This salad will make you love grains and dark, leafy greens. I wish I were eating it right now for breakfast.

We rely on this on Friday nights in the fall and winter when we need to clear out the refridgerator before our trip to the market on Saturday morning. It’s not really a recipe – more of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” – so feel free to play around with the quantities if you have more or less of something.

Makes 4-6 servings and keeps well for a few days in the refrigerator

Local Ingredients:

• Roasted vegetables
• Greens
• Red onions
• Feta
• Grains (We used farro from Cayuga Pure Organics this time, but feel free to mix it up.)

Ingredients:

2-3 cups of roasted vegetables (leftover is great, but if you’re roasting just for this recipe, leave out the garlic and go easy on the salt)
1-2 bunches of dark, leafy greens (leftover sauteed greens or fresh)
3-4 cups of cooked grain (see table below)
1 cup of red onion (about 1/2 large or 1 small)
1 cup of feta, crumbled (about 4 ounces)
4 tablespoons of lemon juice, divided (about 2 lemons)
2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
Salt

Directions:

1. Roast the vegetables, if you need to. (Follow these instructions.) Start cooking the grain while the vegetables are in the oven.
2. Cook the grain: Bring the water to a boil. Add the grain and 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook (covered) at a simmer for the noted time or until al dente. Taste frequently, because you want slightly chewy, separate grains for this, not soft, mushy ones. Once the grain is cooking, move onto the next step.
   

   GRAIN	CUPS WATER	CUPS GRAIN	COOK TIME
   Barley, pearled	3	1	25 mins
   Barley, hulled	3	1	45 mins
   Buckwheat groats	3	1 2/4	10 mins
   Farro	3	1	25 mins
   Oat Groats	3	1	30 mins
   Rice, brown basmati	3	1 1/4	35 mins
   Rice, brown, long grain	3	1 1/4	45 mins
   Rice, brown, short grain	3	1 1/4	45 mins
   Rice, wild	2 3/4	1	50 mins
   Rye, berries	4 1/4	1 1/4	45 mins
   Spelt	5	1 2/4	35 mins
   Wheat, whole berries	4 1/4	1 2/4	60 mins
   Wheat, cracked	3 1/4	1 3/4	15 mins
   Wheat, bulgur	3	1 2/4	10 mins

3. Chop the red onion and soak it in cold water for about 30 minutes. This will remove some of the “sting” and make it milder.

   

4. If the greens are fresh, separate the stems from the leaves and chop each into bite-sized pieces. Heat 2 teaspoons of the olive oil in a pan. Add the stems and saute until they begin to soften (about 5 minutes). Add the greens one handful at at time, waiting for them to wilt slightly before adding another handful, so that you can fit them all in your pan. Once all the leaves are in the pan, add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Cover and allow to cook for 3-5 minutes or until bright green. If your pan doesn’t have a lid, use a pizza pan (like we do) or tin foil.

   

5. Taste the grain to see if it’s done. Once it is, drain off any extra water and cover the pot until everything else is ready.
6. To make the dressing, add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to the bottom of a large salad bowl. Slowly whisk in 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
7. Add the grain, roasted vegetables, red onion (drained), greens, and feta to the bowl and mix well.

   

This time, we used farro, roasted celeriac, carrots, sunchokes, kohrabi, and potatoes, Swiss chard and kale, and feta. Feel free to use your imagination and leftovers!

Note about washing and storing greens:

• If you know and trust your farmer, washing greens is more about getting the dirt off so you don’t dull your knives or hurt your teeth.  If you wash the greens before you chop them, fill your sink (or a salad spinner) with enough water so the greens will float.  Toss them in and swirl them around a bit.  The dirt will fall to the bottom and you can scoop the greens off the top.  If you chop them first, you can save some water by rinsing them in a salad spinner (if you have one).
• If you don’t know or trust your farmer, add regular white vinegar to the soaking water and let everything sit for a few minutes before rinsing well.  Check out this NPR story if you want more information.
• Either way, if you do this before storing the greens (the way we do it), make sure you dry the greens thoroughly, wrap in paper towels, and tuck into a plastic bag before placing  in the refrigerator.  The drier they are, the longer they’ll keep.  If you do all this you can get up to 5 or 6 days in the refrigerator without serious wilting, otherwise you should use them sooner.

Directions:

1. Trim the stems at the point where the leaves begin.  It’s helpful if you leave the rubber band on, so that the stems stay together.  Save the stems for later, but put them aside for now, except for the last inch or so at the “ground” end of the stems, which you should cut off and discard.

   

2. If you want to remove the ribs, take each leaf, one at a time, and fold it in half along the rib.  Run your knife along the rib (towards you) to separate it from the leaf.

   

3. Gather up all of the ribs and stems from the first two steps, and cut them into bite-sized pieces (about 1/2 to 1 inch).

   

These are the basic steps for prepping “stemmy” leafy greens like Swiss Chard.  Now, if you plan to sauté the chard you would want to give the rib pieces about a 5 minute head start (maybe with some onion and garlic) before adding the actual greens to the pan.  The ribs are perfectly edible, but they tend to be fibrous (kind of like celery) and need this extra step.

4. For our dinner, however, we wanted to cut the greens into “ribbons”, so they would be more evenly spread out in the dish.  We also like using raw greens in salads, but they have to be sliced thinly the same way or you risk wearing out your jaw.  To do this, lay out 5 – 6 of the leaves in a stack. It’s helpful to put bigger leaves on the bottom and smaller leaves on the top.  If you removed the ribs, fold the stack in half on the cutting board.  If you didn’t remove them, roll up the stack like a cigar.

   

5. Next, cut the stack or roll cross-wise into “ribbons”. If you are cooking the greens, 1/2 to 1 inch ribbons work well. If you’re eating them raw in a salad, you might want them thinner.

   

One more note:  we forgot to wash our Swiss Chard at the beginning of the process.  Chard with the full stems is a bit unruly for our salad spinner, so we would normally wash everything after step #1 (or even step #2).  This time, however, we made the mistake of throwing all of the ribboned leaves and cut-up stems into our salad spinner and washing them after the fact.  Don’t do that.  In order to properly sauté the ribs for 5 minutes before adding the greens, we had to pick them all (or most of them) out of the mix.  What a pain! Nobody’s perfect!