Wellness

A Genius New Salad Craze, Shepherded by Smitten Kitchen

January  3, 2018

This grain salad is my perfect New Year’s resolution food—and it might be yours, too!—but not for any of the reasons you’d think.

The blueprint comes from Deb Perelman’s newest cookbook Smitten Kitchen Every Day, a tremendously appealing collection of recipes whose headnotes strike chord after rousing chord. Yes, of course I want those Pizza Beans and Pretzel Linzer Cookies. And why have I never heard of Jam-Bellied Bran Scones before—or had the sense to put jam in the belly of any baked good at all?

But the headnote that most gripped me was for this Winter Slaw with Farro. It might sound unassuming, but in her warm, immediately relatable way, Perelman sold me on the notion of grain salads “where the grain is the minority ingredient, not just a foundation that vegetables are dotted across as an afterthought." A grain can be a salad ingredient like any other, rather than the overstuffed bed.

In the aftermath of the holidays, when many of us are feeling worn from too many foil-wrapped chocolates and cream-addled everything, this salad has all the right moves. You get cabbage’s frisky crunch, escalated by cracked toasted almonds, plus the tart-sweet pop of quickly-pickled dried apricots and salty nip of Parmesan shavings. The farro is scattered through to poke up here and there in the slaw “like nubby crouton accents,” as Perelman says, providing just enough texture to give your teeth a place to pause, and just enough heft to make slaw a meal.

Shop the Story

So yes, this salad will make you feel energized and excited to eat slaw for dinner (and the brown bag lunches that follow—it's great for those). And it will bring color and crunch to a barren January. But, to me, what’s even more thrilling is the reminder to try cooking something new and downright wrong-feeling, and maybe stumble on a whole new favorite genre of dishes in the process.

Perelman told me that she’d dreamed of a grain salad with such an inverted profile for some time before tasting the inspiration for this one at the West Village restaurant Via Carota—when finally, she felt more confident in making her own. Since then, she’s seen scant proportions of grains peek through in other restaurant salads (often fried freekah for toasty, popcorn-like crunch) and made lots of variations herself. She loves walnuts and diced bits of Taleggio or Robiola instead of Parmesan. I’m planning on working in pickled golden raisins next.

Join The Conversation

Top Comment:
“Tweaked this, given what was in my fridge. Subbed red cabbage for green, dried cranberries for apricots, grated Parmesan for shaved. Kept the overall gist of the recipe, though, and the result was great. Definitely not something I'd have thought of without Deb Perelman's inspiration.”
— Leslie C.
Comment

But restaurants are of course just one of scads of places to get your cook brain whirring. Some of my most memorable tricks have come from a bare fridge and a combination of desperation and an impish mood: Taking yesterday’s sad, dry (normally proportioned) grain salad and searing it in ripping hot oil. Grabbing frozen summer tomatoes and throwing them—whole—into a pot to defrost into an instant risotto broth. (Tell me about your lightbulb moments like these, too!)

Whether the next itch comes from a dinner out on the town, a cookbook or a watercooler conversation, or just that fridge with a lonely cup of cooked grains I can’t bear to throw away, my resolution is to make 2018 a year where I stumble on more new meals marked by surprise and discovery, simply by shaking off my preconceived notions and letting myself get weird in the kitchen.

Who's with me?

Photos by Rocky Luten

Got a genius recipe to share—from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Please send it my way (and tell me what's so smart about it) at [email protected].

Listen & Subscribe

From our new podcast network, The Genius Recipe Tapes is lifelong Genius hunter Kristen Miglore’s 10-year-strong column in audio form, featuring all the uncut gems from the weekly column and video series. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss out.

Listen & Subscribe

See what other Food52 readers are saying.

  • allie
    allie
  • cookcooks
    cookcooks
  • milo
    milo
  • Barbara Hinde
    Barbara Hinde
  • Michelle Morey
    Michelle Morey
I'm an ex-economist, lifelong-Californian who moved to New York to work in food media in 2007, before returning to the land of Dutch Crunch bread and tri-tip barbecues in 2020. Dodgy career choices aside, I can't help but apply the rational tendencies of my former life to things like: recipe tweaking, digging up obscure facts about pizza, and deciding how many pastries to put in my purse for "later."

