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John o’ groats: Working through a glut of groats

It was time to set about eroding the groat glut. But how?

The oat bloke sent through notification of imminent cereal dispatch. Hold up, I said. I have 6kg of your fabulous groats in the pantry, enough to fill a wading pool with gruel. Can we put that next shipment on hold?

The regular reader (thanks, darling) will recall my proselytising on the subject of porridge, oats, groats and hand-rolled, just-in-time cereal. As part of a balanced diet that includes statins and blood pressure medicine, oats are the key to eternal life. The thing is, what with travel and hot weather seasoned with a generous drizzle of laziness, porridge and bircher muesli just haven’t been happening. And late last year, having tried a brand of groats – Dad’s Oats – at just the time my regular supplier had gone to seed, I signed up to a kind of $49 groat subscription. Unfortunately, instead of a bag a month, I got most of their annual harvest at once.

It was time to set about eroding the groat glut without having to make crumbly desserts, worthy nutrition drinks, sweet health bars and other things that belong in school lunches. Not my bag.

From Eataly: Contemporary Italian Cooking came an oat and chickpea soup, using whole oats and basic vegetables, a peasant dish if ever there was one. On the flip side, avant-garde San Franciscan chef Daniel Patterson includes in his lovely (and ambitious) Coi a recipe for carrots roasted in rolled oats, honey, ground chicory root and coffee beans. That should use a few up, expensively. And as soon as I can land some smoked mackerel, I’ll take a stab at Molly Brown’s mackerel and oat fishcakes (Grains: The Definitive Guide). Oily fish and oats? Can it get any better?

Scottish oatcakes, to go with cheese, are a sensible inclusion in Nick Haddow’s excellent Milk Made, a definitive cheese book for Australia. Oatcakes are about as Scottish as the sgian-dubh, but the recipe I liked most was from the reliable, avuncular Englishman Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in River Cottage A to Z: cheddar and onion oatcakes. These things are so delicious, sweet and savoury at the same time, easier than changing lanes without indicating and really good for you.

I’ll walk over broken glass for real English cheddar (Montgomery’s, if you get the chance) but all we had in the fridge was decent Reggiano and what we call chook cheese: cheap muck ideal for luring chickens back to their house at night. They formed an unlikely cocktail. (Coles’ Extra Reserve Cheddar is fantastic value for money, btw.)

First you roll 200g of groats in your hand roller; put half into a food processor and blitz into a coarse, flour-like oatmeal. Add a very finely diced onion (red, brown, it doesn’t matter), about 75g of grated cheese, good salt and ground black pepper. Form a well at the centre, add most of 100ml of full cream milk and, with your hands, work into a sticky dough. Add the balance of the milk if it needs it.

Roll into a ball, rest for a while, roll out on a floured surface to the thickness you like, cut into biscuit rounds and cook at 160°C (fan) for 30 minutes. Flip and give them another 5-10 minutes. Could it be any easier? I made a batch for the week and they were all gone by dinner time. Curse of the home office. But I am getting through the glut. One biscuit at a time.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/john-o-groats-working-through-a-glut-of-groats/news-story/8ba4cc51bb35810947757549e8cf065d