The other white wheat Kamut gaining acceptance among pasta snobs
by Ari LeVaux
At a fancy restaurant in Rome, recently, I found myself debating the existence of Kamut pasta with Maureen Fant, an authority on the subject. I was not winning.
Fant is an American-born food writer who has lived most of her life in Rome and recently co-wrote the award-winning book Sauces & Shapes: Cooking Pasta the Italian Way. Her husband, a lifelong Roman, is a fan of my home state of Montana. He ogled photos of elk on my phone while Fant squinted at my story of how a Montana farmer resurrected the ancient grain that is now branded as Kamut.
Starting with a few very large grains of wheat that were supposedly stolen from an Egyptian tomb during World War II, the farmer, Bob Quinn, grew and multiplied the seed. Now marketed as Kamut, it was identified as khorosan wheat, an ancient large-grained variety.
“I’ve heard Kamut pasta is really good,” I concluded. “It’s widely available in the U.S., and supposedly quite popular in Italy.”
Her husband was fascinated with this Montana Kamut. She shook her head. “There’s no such thing,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“If it’s pasta, it’s made with grano duro,” she explained, grano duro being Italian for durum wheat. “I don’t doubt that you can make noodles out of that grain, but it won’t be pasta.”
As I munched a piece of crispy cod dipped in chickpea sauce, I discreetly checked Wikipedia on my phone and confirmed that yes, Kamut pasta does too exist. I told her as much, and about how one of the bistros we passed en-route to the restaurant advertised “Kamut Pasta” on its specials board.
“But we wouldn’t eat at any of those places,” she said.
You can imagine how it went, a few days later, when I attempted to convince Fant that vegan, egg-free mayo is actually a form of real mayonnaise and superior to the version that contains eggs.
Traditional recipes can be vessels of history as much as flavor, and you don’t want to mess with history. But on the other hand, if all the evidence will be destroyed when the dishes are done, maybe it’s OK if you slip a little guanciale in the puttanesca? To me, it comes down to performance. If it performs correctly in my mouth, it’s the real deal.
A truffled chunk of porchetta arrived, and performed correctly in my mouth. Her husband asked if we have wild pigs in Montana.
“It’s one of the most dangerous animals to hunt,” I said. Some will attack and eat you if they can, which is why a lot of pig hunters carry semi-automatic weapons. But no, we don’t have wild pigs in Montana, because the grizzlwould devour them all.
He said something in Italian that I think translates loosely to “mamma mia.” I decided to quit butting heads with his wife and learn what I could.
The other crucial thing to know when buying pasta, she explained, is how it was dried. “Most pasta is dried in ovens; you don’t want that. It has to dry slowly.”
Back in my hotel room, I examined the bags of Gladiatore brand pasta I’d picked up near the coliseum. They included an assortment of multicolored ribbons and wheels and squiggly tubes. It was made with grano duro of course, but none of the packaging mentioned how slowly the pasta had been dried.
I took a walk to a grocery store, where I found slow-dried pasta, including a bag of fregola sarda, multi-colored balls of pasta that look like sugary cereal.
I returned home with an enhanced understanding of what pasta “should” taste like. And by these refined standards, that slow-dried, grano duro pasta I brought home was amazing.
But the Eden Brand Kamut fusilli that I picked up at my grocery store, on the other hand, not so much. The noodles were grainy and hard to cook al dente, going straight from crunchy to soggy. It was indeed tough to acknowledge their existence. But this disappointment did not quite close the book on Kamut pasta.
That fusilli was made with whole wheat flour, rather than flour made from semolina, which is made from just part of the wheat grain. The whole wheat version may be healthier, and some people may appreciate its coarseness, but a whole wheat noodle won’t perform the way a semolina one does.
I was able to find some Italian Kamut semolina noodles online – fusilli-shaped, no-less – at igourmet.com. This pasta, made by Monograno Felicetti, is purported to have been slow-dried in the fresh air of the Dolomite mountains.
The blurb proclaimed khorosan wheat to be an ancestor of modern wheat and that, “During cooking, it releases scents of white flowers and freshly peeled fruit. Its flavor is a combination of pine and macadamia nuts with hints of edible flowers.”
Take that, wine nerds.
While the noodles were in transit, I learned something interesting. Khorosan wheat is actually the same species as grano duro. They are both Triticum turgidum, but Khorosan wheat is subspecies turanicum, while grano duro is subspecies durum. Kamut is about as close to being grano duro as you can get. Every other type of wheat you’ve likely heard of, including common bread wheat and specialized varieties like spelt, are different species altogether.
The noodles arrived. Side by side trials were conducted. The Kamut semolina noodles held their own against the top slow-dried noodles from Rome. They were durable enough to allow plenty of al dente gradations between crunchy and soggy. Tasting one every few minutes from a kettle of boiling water, I was able to find the balance between chewy and soft. And when I spaced out and basically doubled the recommended cooking time, the noodles hung in admirably, without becoming too starchy or soggy. The flavor was mildly sweet and nutty, though I somehow missed the edible flowers.
The Gladiatore brand, meanwhile – which was made with grano duro but not slow-dried – was decent, but inferior. Point taken on the importance of slow-drying. Ditto for the grano duro. But, with all due respect, Kamut pasta does exist.