16 Comments

allie January 25, 2023
Thoughts on how to make this without cheese? what would you add to make it vegan/dairy free, but give it the deliciousness of the cheese?
 
AntoniaJames January 25, 2023
How about some small-ish croutons made with a high quality garlic salt (I never used the stuff until discovering the one sold by The Spice House) and smoked paprika tossed with a generous glug or two of olive oil before baking? Or small cubes of tofu that have been baked until chewy with whatever seasonings you fancy? ;o)
 
cookcooks May 20, 2020
I made this and it was wonderful. You must try it.
 
milo December 29, 2018
I made this, as written, as my contribution to the family holiday meal earlier this week. Truly, it was the yummiest thing on the table. In my estimation this slaw trumped my homegrown (from cows raised on my little farm) roast beef. I pretty much filled my plate with this slaw two times over. I used left overs, warmed, as a bed for a couple of over easy eggs for supper the next day. Yum.
 
Barbara H. December 26, 2018
This recipe provided a great way to use up the huge amount of Brussels sprouts slaw I'd made as a side for Christmas dinner with a mustard vinaigrette already in it. I used quinoa and pickled the very old bag of apricots I found in the freezer--sublime and perfectly renewed our leftovers for lunch. All great suggestions!
 
Michelle M. January 20, 2018
This sounds great, but I actually first saw this idea at Sprouted Kitchen, where Sara Forte makes this incredible salad with toasted quinoa as an accentuating component: https://www.sproutedkitchen.com/home/2013/1/24/winter-greens-crispy-quinoa-salad.html If you do this you need to use a MEYER lemon (if possible) for the super fantastic dressing.
 
Sydney N. January 16, 2018
Made this salad and I have to share: it was made even better by adding citrus !! I put in orange segments and spritzed in some juice from the cut off rind and it totally MADE the salad!!
 
Leslie C. January 15, 2018
Tweaked this, given what was in my fridge. Subbed red cabbage for green, dried cranberries for apricots, grated Parmesan for shaved. Kept the overall gist of the recipe, though, and the result was great. Definitely not something I'd have thought of without Deb Perelman's inspiration.
 
Ruth K. January 3, 2018
Love the idea...as someone who needs whole grains but needs to watch her overall carb intake, this is the way to go.
I do have a small bone to pick with the word "headnote": I had to look it up, and found it is a prefix or executive summary, typically affixed to laws. If I'm gonna get wild and crazy in the kitchen - no lawyers.
 
Kristen M. January 3, 2018
Hi Ruth, I'm so glad you asked this—I'm so steeped in recipe writing lingo I forgot that headnote isn't a common word. The recipe's headnote is the brief note from the author at the beginning to describe the recipe—here's a bit more on what we thought made a good one back in 2012: https://food52.com/blog/3808-how-to-write-a-headnote
 
Ruth K. January 3, 2018
Love the idea...as someone who needs whole grains but needs to watch her overall carb intake, this is the way to go.
I do have a small bone to pick with the word "headnote": I had to look it up, and found it is a prefix or executive summary, typically affixed to laws. If I'm gonna get wild and crazy in the kitchen - no lawyers.
 
Warren January 3, 2018
Ruth, I am a Type II diabetic and carbs are a concern of mine as well. The benefit of the grains is that they digest slower and their Glycemic Index (GI) is much lower than a lot of the "usual carbs", so you don't get the blood-sugar spike after eating.
 
Warren January 3, 2018
That's a great salad! I always keep a container of cooked Farro (also Kamut or Freekeh) in the refrigerator to add to my usual lunch salad. The added nutty taste and a bit of bite is a welcome addition to almost any type of salad.
 
Kristen M. January 3, 2018
So smart! Deb also works a spoonful of cooked grains into a carrot-pepper soup in the book to bulk it up.
 
Ann C. January 8, 2018
Is this just regular green cabbage or something else? the cabbage I get at the store doesn't look like this. Thanks.
 
Kristen M. January 8, 2018
Regular old green cabbage is just fine for this (it's what I usually use). What we had on photo shoot day was just an extra good-looking kind from the farmers market, maybe a cousin of savoy cabbage.