Farro with garlic-roasted tomatoes and edamame

Farro is one of my favorite grains to eat.  I love its nuttiness and chewiness.  I find it's a grain that's easy for so many to love because it's not quite so chewy and hard - like wheat berries (which I personally also love), for instance.  Its firm yet still familiar texture makes it a great component/accompaniment to salads, soups, stews, and so many other dishes.

I like mixing up our default brown rice with farro for dinner and making it a focal point of the meal by making farro risotto, too.  It's pretty easy to add farro (and other whole grains you enjoy) into your meals.  I especially love grain salads, particularly in the summertime when seasonal vegetables are plentiful (though roasted root vegetables are always nice, too).  

I'm always happy to check out farro recipes and I really liked one I saw from Cooking Light last December.  I adapted the recipe some but the main idea was having roasted grape or cherry tomatoes as a basis for the dish.  I love to roast grape tomatoes.  I typically roast a big batch of them with garlic to toss with pasta but why not do something a little different and mix it up with some farro instead.

And boy, this is one of those so-simple yet so-tasty little dishes.  I'm thinking it's a great side for summer barbecues but whenever I make something like this, I want to make a whole meal out of it all on its own because it's just so tasty.  

I played around with the recipe a little but it starts with roasting some grape or cherry (I used grape) tomatoes with garlic until they're just soft and somewhat crinkly, not so far that they are totally broken down into a sauce.  You want to soften and draw out the sweet-tart flavor of the tomatoes while keeping much of the structure intact.

I wanted to add a little more substance and color to the dish so I added edamame. It's one of those things I always have in the freezer because it bulks up so many dishes so well.  Here, it adds color and a complimentary texture to the farro.  It also couldn't be easier to include since I just plop them for a few minutes in the boiling water that I then used to cook the farro in.

Speaking of the farro, I use Trader Joe's quick-cooking farro, which cooks in about 10-12 minutes.  It's another must for my pantry.  Whatever you use, keep an eye on it and cook the farro until it just begins to bloom - avoid overcooking it so you're sure to get a nice chewy bite from the nutty grain.

To bring all the components together - the roasted grape tomatoes, the farro and edamame - is a little sherry vinegar, along with salt and pepper.  A small handful of chopped toasted walnuts finishes it off.  Please don't skip the walnuts, and do toast the nuts first!  The walnuts bring out the grain's nutty chewiness so well and toasting the nuts is an effort that produces a huge payoff in flavor.  

I'd be happy to have this in my refrigerator every day!
  

What's for dinner

Every once in a while, I'm reminded that given the right fresh ingredients, simple food can be the best food.  A few weeks ago, I took a break from all the sweets and posted some of my favorite pasta dishes.  I mentioned a dish with roasted tomatoes I made and just loved late last summer after picking some grape tomatoes fresh from the vine.  I recently made this for dinner and while it's such a simple thing, I wanted to post it here in case you're looking for an easy dinner idea.  It's so simple and so good.

I picked these tomatoes up at the local market.  Admittedly, they're not as good as the pick-it-yourself variety but it's still a delicious option this time of year.  If you see grape tomatoes on the vine for picking at your local farm, load 'em up!  Also, if you can get your hands on the yellow variety (which are a bit sweeter), I very highly recommend a mixture of red and yellow grape tomatoes for this dish.

All I do is roast these tomatoes in the oven with some olive oil, crushed garlic, salt & pepper (and basil if you have it) for about 45 minutes.  It will make the kitchen smell amazing.  Toss in some pasta and it's time for a hearty and delicious dinner.