FARRO AND FUYU PERSIMMON SALAD 

This salad is delicious and nutritious, good and good for you. It became one of our most popular dishes at Eccolo, my Berkeley restaurant, along with our chopped salad. On its own, the farro salad was a terrific luncheon dish on its own. We also offered it with grilled chicken breast, grilled steak, and sometimes fish as a main course. It was an accompaniment to several other popular dishes. In fact, it’s a kind of conceptual variation of the chopped salad – small pieces, contrasting textures and colors, exciting flavor combinations – chopped salad, without all the chopping, as it were. 

Farro is an ancient grain grown widely in Europe and, depending on type, known by several different names: spelt, emmer, and einkorn. It is a commonly used grain in Italian cooking and has become well-known in the U.S. in recent years. In this salad, farro is semi-pearled, which means part of its bran has been removed to reduce its cooking time. If you prefer whole grain farrow, an excellent Italian brand – and my favorite – is Rustichella, available online; Anson Mills, in Columbia, SC, have it available in two sizes – small and medium – as well as a roasted version; and there’s Bluebird Grain Farms, in Washington State.  

Fuyu persimmons are the hard, apple-like early season persimmons that look like small flattened pumpkins, different to the custardy, too-tannic-to-eat-raw hachiya persimmons that are typically baked into persimmon pudding. Fuyu persimmons appear around the end of October and continue for several months. 

A wonderful part of the salad is its seasonality – the fruits change through the year and determine the character of the salad. In the fall, prepare it with persimmons and seeds of pomegranate (they're especially delicious) as in this recipe. In winter, apples, pears, and citrus, especially kumquats, become the sweet-sour poignant crunch, and radicchio replaces cabbage. In summer, berries appear and continue until the fall, when one finds walnuts, almonds, and pumpkin seeds to add. It’s an expansive, accommodating recipe. Even the grains can change; if you can’t find farro, look for brown rice, barley, or bulghur wheat. All will work well. 

Makes 5 cups of salad, about 4 portions

2 cups cooked farro 
1 cup Fuyu persimmon, cored, skin on, thinly sliced, about 1 persimmon 
½ cup pomegranate seeds, about ½ a large pomegranate
½ cup celery, thinly sliced 
½ cup thinly sliced scallions
½ cup raw walnut halves, crushed, or ½ cup pinenuts, lightly toasted 
1 tsp orange zest, grated 
½ teaspoon sea salt 
1 cup thinly sliced cabbage (see instructions below) 
Optional: 3 TBL blue cheese, sharp Cheddar, or feta, crumbled with a fork 

Dressing:

3 TBL rice wine vinegar 
1 TBL champagne vinegar 
4 TBL grapeseed or avocado oil 
¼ tsp salt 
½ tsp ground Tellicherry pepper
½ tsp sugar 

Place cooked farro, persimmons, pomegranate, celery, scallions, walnuts, orange zest, and salt in a large bowl. Cut cabbage into eights, then slice thinly and add to bowl. Whisk together the ingredients for the dressing, or shake them vigorously in a jar. Pour dressing over salad and toss salad well. If using avocado or blue cheese, stir the gently into the salad without turning them onto mush. The pieces should remain discrete. When serving, ensure the ingredients are distributed evenly among the bowls.  

©2020 Christopher Lee