-40 minutes, until the spelt is cooked (it will always still stay slightly chewy)
- When the spelt is ready, heat the sesame oil in a pan, and stir-fry the broccoli with a good pinch of coarse sea salt for about 5 minutes.
- Toast the almonds or seeds, and use them as topping over the broccoli.
Notes
As a topping you can use any of your favourite nuts, sunflower seeds, and/or pumpkin seeds.
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