(FORTUNE Magazine) – Move over, jellied eels and Cornish pasties. British cuisine may soon include straw. SkyWay Technology, a small engineering company in the north of England, has devised a method to grind the stubble left in the fields after wheat and barley harvests and plans to sell the resultant fiber- and protein-rich powder to makers of such foods as bread, pasta, cereals -- even health snacks. SkyWay discovered straw's culinary possibilities while searching for alternatives to burning the stubble, a tradition that EC pollution laws now ban. The company's experimental straw-processing machine, based on technology developed in Italy for making pasta, mixes in an enzyme to make the flourlike substance more palatable. Carolyn Punter, food technologist at SkyWay, is still fine-tuning the mix but confidently predicts, ''It will taste like muesli.'' Skyway hopes food makers will start buying next year. Longer term, the company would like to apply the technology to sorghum and millet, which are both found in poor countries. Says managing director Mike Davis: ''We believe we've got something that will not only turn millions of tons of waste straw into food, but prove a valuable weapon against famine.''