Roasted Garlic and Tomato Farro!

I have had a bag of farro in my cupboard for a long time – it’s an “ancient grain” that lives in the same aisle of the grocery store as the rice and quinoa. It has a lot of fiber and protein, and was a favorite of my grad school buddy M, who was vegetarian and always looking for something hearty to supplement his diet. I made one farro salad for a party, but I still have community-garden garlic and the last dregs of the tomato plants, so I thought I’d try this out. I got inspired by this recipe I found on Pinterest, which seemed to mix some of my favorite earthiest flavors and obviously, this blog has been all tomatoes all the time lately.

The key, I realized, was that if my tomatoes were already swimming in water (last canned batch of tomatoes had a lot of excess liquid), I might as well prepare the farro in the tomato juices, rather than separately in water. It worked like a charm – I prepared the farro in the juices according to the directions on the farro package, and soon I had big, thick kernels that looked a bit like that cereal “sugar smacks” if you remember it from your childhood. My grandfather ate it all the time, which was definitely not as healthy as eating farro but does make me endeared to the idea.

In the end, just a little garlic and salt were all the chewy kernels and various-sized tomatoes needed. I used it alongside a shrimp scampi I’ll post later, but it didn’t need oil or a lot of fancy spicing – the combination of home canned tomatoes and the nuttiness of the farro were enough to be one of those dishes that are simple without being bland. Not to mention, surprisingly filling: I didn’t have to layer on the scampi sauce to fill like I was getting a whole meal when I used this as a base instead of pasta.