It has always seemed tragic to us that the sweet and earthy rutabaga has been relegated to the dustbin of modern American cookery. It is one of those cheap, humble, durable vegetables that doesn't glitter on the shelves at the market but shines for the patient cook, honest and unpretentious like your oldest friend.
In this dish: Farro with Spice-Roasted Rutabagas, Bean Broth, and Smokey Arugula Salad, the rutabagas get a good dose of rosemary, aleppo pepper, and garlic powder and after a short while in a hot oven, they're crispy on the outside with a spice-crust and like butter on the inside. The foundation, the anchor is farro - one of our favorite grains - both chewy and toothsome, and it was cooked with lots of garlic. Carrots roasted whole along with arugula and radish all tossed with a smoked paprika and honey vinaigrette form the crown.
And about that unassuming broth you see ringing the bowl: one of the most beautiful things in the culinary universe is the liquid you get after cooking a big pot of beans. You could throw the beans away - not that we would ever do that - and it would still have been worth cooking them. This broth, or bean liquor, is hauntingly sweet and redolent of garlic and herbs and the slight starchiness thrown from the cannellini beans makes it taste rich somehow, though it's essentially fatless and vegetarian. So we spiked this lucky leftover with fresh lemon juice, drizzled on a little olive oil, and poof: the dish was tied together.
A healthy study in textures and so darn satisfying to eat, this is what we mean when we tell people our style is "vegetable-driven".
2 comments:
What an innovative, lovely, and elemental dish. I must try that bean broth. Louisa and I recently made a parmigiano-reggiano broth, using the rinds of the cheese, and I feel the same way about that as you do the "liquor."
Save the rutabega!
Hey Guys! Looks good to me! Wish I was close enough to come for dinner!
Nice writing!
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