Roasted Veggie Grain Salad with Herb Sauce and Feta
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This roasted vegetable grain salad started out as a summery grilled vegetable grain salad, and at the time I thought I was being a real innovator with that one. Grilling is so often relegated to the fins, fishes, and things that go moo, and over the years I’ve really tried to lean into grilling vegetables that aren’t portobello mushrooms. (You’ll never catch me out back with a portobello.) Grain salads are one of my summer staples, and I have many happy memories of eating them on the beach with friends and bringing them to the park. This one has a really punchy, concentrated and multi-purpose herb sauce that is literally salsa verde, and you can either use it to dress these grains, or deploy it wherever you want a spoonful of herbaceous hydration.
That was the summery inspiration. But it’s quite fallish around here at the moment, and as most of you already know, I have issues with this particular seasonal shift. I don’t like it. It makes me melancholy and sad. As I write this, acorns are bouncing off the tops of cars outside my window, and frankly that seems rude. I give myself a D for how I conducted myself this summer; less than five trips to the beach, not a single deck dinner, made only one batch of watermelon juice and ended up pouring it down the drain because it started to go off before we drank it. The Astrological Foundation of Leos has sent me a warning letter to get my fire-sign ass in order.
And yet, here I am embracing fall, turning the oven up to 400°F, and communing with root vegetables no less. The fact is—and I go through this revelation every year—that responding to the shorter days and ripening ginkgos with cool-weather-appropriate cooking eventually cheers me up, even if it’s temporary. Bottom line: cooking and eating are my joy. I wrote in That Sounds So Good that “there’s a food for every feeling,” and I wasn’t just talking about feelings of delight and perkiness. My life is buoyed by moments in the kitchen, and best believe I eat 365 days a year.
Even when things are sh*t (and between you and me, I’m going through it right now), there’s a food that will fix it, even if that represents the one “up” moment in my day. And you don’t even have to cook to feel the feels: Dipping a hard pretzel into soft butter counts. Let me try to dot a line back to the actual grain salad I’m delivering today. Warming up the kitchen with a hot oven is a good feeling. Sweet roasted vegetables that caramelize on the pan—that’s not a summer thing, and we (I) owe autumn an iota of the thrill that’s a given for spring. The shallots that go into this salad are soft and silky and take on the most beautiful color in the oven; even my grumpy fall self can appreciate that. I love grains—they’re hearty, they’re wheat-derived, wheat is a carb, I love carbs, carbs help us hibernate, etc. Cooking grains makes me think of all the other ways I like to eat them: in a brothy soup, in a stir-fry, in many grain salads. That’s sweet to me.
Whether this recipe represents a dinner idea, a way to use up leftover roasted veggies, a veggie main for a fall function you have to go to, or a reason to immerse yourself in the creative act of cooking and devote an hour to the magic of ingredient transformation, I hope it’s a net positive for you. I’m going to make my bed, collect all the random glasses that are scattered all over the house, and put last night’s dishes away. I might make pancakes for Cosmo. I’m looking to create pleasure in this day, and—as usual—my mind instantly goes to food.
xoCLM