FORT KENT, Maine — Every day Amit Chhabra is surrounded by some of the best pastries to be found in Jalandhar, his hometown in India’s Punjab state.
In his family’s bakery he prepares and bakes cakes, breads, cookies and other delicacies — none of which he can eat because of a gluten intolerance. But thanks to some internet research and a lucky discovery of a northern Maine farm, Chhabra is able to enjoy some of his favorite Indian dishes, albeit with a distinctly Acadian twist.
Chhabra, 35, was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2010 and told to avoid gluten, in addition several other foods that were causing allergic reactions.
“By mid-2012 I had tried all the gluten-free flours available in India,” Chhabra said via email. “Since all of these were pre-mixes with multiple ingredients, I realized that I would be much safer shifting to single-ingredient foods.”
After eliminating numerous items, Chhabra said his grain options were down to two: quinoa and buckwheat, neither of which was readily available in his country.
During his online research, Chhabra said he stumbled upon an article about prominent buckwheat growers in the United States, which included a section on Bouchard Family Farms of Fort Kent. He then spent some time trying buckwheat from growers around the world, including the Fort Kent grain.
“Once I tried the Bouchard’s buckwheat flour, it didn’t take me much time to realize that this was the one I wanted. Soon I had completely switched over to this flour,” he said.
Chhabra said Bouchard’s buckwheat is the only flour — and one of the few foods — he’s never had an allergic reaction to.
“I have no idea what the Bouchard family does — or does not do — with their buckwheat that makes me never react to it,” he said. “But I am extremely thankful for it.”
What the family does, according to Janice Bouchard, is take special care to assure the naturally — and now certified — gluten-free grain stays that way from field to mill to storage and packaging.
“We have our own mill and only mill our own buckwheat in there,” Bouchard said. “It’s right here on the farm, and we do not allow any wheat, oats or other grains in that building at all so there is never a chance of cross-contamination.”
The Bouchards don’t mill their entire fall harvest at once, choosing instead to mill small batches as orders come in to preserve as much of the grain’s fresh taste as possible.
Chhabra discovered the Bouchards in 2013 and has been getting regular shipments from the the farm ever since, first by way of his cousin who lives in the U.S. but more recently directly from the farm.
“I send out six 3-pound bags about once a month,” Janice Bouchard said this week as she finished packing up an order for Chhabra. “I have to double bag it in plastic bags because it is going on a long trip.”
For Chhabra, all that extra effort the Bouchards take to raise their buckwheat means a grain that is not only safe to eat but one that he enjoys.
“For me, [Bouchard’s buckwheat] had just the right nuttiness and the perfect combination of flavor and texture [and] their flour has a distinctive freshness to it, lacking in other flours I tried,” he said. “But I would be dishonest if I said that I keep on getting it because of its deliciousness [because] with the Indian currency being very weak compared to the U.S. dollar and the high rates of international shipping, it becomes simply too expensive for an Indian to afford just for the taste.”
It costs about $100 to ship the buckwheat to India, or about 6,600 Indian Rupees.
Chhabra uses the buckwheat to prepare traditional recipes, including the Indian flatbreads Roti and Chapati.
“While generally roti is made by using a small amount of water to wheat flour and kneading the dough,” he said. “We add mashed potatoes instead of water to the buckwheat flour so that the starch in the potatoes provides the necessary binding.”
The buckwheat also works well for making Poora — the Indian version of ployes — along with pakoras, which is vegetables dipped in batter and fried in oil.
“Did I mention how much my 4-year-old daughter loves the buckwheat roti?” Chhabra said. “Not only does she like it way more than the wheat-flour roti, my little picky eater relishes it even more than her candies and chocolates.”
The Bouchards plant and harvest around 200 acres in buckwheat annually and are perhaps best known for the packages of ploye mix — the traditional Acadian flatbread made of buckwheat and white flour with just the right amount of baking powder to make it light and airy. The prepared mix makes preparing the pancake-like bread a snap for those not brought up on secret family ploye recipes.
“The ploye mix used to be 80 percent of our business and selling straight buckwheat flour the other 20 percent,” Bouchard said. “But in the last couple of years, that has really flip-flopped with more and more people being told to stay away from gluten.”
They sell the buckwheat and ploye mix throughout New England in Hannaford grocery stores and in specialty food shops. The family also sells the grain online and regularly ships it out to customers around the country.
Recipes using buckwheat in general — and Bouchard’s grains in particular — are starting to pop up in cookbooks in the states, including “Against the Grain,” by Nancy Cain and published by Clarkson Potter.
“We are getting more inquiries all the time for our buckwheat thanks to the cookbooks and more people looking for healthy alternatives to wheat,” Bouchard said. “We have enough [grain] storage here on the farm to store buckwheat for five years, [but] that does not seem to be something we need to do.”
