Use Mushrooms in a Warm Farro Salad

For me, fall foods are all about comfort. Slow foods such as roasts, stews, and braises often top peoples lists of comfort foods, but just because the sun is waning doesnt mean we suddenly have more time to spend in the kitchen.

This warm farro salad is perfect for those gusty autumn days when you crave something warm and hearty but dont have the time to spend hours cooking. Using falls bounty of mushrooms, some wholesome farro, and a fried egg, this salad is a filling, flavor-packed meal thats as comforting as it is nutritious.

The trick to making a really flavorful farro salad isnt just in the dressing. Farro, like any grain, tastes best when cooked in a broth. In this case, I made a Japanese style dashi using dried shiitakes and kombu. Dried mushrooms are high in guanosine monophosphate, a nucleotide associated with stimulating your umami sensing tastebuds. Together with kombu, which is rich in glutamic acids, dried shiitake mushrooms make an incredibly flavorful vegan broth with tons of lip-smacking umami.

I tend to like my farro al dente, especially in a salad, so I only cook it for 20 minutes, which gives the grains just enough time to swell up with the flavorful broth without making them soft.

Mixed together with sauteed mushrooms and a balsamic dressing with just a hint of black truffles, you have a soul-satisfying salad thats made even more comforting by topping it with a sunny-side-up egg. The egg not only adds some richness to the dish, seeing a golden cascade of sunny yolk flowing down a mountain of farro never fails to put a smile on my face.

If you want to make this vegan, just swap the egg out for sliced avocado. As for the mushrooms, any combination of your favorite mushrooms in season will work, but I used a combo of enoki, beech (shimeji), hen of the woods (maitake) and shiitake.