Luciano Mignolli
pp. 64, f.to 12×16,5, 2012
ISBN 978-88-6550-129-0
€ 5
After having forgot it for centuries, it has now been rediscovered and is considered a real ‘gift’ of nature by refined and demanding food connoisseurs.
Realistically, this precious and ancient cereal has always been cultivated, even if only in small and spread out farms that never reached an extension of more than 500 hectares, used mainly for tasty traditional recipes of the Garfagnana, pride of many restaurants of the Lucca area (spelt and beans, spelt soup, spelt stuffed peppers, ricotta cake with spelt).
The rediscovery of spelt has French origins, in the last twenty years they have produced this ancient ‘wheat’ in the Alta Savoia to be sold to famous restaurants beyond the Alps, that used it for vegetable and cereal soups and for crusty specialities.
Spelt is the ‘ancestor’ of all the kinds of wheat we know today and has been the basic nourishment for many Mediterranean and Asiatic populations for more than 2000 years.
In the last five centuries, other kinds of ‘modern’ cereals that progressively yielded always more product were used. Spelt can yield six times less for a hectare than wheat and must be threshed intact, for this reason it must be husked (like rice) and the quantity of the product is reduced by 50%.
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