After the Feast Days - Eat Farro!

 For Italians the New Year does not truly begin on January 1st, but on the 7th, the day after the Epiphany, when after weeks of over-eating and indulgences, the good china can go back in the breakfront, the Christmas linens back in the trunk, and all the New Year’s resolutions for dieting can, finally, necessarily be honored.  For the most earnest, the New Year’s diet may begin with a detoxicating fast.

“Detoxification” is as much of a buzz word in Italy as it is in the States, with all the magazines touting the cleansing advantages of drinking green tea, juice of green apples, aloe vera, and especially the kind of probiotics that fill the refrigerator sections of grocery stores in the almost thimble-sized yogurt-drinks, served medicinally rather than as food, with a variety of other additives like guarana and ginsing added to give extra oomph.

The less ambitious dieter, for whom the digiuno or fast is impossible, will look for super foods to help their bodies find new eating-equilibrium. Artichokes are known to clean the livers and are abundant in winter season. A soup of artichokes and curry is a popular feast-season antidote, but eating the vegetable steamed or stuffed or fried satisfies some people more. More popular still and certainly more substantial are the more hearty, soul-warming soups made from spelt or farro, as it’s called in Italian—soups so thick and delectable one can diet without feeling the least bit deprived. Zuppa di farro/Spelt soup certainly ranks among winter favorites for Italians.

Spelt is a staple in central Europe where it is traditionally known as a peasant food—because of its abundance, low cost and nutritional value. Genetically it is a hybrid of ordinary wheat and wild goat grass, has a higher protein content but lower gluten content than wheat, and so can be tolerated by some people who cannot tolerate wheat in their diets (though is not gluten-free or appropriate for those with Celiac’s disease). Though spelt was introduced in the United States in the 1890s, one rarely finds it available in the American supermarket, though the health food industry has reintroduced the possibilities of spelt’s health-benefits to Americans and the grain can readily be found in health specialty stores.

Farro can be added to vegetable soups in the way barley is added—whole, to offer more substance and to balance proteins. More delicate soups require that the farro be ground, not quite as fine as polenta (though in Umbria especially a polenta of farro is popular), but sprecate, in tiny pieces, more like American grits, that cook up into thick gruel-like soup. For a simple soup, the ground farro is cooked with a beef or vegetable broth, tomatoes and garlic. Sausage is often added to make it especially savory. It’s the kind of soup a spoon will stand straight up in—that thickens even more as it cools, and fills the belly, though the calorie content is modest and the nutritional value high.

Zuppa di Farro can be found among primi piatti on virtually any Italian menu, as can, in summer months, an insalata di Farro that usually consists of whole farro, olives, carrots, cherry tomatoes and chunks of pecorino cheese. But the farro grain is not confined to these traditional dishes.

Nowadays, in the wake of concerns about refined carbohydrates and sensitivities to gluten, even mainstream Italian food stores promote breads, pastas, breakfast cereals and crackers made of farro. Virtually everyone overeats during the holidays and some people even put on a few pounds, but even post-season dieting can be a culinary adventure and satisfy the palette.  Try una bella zuppa!

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