Working on the Local Thing

Farro Salad



I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and I have to say that I found it inspiring. Her mantra “Eat Locally” is like an earworm, making me read those obnoxious stickers on produce to see where its from and get up early on Saturday mornings to shop at the Hastings Farmer’s Market. And that’s not all bad. I’m not really complaining here. I’m just glad I’m reading it now instead of back in the ‘80’s. I’d be digging up the back yard to plant squash and looking into raising goats. I was highly impressionable and full of zeal.

Now I embrace Julia Child’s attitude about moderation, and that’s why I could prepare my favorite farro salad for dinner last night.

The salad is problematic for “localvores” unless you live in both Italy and Spain; you see I have only been able to find farro made in Italy and Manchego cheese made in Spain. But I compensated by getting the red peppers at the local farmer’s market and the basil even closer – my own backyard. I can live with that trade off for now.

Farro, by the way, is a nutty grain. The internet tells me that it was the staple of the Roman Legions. Wikipedia says that it’s also known as Emmer Wheat and that it was one of the first domesticated crops.

I adapted this recipe from one in the beautiful Zuni Café Cookbook by Judy Rogers.

Here’s how to make it:

1C farro
1 Red pepper, diced – a bit bigger than the farro*
2/3 C Manchego cheese, diced — a bit bigger than the farro
1/4 C fresh basil en chiffonade (shredded)**
3-4 T Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Boil about 3 cups of water in a med. saucepan. Add a few pinches of salt.

Add I C farro to the boiling water. Cook for 10 – 15 minutes until somewhat tender, but not too firm.

Drain cooked farro, as you would pasta, and then spread it out on a baking sheet to cool.

When the grain is cool, combine red pepper, cheese, and basil in a large bowl. Add olive oil, a tablespoon at a time (while gently tossing the salad) until everything is thinly and evenly coated. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I will eat this salad anytime, even for breakfast! But now that I’ve read the Kingsolver I would feel badly to purchase basil in February. I’m not saying that I won’t ever, but I’d feel really badly.



*Rogers’ recipe calls for tomatoes. I’ve also used roasted red peppers when I’m not in a hurry.
** A chiffonade is done by stacking all of the basil leaves on top of each other, rolling them up like some kind of strange cigar, and then slicing thin thin horizontal cuttings (say, from the tip to the base).

Holy Basil

I was saved by basil tonight.

As I was driving us home from the airport at 6:30 pm, I realized that dinner had to be made as soon as I stepped foot in the house. All of us were starving not only for food but for the delight of sitting around our own table with a real meal made just for us. You see, we had been on vacation for just over two weeks, the last week or so visiting national parks in Wyoming.

We weren't roughing it by any means. We stayed in little cottages and a beautiful inn while traipsing through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. No little camp stove dehydrated meals. But we still had to reckon with cafeterias and the potential icky quality of food prepared for masses.

So the stakes were high as I cruised along the Van Wyck Expressway. I didn't want to take the time to stop at the store to buy ingredients, and I certainly did not want to eat out. And then I remembered that little planter box of basil that I planted in May.

The first graders at my school sold their little seedlings for 25 cents a pop, and I planted two of them along with some tarragon and some rosemary just outside my kitchen door. Would the basil still be okay?

Thanks to some incredibly conscientious neighbors the plants had grown about half a foot since we left. They were full of gorgeous dark green leaves just waiting to be picked. I found some pinenuts in the fridge (toasted them), chopped up in the cuisinart the last edible pieces of some parmesan, added the nuts, a bit of salt, a bit of garlic, and about 20 basil leaves. A few whirrs later with some olive oil streamed in and I had some pretty magnificent pesto.

Luckily I had a couple of half boxes of spaghetti that were all about the same size. Voilà! Pasta with Pesto.

Dinner was ready in about 20 minutes. Afterwards we watched a slideshow of our vacation photos from iphoto, and I think we were each a bit ambivilent about having left our hiking adventures behind. The memories of the cafeterias paled with the reminder of Old Faithful, the enormous moose grazing by the side of the road, and the mud pots boiling up from the earth.



Thank you basil, for being the most sublime herb of summer.
And thank you neighbors for tending after our garden while we were gone.