Fall Food: Farro, Squash, and Kale / "Breaking the Yearlings"

[mark_asphodel]

It's not harvest time around my house without a nice squash risotto.  This time, I got a little more edgy and made a "farrotto," which sounds like a commedia dell'arte clown (or one of Dante's hell-demons) but is actually a risotto-type dish made with farro wheat instead of short-grain rice.  It's a little heartier than risotto, with more heft in each bite and a nice nutty toasty flavor, and the chunks of acorn squash and shreds of red kale all worked to make quite a tasty dish.  The cooked kale, when refrigerated, turned an alarming shade of blue-green with hints of violet, but returned to normal after being re-heated.  It did take about 2.5 hours to prepare and cook, so this was a little more labor-intensive than I had hoped.  

Not convinced by this article extolling the virtues of paella compared to risotto.  Risotto really isn't hard to make (even if it does take a couple of hours) and every paella I've tasted Stateside has been kind of acrid and nasty.  I think I'll pass on paella unless I take a trip to Spain.

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Shearwater have released a fantastic new single, "Breaking the Yearlings."  Even if you didn't like them before, give this one a chance, as the sound is a significant departure from the last three albums.  I do wish Jonathan Meiburg would sing a song the entire way through in his baritone register, though.  His baritone parts were the best thing about "Lost Coastlines" by a mile and a half.

Comments

[blankspectrum.livejournal.com]

I'm allergic to rice, so farroto sounds very appealing to me. Is the recipe you used online, or is there one you would recommend?

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I really like the new Shearwater single too. I am really curious about their new album, especially since you said you heard it and it may be a new favorite! And since you mentioned "Lost Coastlines," are you an Okkervil River fan too? :-P (I think it's kind of hard to like one and not the other, but maybe that's just me, haha.)

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

I used this:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Farro-with-Acorn-Squash-and-Kale-367135

My TouchPad has an Epicurious app that I use to find recipes, which is how I came across it.

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I think that "Animal Joy" is a an album where the stakes are lower than on any of the Island Arc albums; the territory being explored is more about human emotions instead of, say, nuclear annihilation and the cavalier destruction of entire cultures. So initially I was a little... uninvolved. It sounded great, it sounded commercial in a way they never have before, but nothing grabbed me by the viscera. It was... pleasant. Really listenable. But I couldn't put it away; I literally went an entire week not wanting to listen to anything else during my commutes. And that week turned into two weeks. And pretty soon, I was convinced that it was their most solid album to date, which is saying a LOT. But it really is coming at things from a different angle than PS, Rook, or TGA.

are you an Okkervil River fan too?

Actually, no. The less Will Sheff in my life, the better. JM's contributions to Okkervil River are the good part IMO, and Sheff's contributions to early Shearwater are something I can live without. It took me a while to even track down Palo Santo after I heard my first Shearwater song ("Seventy-Four Seventy-Five"), because "Okkervil River side project" sounded like a really unpromising idea.

I was very wrong.

[blankspectrum.livejournal.com]

Thanks! If I try it I will let you know how I like it. :D

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That is saying a lot! I've definitely had experiences like that with albums before, where I wasn't sure what was so great about the music, but I couldn't stop listening. I am all for new angles though, so I'm looking forward to hearing it. :3

Ahaha. I actually like Okkervil River a little better than Shearwater, if I had to choose. But to each their own and all! I can understand them not being appealing to people in some ways (Sheff's voice, in some of their early records, is kind of hard to listen to at times). Amusingly (to me, anyway) Ammie actually shares your opinion - I had placed a song or two of theirs in mixes I made for her, and she was like, don't give me any more of that please. :-P