After All These Years

When I was in Italy, I was only 20, so recipes and cooking weren't high on my list of priorities. But there was one dish that our host made for us that I loved so much, I had to get the recipe. Somewhere in the jumble of life post-graduation, I lost my Italy notebook that contained the recipe. (Remember, I keep everything!) I was really upset when I couldn't find it because I could not, for the life of me, remember what the name of the recipe was.

I even went to the Italian grocery store in town here and tried to describe the contents of the dish, but they had no clue. And I don't blame them- I was like "It has these things in it that are like nuts, but they aren't, I think, and it can go with pasta, and it's REALLY popular in Italy!" I finally gave up, even though it's irked me all these years. Every time I go to an Italian restaurant I would always check to see if it was on the menu, thinking that if I saw the name written out, I'd recognize it. But that never happened either.

So last night I went into the attic to put some things away (to keep them from Spencer) and I saw an old crate filled with my things. I know I didn't put it up there, so I was curious and started going through it. Most it was junk, an old hula man that sat on the dashboard of my car during high school- type things. But as I neared the bottom, I saw it! A beat up old black notebook that had Italian words written on it. I could the Hallelujah Chorus of the Angels!

I didn't look at anything else in it, I immediately went to the page where I knew the recipe was written. There it was- "Farro Con Pesto." It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to remember, but it's name has alluded me all these years! It's supposed to be "Farro con il Pesto," but Italian grammar was never my strong suit! haha.


The funniest part of the whole thing is that I wrote it out in Italian and in the metric system! I guess I was trying to assimilate to all things Italian, but the first thing I thought to myself as I read it was "wow, pretentious much?!" Luckily I still know enough to understand the majority of it, so at least that part of my brain is working okay.

I know you're on the edge of your seats for the recipe, which is SUPER easy, delicious, and it will be a great addition to you Vegetarians out there.

Pesto

• A lot of basil, about 1 and 1/2 to 3 ounces, per your liking
• Handful of pine nuts, about 1.4 ounces
  
• 4 and 1/2 ounces of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 tsp. of salt
• Pinch of garlic- per your liking
• 1 and 3/4 ounces of Parmesan cheese

Directions

• Take the basil, pine nuts, and garlic mix them together in a bowl
• Crush them together and mix well
• Add oil, salt and Parmesan

Farro

• Cook 0.55 quarts of Farro (that's a little more than 1/2 of a quart, it's exactly 17.6 ounces)
• Use a lot of water and salt, and cook for 30 minutes (remember to stir!)
• Drain the water and refrigerate
• Mix the farro with the pesto sauce
• Optional - add 4 tomatoes chopped in small pieces

Buon Appetito!

Some of the conversions are a little wonky, due to the fact that it was in grams. In case you don't know what farro is, or if they tell you it's not at the grocery store, it is sometimes called Emmer Wheat, more specifically, Triticum dicoccon. Here is a picture of it.