Author: Luigi Guarino

Greetings from Nairobi. I’m here for a week’s rest and relaxation, which does not of course preclude blogging! Anyway, what I wanted to write about has nothing to do with Kenya. Or at least I don’t think buckwheat — our subject this evening — is grown here. It all started a week back when I went up to Lucca, near Pisa, for the weekend. That included a lot of eating, of course, and one of the dishes that particularly struck me was a main course composed of a thin tortilla-type thing, folded up, and filled with a nice sauce. I can’t remember the name of the dish, but the tortilla was made of “grano Saraceno,” according to the menu. I hadn’t heard the name, but a little snooping confirmed it to be buckwheat. A rarish crop in Italy, but nevertheless the basis of some interesting traditional recipes. Now, I knew a little about buckwheat, but next to nothing about its nutritious relative, Tartar(y) buckwheat. And I certainly didn’t know that there’s an easily de-hulled variety of this crop called rice-tartary which promises to be a boon to breeders. Nor that you can emasculate the flowers with hot water, which could also be useful if you’re trying to make crosses. I should eat out more.