Farro with Roasted Fruit

If you pay attention to this sort of thing, it would probably be surprising to you that I'm participating in Nablopomo  this month. I mean, for crying out loud, I probably didn't post 30 times in all of last year. But it's good to try the new and different, and for the same reasons many people do it -- structure, pushing myself, seeing if it's even possible for me to do it -- I'm looking forward to it.

So, on with the posting.

This farro for breakfast which I saw ages ago on  A Chicken in Every Granny Cart, has kept me mildly obsessed ever since I saw it. I think it's because I'm not much of a breakfast person but I know this is something I should change about my life and I live in hope of reforming myself and becoming a regular breakfast eater. My disinterest in breakfast stems at least in part from the fact that I'm not crazy about most breakfast foods. In fact, contemplating a cooked grain as something that might encourage me to eat breakfast is ironic because as a child I hated all hot cereal (hot cereal: slimy!) and this has persisted into adulthood. But I'm forever optimistic that if I hit on the right thing, I'll become a breakfast eater.

Anyway, when Ann posted her version of this on her site -- she makes hers with a mixture of fresh and dried fruit -- it looked delicious. But I wanted to make it from the source recipe first and spent ages searching for the issue of the Gourmet Magazine in which it was featured. Not in an active, ongoing way but whenever I was someplace where there were back issues of Gourmet (the library, the Book Thing, under my bed)  I'd look for the issue. Eventually it turned up at the Book Thing.

I can now report that farro makes a delicious breakfast cereal. I can't say that it's changed my breakfast eating habits but it has made me think I should also go back and revisit oatmeal. Part of what makes this so delicious is the heavy cream that's added in the final minutes of cooking. Of course, eating breakfast cereal with a couple of tablespoons of heavy cream on a daily basis is not the breakfast habit I need but I plan to experiment with versions that don't have heavy cream.

In the meantime though, this is a delicious, indulgent breakfast.

Farro with Roasted Fruit

adapted from Gourmet Magazine, April 2007; serves 4

1/2 lb. seedless red grapes
4 plums, quartered and pitted
2 ripe but firm Bartlett pears
3 cups water
1 cup farro
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tablespoons chestnut honey (Next time I probably will use regular honey rather than chestnut honey. Chestnut honey is oddly funky stuff.)

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spread fruit out in large, shallow-sided roasting pan. (You want pieces to be touching each other as little as possible so they'll roast and not steam.) Roast fruit, stirring occasionally, until pears can be pierced easily. This will be about 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, cook the farro. Place farro in saucepan and cover with 3 cups of water and the salt. Bring water to a boil, then bring down to a simmer and cook the farro until it is tender but still has some resistance. This should be about 25 minutes but check the farro package and see what the directions say. I've only cooked farro a handful of times but it seems as if each batch has cooked at a different rate. Tasting the farro to test for readiness is your ultimate guide.

3. When the farro has absorbed all the water, stir in cream and honey and cook over low heat while stirring for three minutes. (If the farro is ready before it has absorbed all the water, drain it and proceed.)

4. Stir in the roasted fruit and any juices that collected in the roasting pan. Serve.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Delicious! Never tried farro, but anything with honey and cream for breakfast is where its at!

[pigtown*design]

under your bed? haha!

[adele]

Nablopomo? Is that when you post daily, for a month? Yikes. Even when I was at my most enthusiastic and distractable, I don't think I managed to top twenty posts in a single month.

This sounds tasty - I'm not a cereal-for-breakfast fan myself, but maybe I'll try it when I do breakfast-for-dinner. :)

[ann]

YAY! Congrats on the NaBloPoMo! I'm so honored to be a part of it, and super excited you love farro for breakfast. I should really make that for breakfast one of these days up at the house... I hope you're well! Sorry I've been so "distant" its been a long couple of weeks.