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| Butternut Farro Risotto with Beans, Spinach and Mushrooms. |
It’s
not an exaggeration to say that I’ve been neglecting my blog of
late...it’s been a super busy overworked, overbooked, overtired kind fall
until recently, and I’m not quite sure how that happened. My goal was
to do as much reading, cooking, and updating as possible, and I’ve met
approximately zero of these goals. The beginning of the school year
always seems nuts, but this was like every kind of nut, crushed
together, rolled in more nuts, roasted with more nuts, and served on top
of nuts. I also cleverly started upping my mileage for an upcoming
half, and while my talents do include travel to South Beach
occasionally, they do not include cooking and running, reading and
running, copying and pasting links and running...running and running is
about as much of a motor skill challenge as I can handle at a time.
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| Some of the terrible sights to see while running in my hometo |
This
has meant that I’ve also been fairly lazy in the kitchen, mostly doing
quick sautes of veggies for dinner when I’m getting home late, along
being a gym nerd and trying to up my protein intake. I was feeling kind
of bad about not cooking almost anything of substance in a while, and
uninspired to boot, until my good friend Bean had me and some other
lovely ladies over for dinner on Friday. Bean is an awesome cook, and
made a really fabulous recreation of a butternut farro salad from the Smitten Kitchen. I have been intrigued by using alternative grains, because
they have a lot more nutritional value than normal rice, grits, or
pastas. I’m especially excited about farro because it has a ton of
fiber and protein (perhaps I should have thrown up a nutrition nerd
alert?), and it actually tastes good - almost nutty. I should also note
that Bean is a former roomie from the Kilsyth days, and is responsible
for bringing a delicious butternut risotto into our lives that became a
frequent recipe request. It was tweaked and recreated from and original recipe in the Vegetarian Food For Friends cookbook. I was so inspired by both that I thought I’d
try and see if I could turn out a similar risotto using farro, and
perhaps adding some extra goodness to it to see if I could make it a
meal in a bowl.
A Cooking Light recipe for Farro Risotto with Mushrooms
confirmed I could, so I added mushroom in its honor, spinach
because we're questing for delicious here team, and then figured some beans would be a tasty source of
protein - so I added the beans for Bean! This turned out to be what I
think might be one of my greatest ever creations. It’s warm, warming,
filling, and delicious. It’s hard to put down your utensils. Eat it
all fall and winter, preferably with good friends and awesome wine (it
seems to pair well with Chianti and Montepulciano)!
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| Caps off to you if you make this delicious dinner! Butternut Farro Risotto with Beans, Spinach, and Mushroom |
Butternut Farro Risotto with Beans, Spinach, and Mushroom
Serves 4-6
