I love whole grains, like really chewy rustic whole grains. In my pantry at any given time, I have barley, millet, quinoa, wheat berries, farro, brown rice, bhutanese red rice... I just like to have a small amount of whatever I might want to use available at any given time. Recently, I was at Rainbow market (my personal equivalent of Disneyland) and saw Oat Berries, and I couldn't believe I hadn't ever tried these before! Oat Berries are the whole form of oats before they are rolled flat, cut up, or any of the other forms of processing they go through to make the oats that we all know and love. Now that I have tried them, to be totally honest, flavor-wise I don't see a huge difference in taste and texture between oat berries, and wheat berries, but either way the were delicious, and super nutritious too! With any whole grain that I listed above, I recommend soaking the grains for at least 8 hours up to 24 hours before cooking. This is for two reasons- 1.) It starts the germination process, and improves the nutrition (you won't see any sprouting yet) and 2.) It reduces the cooking time. Most hearty grains such as barley, oat berries and wheat berries can take up to an hour to cook! If you soak ahead, you are probably looking at more like 40 -45 minutes cooking time.
So, after a long day at work I felt like a nice light healthy salad, so I put my pre-soaked oat berries on the stove to simmer, and I roasted up some sweet cherry tomatoes (both red and yellow, and oh so so sweet) along with some garlic and onion. The three roasted up together for a classic combination. When the oat berries were done, I tossed them with some fresh arugula, parsley, and then my trio of roasted delight. I topped it all of with some white balsalmic vinegar, lemon juice, sea salt, pepitas, and fresh cracked pepper. You could make this oat berry salad in similar variation with any number of veggies you might have on hand, tossed with a nice dressing, and some chopped nuts or tofu. A perfect dinner.
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