Being busy is almost always my excuse for not cooking.  It means I put off grocery shopping or haven’t cleaned up the kitchen from the previous meal (gasp!) and as a result think take-out is easier, which who are we kidding, it is.  But, it is nowhere near as satisfying to me.  It’s tasty yes.  But I don’t get that sense of satisfaction seeing a variety of ingredients come together, either randomly or with great thought and planning.

Perhaps it is because cooking is my creative outlet.  When I don’t get into the kitchen I get irritable and often stress out over the things that I normally can deal with.  A colleague told me when her home life is in order; it makes her work life easier. I totally agree with that, yet at the same time, I know that when my work life gets busy and overwhelming, my home life falls into disorder.  Recognizing how important cooking is to me, coupled with the fact that work has been busy, I’ve been on vacation and sick in the last three weeks; I knew I needed to get into the kitchen -and soon.

I’ve taken to some basic meal planning over the last few days to help ensure I have what I need to make the food I want to make.  It’s helped.  It also helps if I don’t sit down between coming home, walking the dog and getting dinner prepped.  This meal grew out of my meal planning and trying to find a few meals that use similar ingredients.  This meal specifically has wheat berries as the main ingredients.  I love wheat berries.  I cooked double the amount below one evening, used half to make an Asian beef wheat berry salad and then the other half saved for the next evening’s meal, the recipe below.  It’s a fairly unique take on a rice pilaf, but as a wheat berry pilaf, I am sure you could make it with a variety of flavor profiles. I opted for something a little more comforting: mushrooms and spicy chorizo.

Ingredients:

1 cup wheat berries

2½ cups chicken stock

3 chorizo sausages, two sliced into coins and one diced

2 cups sliced mushrooms

1 shallot minced

2 garlic cloves minced

2 Tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 sprigs rosemary

2 sage leaves, finely chopped

Rosemary garnish, optional

Directions:

Combine wheat berries and chicken stock in a medium-large pot.  Bring to boil, cover and allow to simmer until wheat berries are tender.  They should be slightly chewy – it should take about an hour and a half or so.

Once wheat berries have cooked, remove from heat, uncover and let dry out a little. While this is happening, sauté in a medium-hot skillet the sausages, render out the fat and with a slotted spoon remove sausages from the pan.  You want to leave the fat or oil in the pan as the flavor from it will be infused into the mushrooms and shallot.

Reduce heat in pan to medium.  Add the shallot, stir and cook for 2-3 minutes until beginning to soften.  Add mushrooms and garlic.  Cook until mushrooms are soft and browning and onions are translucent.  Add the sage, rosemary and wheat berries. Cover and re-heat the wheat berries.  Stir in sausage and serve.
Serves 3-4.

Guest post by Bakergirl Creations

Tags: guest blogger: bakergirl creations, wheat berry mix-up

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