Farro lacks essential amino acids, particularly lysine, and by coupling it with legumes rich in these substances such lack is compensated. You can cook it with just about anything (ideal with vegetables) and can be utilized in most dishes in place of pasta or rice. Almost all thick soups, until the beginning of last century (when pasta was not yet used), were cooked with cereals and among them farro always constituted the richest and most appreciated. It was also utilized for cakes, pies and other concoctions, what follows is an interesting recipe from the old book “il panunto Toscano”of Francesco Gaudenzio, a gesuit monk born in Florence April 12 1648, a known gourmand who moved from convent collecting local recipes and who finally compiled a volume that he himself described as “opus in which it is shown the ease of modern cuisine at little expense.”

RECIPE: FARRO SOUP

Clean it with care and wash it in lukewarm water: for ten people just shy of one and a half bowls, place to cook with a medium fate broth: keep adding broth little by little and ensure you stir it now and then with a wooden spoon and take care that it boils very gently and without flame, and the longer it will take in cooking, the better, you ought to insure, though, that it boils for at least three and one half hours, and when you will feel that it is cooked, throw in a frying pan a bit of lard, very thin and fresh and let it gently melt, and then pour it into the farro, and at the end add eggs and sweet cheese and maybe a little vinegar for color, you can, before pouring the condiment, pass it through a sieve and then add the other ingredients as we mentioned with the only variant being just add the egg yolks, and if you want, before cooking the farro, you can place it in a mortar with little water, and pound it, when dairy products are available, you can cook it with milk and sugar and at Christmas eve with a paste of almonds or pine nuts or walnuts or hazel nuts and it will always help to add a little sugar, after straining it if you wish make a cake by adding egg yolks, grated cheese or sweet cheese with sugar and spices, you will then place it in a cake pan that has been greased at the bottom, and you will bake it in the oven to come out with a crust as in the meat or butter pie. Caution must be exercised when buying the so called “whole wheat pasta” or “farro pasta”, since you may not be told the exact proportion of farro has a surprising taste, it is pasta of dark color that, besides being extremely flavorful, it holds its firmness so that you can taste it unaltered even several hours after straining it. This type of pasta never becomes sticky, has an intense and distinct flavor, it is so good that you can enjoy it with just a little dab of butter or a few drops of raw olive oil, and it affords you those healthy properties already described. Be prepared to pay a higher price for farro pasta.