26 Grains founder Alex Hely-Hutchinson on posh porridge and her debut cookbook

Meet the woman taking oat cuisine to new heights of hygge from her Neal's Yard café, says Katie Law
Haulin' oats: Alex Hely-Hutchinson, whose cookbook features recipes using 26 grains
Matt Writtle
Katie Law @jkatielaw7 September 2016

Alex “26 Grains” Hely-Hutchinson is London’s hottest food property. The champion of posh porridge started selling pre-soaked, slow-cooked, hot porridge pots two years ago from a pop-up stall in Old Street Tube station. Today she’s celebrating the publication of her first cookery book and is about to open a smart new café/shop on enlarged premises opposite The Barbary in Neal’s Yard. Both book and shop are called simply 26 Grains.

The name refers not to her age, although she is 26, but to the number of “ancient” grains and pseudo-grains, as she refers to ingredients such as amaranth and buckwheat, that she cooks with. If you fancy the idea of cinnamon and banana quinoa porridge, barley porridge with salted pear compôte, miso rice porridge with mango and hazelnuts or savoury kale porridge with fried eggs and a splash of sriracha hot sauce, she’s your gal.

“It’s an exciting way to cook,” she says. “Barley has real bounce and taste. Quinoa is exciting for all its colours and different levels of nuttiness and there are endless varieties of rice.”

Her love affair with oat cuisine began in Copenhagen, where she spent a year studying and learned just how much the Danes love their grains. While they tend to use them in innovative, exciting ways, the English love porridge because of its nostalgic connotations, she thinks. “When I started, everyone would come up and say, ‘When I was little I remember my dad giving me a silver spoon with cream and salty oats’, and that influenced how I played with the recipes. It wasn’t about being gimmicky, it was continuing something and improving it.”

Make-up-free and wearing a perfectly crumpled cream linen romper suit, she’s as natural and wholesome-looking as the organic oats she rolls and flakes herself “to create that perfect juicy but soft texture.”

Her signature recipes are emphatically not from the salt-and-water-only school. They’re indulgent and include spices, salt flakes, homemade fruit compôtes and blitzed nut butters topped with swirls of maple syrup or coconut palm sugar. A bowlful at 26 Grains costs £5.60-£6.

She rejects the idea of excluding food groups apart from highly refined wheat and sugar. “I want food to be simple and delicious. I haven’t got any food intolerances but I’m a stickler for using the best ingredients in season. You don’t need to beat yourself up because you haven’t had maca today — it can be a tomato with olive oil and salt, which is healthy and tastes good,” she says. “At first all I got asked was: ‘Is this dairy-free?’, ‘Is this gluten-free?’, ‘Is this sugar-free?’ Gluten-free was definitely a trend but I think that was of its time and people ask fewer questions now.”

26 Grains: spelt with parsley almond pesto, cherry tomatoes and parmesan
26 Grains

Still, she’s sympathetic to anyone with an allergy, like her friend Ella Mills. There’s a quote from Mills on the cover of the 26 Grains book calling the food “absolutely delicious”.

“When I first met Ella she was very tired and had postural tachycardia syndrome. I hadn’t realised what a proper allergy could be but seeing her so ill for so long made me see how you can use food to help you feel better.”

Hely-Hutchinson also admires the way the Deliciously star, who is still only 25, has stayed true to her goals. “It’s easy to lose your values when you’re so young and everyone’s telling you what you should do with your business.”

Alex Hely-Hutchinson's love affair with oat cuisine began in Copenhagen
Matt Writtle

Her own publisher, Square Peg, part of Penguin Random House, tried to persuade her to include a juice recipe, even though “I hardly drink juice and a lot of juice companies have gone out of business.” She won.

Others advised her to turn her unctuous melt-in-the-mouth concoctions into profitable takeaway dry porridge pots. “But it doesn’t translate,” she says. Inevitably there are some people who’ve spotted her potential and want her to “grow, grow, grow”. But, she insists, “I’m in the place I always wanted to get to.”

2016 cookbooks

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She owns her business, has never had outside investment and raised £15,000 on Kickstarter to pay the first three months’ deposit on her first shop. She pays herself a modest £1,000 a month. Educated at Benenden School in Kent before reading economics at Trinity Dublin, Hely-Hutchinson is the middle child of five siblings. Her father is an investment banker who makes his own bread while her mother teaches Montessori at a local school near the family home in East Sussex. Her family are a big support. “My older sister did the photography for the book, my little sister works for me and my little brother has done the odd Saturday.”

She lives in Hackney, off foodie-centric Chatsworth Road, with one of her brothers and loves to eat out with her web developer boyfriend Dom. Favourites spots include My Neighbours the Dumplings, Violet Cakes and Hoppers, although, “I don’t go to that many more than once, because there’s not that much time or money.”

While she was in Copenhagen, Hely-Hutchinson also cottoned on to “hygge”, the Danish concept of cosiness currently doing the rounds here — at least a dozen books with “hygge” in the title are being published this autumn.

“It’s not something you can strive towards, it’s something you realise with hindsight, when you’ve spent time with an old friend and didn’t think about it until you got home and thought it was great. Mine is definitely about sharing food, coming together, hearing the familiar voices in the kitchen while I’m cooking. For me, food is the ultimate ‘hygge’.”

26 Grains, by Alex Hely-Hutchinson (Square Peg, £20) is available from September 8, 2016

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