Gruel To Be Kind

Porridge Purists Swear By The Steel-Cut Variety, But Your Body Will Thank You For A Bowl Of Quick Oats, Too. Just Don't Try Rolling Your Own

You have consumed too much drink, too much food, and far too much of your money--maybe all of it and some of the bank's too. Grave sins require serious penance. A hair shirt and some thin gruel, for instance?

But these are the days of penance lite. Gruel would be too brutal for our pampered souls; the hearty version, hot cereal, is the perfect apology to your stomach. (Try Rome for the hair shirt.) It's not low-carb--which, of course, is perversely satisfying, as sacrifice should be--but it is cheap and healthy. On the top of the list are oats, corn, and rice, which wondrously turn into porridge, grits, and congee, mushy forms of the staff of life.

All I know of congee is that it's good and a billion people wouldn't go without it. As for grits, there are legions who would fight for the Confederacy all over again if you threatened their supply, but, sad to say, grits are nearly impossible to find in Vancouver, raw or cooked. Besides, grits hardly count in an austerity program, since they are best with butter, lots of salt, eggs over easy, sausages, gravy, and even cheese. Oatmeal, on the other hand, defines austere: humble, bland, and cheap.

Which isn't to say that the "chief of Scotia's food" (according to Robbie Burns) doesn't incite passion and prideful boasting. While cooking for some archaeologists in Orkney, I discovered you can't mess with oatmeal, in the pot or in conversation. This is their food, and they don't care a hang that Samuel Johnson dismissed it as horse fodder. Actually, the ancient Greeks and Chinese ate an oat gruel as well, probably a savoury concoction cooked in a broth. So did and do the Danes, Romanians, and just about everybody else in the northern hemisphere. It is a grain that doesn't mind a bit of rain or a short growing season, which might explain why it trumps barley, wheat, and rye, all good candidates for hot cereal.

Porridge purists say the only kind of oatmeal worth the bother is steel-cut. This means the hulled oat, called the groat, has been chopped into pieces. They take longer to cook, about 40 minutes, and are chewier and nuttier in taste. You can get them at Famous Foods (1595 Kingsway) or Galloway's Specialty Foods (929 Denman Street). However, the most common are still rolled oats, the ones in the package with the guy in the nice hat. They are as their name suggests: the groat is steamed, then flattened and dried. Quick oats are chopped-up groats that have been steamed and rolled. Instant (with or without exploding dinosaurs) are dehydrated rolled oats.

More than likely the gruel Oliver Twist ate was steel-cut. However good, three times a day--even with the added bonus of an onion twice a week, as was the routine in his workhouse--would be too much of a good thing. Real-life workhouses didn't mention onions in their menus but begrudgingly added a bit of treacle and even milk when forced by social reforms in the late 1800s.

Even though they didn't know it, the poor folks were getting a source of soluble and insoluble fibre, which is just another way of saying they were kept regular and had happy colons. (Johnson obviously had a miserable colon.) Oatmeal also contains vitamins B1, B2, and E, and beta-glucan, a probiotic agent good for keeping blood-cholesterol levels low--virtuous food for the nutritionally pious.

You would expect a guy called Noel MacDonald to know something about porridge. He and his partner, Marg Meikle, and son Mac host Porridge for Parkinson's. Last month at their annual fundraiser they served 200 bowls to supporters. Cost? $10.81 for pots and pots of steel-cut oats. Their recipe is on their Web site (www.porridgeforparkinsons.com/), and you won't do better. But here is the critical piece: MacDonald says you have to stir the last 10 minutes with a spurtle, a stick made for just this purpose. Failing that, the handle of a wooden spoon will do. This gentle technique ensures a smooth texture. Another thing: cooking any oatmeal with a ratio of 3:1 water to milk makes a huge flavour difference.

But what really matters is what you put on top. Tree planters like maple syrup, homemade yogurt, toasted nuts, wheat germ, and fresh or dried fruit. But those Orkney archaeologists didn't challenge tradition; they had brown sugar, cream, and maybe some fruit compote.

For a bedtime snack they added whisky. But if you're truly contrite, try the onion.

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