Farro salad

Farro salad is one of the dishes on constant rotation in my home year around – only the ingredients change depending on the season.

For those of you who wonder, farro is an ancient wheat grain that’s been around for thousands of years and is still grown abundantly in Italy. In Finland, I often substitute it with spelt or emmer – both ancient varieties that grow here.

The picture is from last summer when I fixated on a combination of oven-roasted cauliflower, roasted hazelnuts, farro, peas, and mint. For the dressing, I combined Greek yogurt, juice and zest of lemon, feta cheese, mint, salt and pepper.

I often make farro salad with chopped veggies in a rainbow of colors. This week we had spring carrots and radishes, fennel, cucumber, cauliflower, peas and virtually everything in the herb garden that was ready to be picked.

To make the salad more savory, I added some feta and roasted almonds. Once everything was chopped and combined, I dressed the salad with olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon juice, and seasoned it with salt and pepper.