Wheat Berry Salad

This here is a wheat berry salad.  A wheat berry is an entire wheat kernel, largely unprocessed.  It’s a true whole grain, full of fiber and nutrients.  I made something with them once–I can’t remember what–but saw this salad in last month’s Cooking Light and thought I’d try it with some modifications.  It’s not bad and the texture’s nice, but the dressing is a bit too tangy for my tastebuds.

You begin with 1 1/4 c of wheat berries.  I found mine in the bulk bin at whole foods.  These go into a pot of salted water to simmer for at least 45 minutes to an hour.  Then you drain and rinse them until cool.  Put in a bowl with 1 1/2 c packed lettuce/arugula, about 1/4 c chopped parsley, some chopped zucchini (maybe half a cup, small dice?), though the recipe originally called for cucumber.  Add a chopped tomato (a big one) and 3 oz crumbled goat cheese.  Toss.  Make your dressing:  zest of one lemon, about 3 T of juice (two would be enough), 2 T olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little sugar (half a teaspoon).  Toss with salad.  I think we had too much dressing, plus I didn’t dry the lettuce enough, which left us with a pool at the bottom of the bowl.  No matter–we ate it anyway.  Serves six.

Poor Man’s Pastas

I had every intention of writing this post yesterday but this week has been really crazy at work. The semester is reaching that screeching pitch where the kids are over-busy and turning into zombies, and I am over-busy both with them and with committee work. That’s a warning of sorts to potential future faculty: if you don’t like serving on committees, maybe you should rethink your career path! So far I enjoy it a lot, but it’s a lot of madness and chaos these days.

The other night Mr. Pea and I enjoyed a very simple pasta, one that is considered a traditional “poor man’s pasta” because of the paucity of ingredients. We got to talking and came to the conclusion that most poor man’s pastas are tasty enough to envy those made with expensive ingredients and are made extra-special by the short amount of time you can make them in. The one we made the other night was a breadcrumb-based dish; but aglio e olio–spaghetti tossed with olive oil that’s gently simmered with garlic and a little red pepper flakes, topped with pecorino or parmesan–is another great example. Even carbonara–pasta with eggs and a little bacon–is a poor-man’s pasta.

Pasta with Breadcrumbs
This is best made with fresh breadcrumbs that you’ve made yourself, blitzing a heel of bread or so in the food processor or blender, but we’ve also made it using unseasoned breadcrumbs from a can. Serves 2.

6 oz pasta, preferably a long cut like spaghetti or fettucine
3/4 c bread crumbs
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
salt and pepper to taste

Get your pasta going. With 5-10 minutes left, warm up the oil and butter together over medium-high heat and add garlic. Cook a minute, being careful not to let it brown. Add bread crumbs, toss to coat, and let it get toasty, 5-10 minutes. Toss pasta with crumbs, season with a little salt (we don’t use pepper, but you could), and voila. Delicious.

Sweet Potato and Sausage Hash

Some time ago I bought some of Stoney Brook Farms’ Italian turkey sausage for a tomato sauce. We used only a few, cooked them up, and were taken aback by the flavor–they seemed somewhere halfway between an Italian sausage (lots of fennel) and a breakfast sausage (lots of sage). We stuck the last four in some plastic wrap and popped them in the freezer, where they remained.

Last night I gave a couple of huge sweet potatoes a rough chop and stuck them in the microwave as a side for some pork chops. There was far too much potato for the two of us, though, and I put the rest in the fridge. Mr. Pea, however, had the genius idea of combining the turkey sausage with the potatoes for some kind of hash this morning, and were we ever glad we did.

We began with a big skillet in which we melted 1 1/2 T of butter. To that I added 2/3 of an onion, chopped, and got it started with a little salt. When they’d just started to soften, I squeezed the sausage out of their casings and broke up the sausage itself, stirring with the onions, over a medium heat. While this cooked down, Mr. Pea chopped the potatoes into 1/2″ dice and I added these to the pan. For 6 or 7 minutes we let them cook and tossed them around; then, after adding some salt and pepper, Mr. Pea gave them a rough mash just to break a few up, and pressed them into the pan to brown.

To top this off, we fried two eggs, and placed each one on top of a nice pile of hash. Oh, so yummy. We easily could have fed four people if we’d made some toast, but we had enough for about three people. Three hungry people. Give it a try!

Update your links!

My old Sweet Pea hosting is set to expire very soon, and so I’m moving the blog to free wordpress hosting instead. I dislike the lack of layout control, but I can live with that. I’ll add a redirect to this site momentarily, but for those of you who have Sweet Pea Cooks bookmarked or in an RSS feed, or who just like to visit often, the new address is http://www.sweetpeacooks.wordpress.com

I’ll be adding a recipe later today for butternut squash risotto, so pop on by!