There is a theory that there are no lucky and unlucky people in the world, that everyone makes their own luck. Lucky people do not win competitions, people who enter competitions win competitions. Well, I'm a sucker for them, ever since that first heady win of a Shakespeare Animated Stories video and book (Macbeth and Twelfth Night respectively) from my first ever entry with a successfully completed wordsearch, courtesy of The Young Telegraph (now sadly defunct, which is a shame, as I always really liked the cartoon lion and unicorn), I have entered competitions left, right and centre.
However, there was a rather lengthy dry spell after that first win - it basically lasted until I joined Twitter last year, but in that year, I have won EIGHT competitions. EIGHT. Seven of them have, to my delight, been food-related, and the king of the lot was this massive bounty of spelt products from Sharpham Park:
Just look at them all! The brownie, flapjack and shortbread biscuits were dealt with almost instantly (and those were definitely some of the best 'bought' shortbreads I've ever had), and the instant speltotto was a boon to have in the cupboard after a long day at my desk without having had time to go out and buy food. The three (three!) cereal products lasted a bit longer - the berry puffs took a bit of chewing, but the bran flakes were sublime. Phooey to Kellogg's. Then it was the turn of the raw spelt products - two bags of flour, one wholegrain, one 'artisan', and a packet of pearled spelt - and in a way, these have been the most interesting in terms of introducing me to spelt and what you can do with it. Which is basically anything.
I eased myself in with some baking, and as I wanted to try some recipes which specifically called for spelt flour, I turned to 'Scandilicious' by Signe Johansen, most of whose baking recipes seem to contain spelt. Ideal. Someone who has already done the testing for me. First came some birthday Valhalla brownies, rich with chocolate and gooey with booze-soaked dry cherries for a bit of tartness:
These tasted even better after a couple of days in the tin. Cor, look at that ooze in the middle and that proper brownie flaking on the top. None of that 'we've made a chocolate sponge cake and called it a brownie' nonsense.
Another Scandilicious recipe soon followed, this time it was plum muffins, or pluffins for short (Signe says it's ok to call them pluffins, I checked):
The thing I noticed here was that the pluffins took a little longer than specified to cook all the way through - now, this could have been the flour, or the juicy fruit, or those silicone muffin cases. I've been having loads of problems with those, and I've decided to ditch them - everything seems to have a subtle taste of rubber, which is not the nicest of cake flavours.
A soda bread recipe by Sophie Dahl got a look in, to use some of the wholemeal spelt flour for a change, and although I don't have a picture as it was snaffled up immediately, I can confirm that the flavour was superb. Again though, it could have done with a bit more time in the oven.
Now, savoury. Let's do this, with the help of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Veg Every Day', as he goes nuts for the stuff in there, mostly in its wholegrain, pearled form. I did a bit of an experiment with a bean and veg soup, which called for spelt or barley:
I used spelt one day (as in the picture) and then made exactly the same soup, but with barley, the next day: spelt won by a long shot. Not so much in terms of flavour, as both were delicious, but in terms of texture - the spelt was much lighter, filling but not heavy, while I struggled to finish the same quantity of barley.
The joy continued with a kale and goat's cheese speltotto:
Marginally quicker to cook than risotto, and with an autumnally nutty flavour.
However, the real tests have happened in the last week, where I substituted spelt flour where a recipe called for wheat flour. First was an apple and blackberry scrumble, which is basically a crumble but with a scone dough topping. No picture here, which was stupid of me, as it was just beautiful, all golden brown in the middle and with purple juices bubbling up around the edge. The taste was heaven too and again, the texture was a winner - a really light sponge that didn't sit in the stomach.
I fancied doing some Christmas baking at the weekend, got out the mincemeat and then realised it was still too early - I'm just not ready to commit yet, goddammit. So I eased myself into the season with some snickerdoodles from Nigella's 'Domestic Goddess' - she doesn't know why they're called that either, but they are sort of like oven-baked mini doughnuts:
Again, I think they could have baked them for a bit longer, so I think that is something to bear in mind when swapping wheat for spelt, but the flavour was really full and matched the cinnamon and nutmeg perfectly.
So, in short, spelt is ace, and if I could enter the lottery with a retweet, I might stand a chance of winning that too...
