Molly Yeh's Miso Broccoli Grain Salad

For a fun farmy side, I'm making my miso broccoli grain salad that's funky and toasty and loaded with chewy wheat berries that come straight from harvest and it's filled with energy for Nick's long days on the farm. I've got my wheat berries here. They're a hearty, chewy grain and I love them so much. I'll dump these in and salted boiling water here. Let this go for about an hour until they're chewy and tasty. You could also use farrow or barley or even couscous or orzo with this salad. Any grainy carby situation would be delicious. While this cooks, I'll get my broccoli going. I've got a pound of broccoli florets that I'll just drizzle with some neutral oil. It'll help them get extra crispy. A couple of good pinches of salt. Toss this all around and then I'm cooking this how I cook all of my broccoli these days, which is I stick it under the broiler and let it get super browned and crispy so that it melts in your mouth and you just eat them almost like potato chips. All right, I'm sticking this under my broiler on high and it'll only take about five to ten minutes. While the broccoli crisps up, I'll just make my dressing. I'm starting with three tablespoons of white miso paste, which is a total flavor bomb. It's what makes this salad. It's fermented soybeans. It's salty. It adds umami. I love this stuff and I can find this at my local grocery store. You can find it at Asian markets and it lasts for a really long time in the fridge. Two teaspoons of soy sauce. A quarter cup of rice vinegar for that brightness. A tablespoon and a half of toasted sesame oil for those delicious toasty nutty notes. This is just a really great dressing. You don't have to have it with this grain salad. You could have it on a green salad too. Five tablespoons of neutral oil. A tablespoon of sugar. You're really getting all the flavors here. Sweet, salty, umami, sour. I'll grate in some fresh ginger. This will add that brightness that I love. I like the really little pieces that you get from a fine zester versus finely chopping it. Makes for a smoother dressing that way and it eats smoother as well. A tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds for a little crunch. I'll whisk this together. Just get it nice and smooth. You don't want to have any chunks of miso paste hanging out in here because that would be very salty. That's good. Makes my mouth up. I'll drain my wheat berries. It smells so nutty. I'll dump these straight into the dressing. Get my broccoli. It's nice and crisp. Toss this in. You could really use any veggies here. This is a super versatile salad. Add in some grated carrots. That fresh bit of sweetness. Some scallions are nice. They complement the miso really well. And lastly some toasted cashews which I love for their crunch. You get some extra protein in here too. I'll toss this all together and get everything coated in that beautiful dressing. So whenever I need wheat berries, I call up Nick and I say, you know where a girl can get some wheat berries around here? And Nick answers and he says, I think I know a guy. And then within minutes he's at my door with a bucket of wheat berries straight from the field or the huge grain bins right outside our door. Like a little ball pit of wheat berries. That dressing is distributed. I'm digging in. The chewy texture obsessor within me is so satisfied by this and the miso brings it all to life. I dig this grain salad. For a flavor-packed accompaniment to our meal, I am making my salt and vinegar potato salad. It's hearty, it's bright, and it's creamy from the potatoes, not from mayo. This is not your average mayo soaked potato salad. And it has chewy bits of Chinese sausage just littered throughout. I love this. I'm starting with my little golden potatoes that I've boiled in salted water until tender. I'm just chopping them up into quarters and these golden ones are so nice because they're creamy and they're so so flavorful. We get really good potatoes in this region. There's a lot of potato farmers around here. Nick's grandpa farmed potatoes. He was the head of the potato growers association. So I'm basically a potato princess. I'm tossing some fresh cilantro as well as some scallions and some peas add nice sweetness. And now my favorite part, Chinese sausage, otherwise known as lap cheong, which is super fatty, it's sweet, it's salty, and it has some fennel in it. It just explodes with flavor. It's a dried sausage but you still gotta cook it. Just stir this around. It smells so good already. I need this to get heated through and crisp around the edges. All the best potato salads have meat. Around here a lot of people put ham in their potato salad. I love it but I'm upping the ante with Chinese sausage. And it is little morsels that explode with flavor when you find them in the salad. I'll be digging through the salad for these. Seems crispy to me. I'll just dump it right in, fat and all. The potatoes will soak it up. It looks great already but of course it still needs its dressing. For my vinegar element in this salt and vinegar situation, I'm using rice vinegar which is a bit more mild than the standard distilled white vinegar flavor that you get with salt and vinegar. Around here most of the potato salads are covered in mayo which nothing against that but this one kind of takes a cue from German style potato salad which is a vinegar-based potato salad and channels some Asian energy. A quarter cup of neutral oil which will emulsify with the vinegar and allow it to thicken. A tablespoon of mirin which is a Japanese cooking wine that's sweet and tangy. A tablespoon of sesame oil. Those darker notes. A couple of teaspoons each of toasted sesame seeds and black sesame seeds. Some garlic and salt of course. I'll whisk this together quite vigorously so that the vinegar and the oil can emulsify. I'll pour it all over. There's a lot going on in here. It's like a Oh yeah, I'm smelling the vinegar. It's really strong in the best way. Looks bright and colorful to me. And for a finishing crunch, some chow mein noodles just for more textural excitement. I love these crispy little guys. Add some flaky salt and taste obviously. I'm gonna get like a lot of lap cheong and one potato. Oh yeah, you can't go wrong. It's bright and salty and the sweetness of the potato just mellows everything out and allows it all to come together. Farm to table, more like lunch to truck. Let's eat.