Mio Farro

It's tomato time again. One has to do one's best to glom in all the stomach can hold before they disappear in the chill of October: the heirlooms, the cheery cherries, the sun ripened that have cracks where the stem meets the fruit. One has to do one's best to let them ripen on the counter and never put them in the fridge until they're almost too soft to use. Only keep and eat a tomato at room temperature if you want to truly taste it.

So what to do right now?  I've provided plenty of recipes in the past including the great Italian bread and basil salad, Panzanella, tomato pie and in my How to Fix a Leek book the famed gazpacho. The traditional, yet unbeatable true Greek salad--farmers' salad to the Greeks-- is just luscious tomatoes chunked with equally chunked cucumber, green bell pepper, thin quarter moons of red onion (optional), kalamata olives pitted or not, and chunks of fresh feta cheese (I sometimes substitute great local goat cheese)--all dressed with good olive oil and a squirt of fresh lemon juice, Salt and pepper of course. Summer doesn't seem fresher than that. 

But I've been playing with mint lately and had to make a dinner party salad the other night and came up with this winner: Farro with Tomatoes and Mint.   For about 8 people (6 with leftovers is good), I cooked 1 c farro according to package instructions. While it was boiling, I chunked up 4 medium very ripe heirloom tomatoes (I'm foolish for Brandwines), and very thinly sliced a small farmers' market red onion into disks which I halved. I halved two small/medium pickling cucumbers, halved them again and sliced them into the mix. I diced 1/2 a medium green bell pepper and once it was in, I tossed in a handful of whole but pitted Kalamata olives plus 1/4 c drained capers. By now I could remove the farro from heat, drain and cold water rinse it. I tossed this into the salad mix, blending everything as evenly as possible. Then I chopped up about 1/2 c fresh parsley leaves--in this case curly parsley, and 1/3 c fresh mint leaves. Into the wooden bowl these went followed by plenty of freshly ground black pepper and good sea salt. The addition of the bright green herbs made the salad vividly eye catching. I dressed it with good fruity olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar, I'd say a ratio of 3 oil to 1 vinegar.

It was a fabulous foil to a lamb and date tagine. I just had the remainder for a refreshing summer lunch.

Using farro likely contrasts with the whole no gluten craze currently in progress. I have celiac friends for whom gluten and wheat are seriously deadly but they are few and far between the panicked legions looking for some excuse to explain why they don't feel well. I had this discussion earlier this week. Here's a gist: farro, if you buy the real Italian stuff, is the berry of a very old emmer wheat whose genetics haven't yet been messed with in Italy the way industrialists have rebred and rebred our American wheat have more and more gluten to withstand all the processing. So it's healthier.

Secondarily, there is a growing body of evidence that all those who feel holier and purer and healthier avoiding all gluten are actually feeling that way because by avoiding gluten they've simply cut back substantially on the normal American carb overload. Too much of anything is a bad thing where food is involved.