Farro salad with orange hazelnut dressing
It can be extremely trying in this december month to try and still eat within the budget of 10 euro. I can assure that we will be going over budget on many days this month, but in the meantime we still try and do our best to eat below the limit for most ‘regular’ days. Since I’ve been busy with work and Tom is currently at home, he did quite a bit of the cooking this week. And let’s be honest; what is better then coming home and your man is behind the stove cooking you a lovely dinner? I’m not entirely sure how the cost relates on the things he cooked, but I think he did pretty good too. We had a lovely salad the other day with little chicken sausages and baked potatoes and he made a pasta the day before with the other half of the chicken sausages.
Since I had a day of today I wanted to make something nice and healthy to counterbalance all the sweet and unhealthy stuff we’ve been preparing before and my eye fell on this recipe in the Christmas edition of Delicious magazine. I guess you can eat this salad as part of a buffet if that is what you want to do, but it is also perfect on it’s own as a light and healthy meal and also important; it will not break the bank account! When I read that I needed half of an entire ball of garlic I was a little taken aback until I read that I had to roast it first. Not that I don’t like garlic; I LOVE garlic, but the thing is… Tom always has some kind of chemical reaction when we eat too much garlic. I don’t mind people smelling like garlic. I honestly don’t. Be he doesn’t smell of garlic. I can’t describe it, but like I said; it seems almost like a chemical reaction of sorts. Let me tell you… it is not pleasant! (understatement of the century..really)
I’m not exactly sure how it will go with roasted garlic. We’ve had roasted garlic before but I can’t exactly remember if that was good or bad. I guess good if I can’t remember it.. 🙂
Now on to this lovely salad. The flavor of this dressing is what makes this farro salad special. It is strong and delicious but that is what this nees. Farro is essentially precooked wheat, which you can boil and eat. If you don’t know what it is or can’t find it (our supermarket has it, so it is not a difficult ingredient) then you can substitute for rice, couscous or bulghur. Be sure to taste before adding all the dressing as they might have different absorption of the flavors.
It’s another vegetarian dish… I don’t pick out vegetarian dishes on purpose. I just like the dish and then o, it turns out to be vegetarian. 🙂
Farro (tarly) salad with orange hazelnut dressing
Ingredients
- 50 g hazelnuts peeled
- 1/2 piece garlic talking about the whole garlic here
- 125 ml orange juice
- 1 orange zest zest of 1 orange
- 100 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 225 g tarly Tarly is basically a precooked wheat and can be bought at the supermarket
- 2 red chili
- 1 bunch flat leaf parsley
- You can prepare this a few hours in advance if you want to. Preheat the oven to 200 C. Take all the cloves out of the ball of garlic and put them in a shallow ovendish with a small layer of oil. Roast them in the oven for about 20 minutes till they are soft. Remove from the oven and leave to cool. In the meantime bring your orange juice to a boil and leave to simmer in order to reduce to about half.
- Roast the hazelnuts; either in a frying pan or in the oven until they are golden brown. Take out and leave to cool. Chop them coarsely.
- Put the orange juice, chopped hazelnuts, orange zest and the orange juice in a mixing bowl. Push the garlic out of it’s skins and mash it a little bit. Add to the mix. Add the olive oil and a little salt and use the lemonjuice to bring to taste.
- Cook the tarly in water in about 12 minutes. Drain and rinse and leave to cool.
- Mix the tarly with 2/3 of the orange/hazelnut dressing.
- Clean the chili’s and cut them in very thin rings. Heat a little bit of oil in a frying pan and fry the chili rings until golden
- Cut the parsley shortly before serving and add to the tarly together with the fried chili rings. Sprinkle with the rest of the chili and parsley and sprinkle with the remaining dressing.
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
This recipe is part of my friend Mona’s Living Leaner project where she is trying to feed her entire family for below 10 euro’s each day. She’s becoming quite famous with it too as she’s been featured in a lot of local magazines and newspapers!
The total cost of this dish was:
- tarly € 0,90
- garlic € 0,30
- oranges € 0,50
- hazelnuts € 1,=
- chili € 1,=
- parsley € 1,40
Total spend € 5,10 (out of stock we used salt, pepper & olive oil)
