Mediterranean Farro Salad with Swordfish & Salmoriglio Dressing
No, you didn't enter the wrong door to a kindergarten classroom. And neither is this an art class teaching the primary colors. It's still Apron and Sneakers, the same old blog that you check out once in a while for recipes where you sometimes leave nice, heartwarming notes telling me how much you've enjoyed whatever it is that I have written, cooked or taken pictures of. You are always welcome to leave me notes like that for they make someone else's day happy. And that someone is me.
Last weekend, instead of staying in the pool, going to the beach, reading a book, or just being a couch potato, I worked on some wooden boards for my food photography. By the way, I don't have the luxury of doing everything I have written (except for the pool) because of two kids running my husband's and my life completely. They are the bosses and we are the servants in our household. The last time I read a book was years ago that it's already an embarrassment coming from a person who grew up being a bookworm. My family had to physically drag me away from books when I was growing up. If I didn't have an interesting book to read, I would take our family's gigantic dictionary or some volumes of the encyclopedia to bed with me and happily spend my free days with them. In spite of this good mental feeding, I did not grow up a genius. Unfortunately. But enough about this. Let's go back to my weekend.
I spent my weekend shopping for paints and wood with the help of my little crew of husband, son & daughter. We got the paints after an excessively long time deciding which colors to get. It might not be a good idea to recruit kids as help on this task because there can be a danger of buying too much colors and going through arguments on which color is better. Well, we survived everything and did the food photography boards and painting all in one day. And this is my favorite color, yellow.
Now the recipe. I came up with this recipe after encountering the problem of having a grilled swordfish steak left from dinner. I wanted to make a cold salad of farro (emmer) so I decided to make the swordfish as the protagonist in the dish. I also had some unused salmoriglio (lemon sauce) from marinating the swordfish so I used it as the dressing instead of my usual lemon-oil-salt dressing. Adding fresh & dried tomatoes with the help of fresh basil & thyme sealed this salad with a wax seal of excellence. No kidding. My husband and I loved it and if you are already used to my recipes with the Mediterranean flavors, then this is another one to try.
Have a good week!
Mediterranean Farro Salad with Swordfish & Salmoriglio Dressing
Ingredients:Serves 2
- 1 sword fish steak grilled with salmoriglio sauce, please refer to this link or scroll down for the recipe
- 1/4 cup salmoriglio (lemon sauce), please refer to this link or scroll down for the recipe
- 3 cups cooked farro
- salt & pepper
- lime, zest & juice
- 10 - 12 datterini tomatoes (or any sweet tomatoes that you have), quartered
- 6 whole sun-dried tomatoes, chopped finely
- fresh thyme, leaves taken away from stems
- about 12 big fresh basil leaves, chopped
- 1 tablespoon capers, soaked in water for 5 - 10 minutes and drained
- Prepare the salmoriglio (lemon sauce) that's good for 4 sword fish steaks.
- Set aside 1/4 cup of salmoriglio for dressing the farro salad. Use the remainder for marinating the swordfish and brushing while grilling. Grill the swordfish on a grill or on a griddle. Throw away excess marinating liquid. Dice swordfish when cooked.
- Cook the farro salad by boiling it with water and a little bit of salt for about 20 minutes or until cooked through. When cooked, drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside.
- In a bowl, toss the farro, swordfish, tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, thyme, capers, and lime zest.
- Dress the salad with the 1/4 cup salmoriglio that you set aside.
- Season with salt & pepper.
- Squeeze some lime juice according to taste.
- Serve cold.
Swordfish with Salmoriglio (Lemon Sauce)
Ingredients:For 4 steaks or slices of swordfish
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tablespoons hot water
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- handful of parsley, finely chopped
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- salt
- pepper
- To prepare the salmoriglio, you will be doing a water bath (bain marie) so prepare a saucepan with some water. Start the fire on the stove.
- Put a heat-resistant bowl or smaller saucepan on the saucepan with boiling water. The water should just be enough, touching the base of the bowl.
- Put the oil, lemon juice & 2 tablespoons of hot water together in the bowl and whisk vigorously. Add the parsley, garlic, oregano, salt & pepper.
- Keep on whisking for about 3 minutes. The sauce should just warm up, not boil. Turn off the fire but leave the bowl in the water bath until the sword fish steaks are cooked.
- Get some of the salmoriglio and coat the sword fish with it.
- Grill the sword fish on both sides. Season with salt & pepper.
- Pour the salmoriglio on the sword fish steaks and serve immediately.
