Sometimes you just make those salads that sound so good. With summery ingredients like juicy tomatoes and crisp cucumbers, bits of torn, aromatic basil, and my favorite, slithery, salty anchovies, it should be great. You follow the recipe almost to the T, and you know what? It just falls flat– not on its face but skidding ever so gently on its bum.

When I saw this recipe for what seemed like a delectably simple farro salad in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook my mind began to reel with all of the pithy titles I would name this post. So Near, So Farro. Farro Too Good. Or maybe, Once Upon a Time, In a Land Farro Way. (Yes, I know that none of these titles make a lick of sense.) But then I made this salad, and I’m sorry to say, for the sake of the English language (or maybe that is a blessing), I was underwhelmed.

This salad just needed something. The dressing was not acidic enough for my taste, with a 1:6 ratio. I even salted heartily, and that didn’t do it either. The best word to describe this salad? Meh. I like each of these ingredients on their own, so why not all mixed up to make this summer salad?

Instead as I sat in the living room, gazing out the window as I am wont to do, choking down this bland melange, I found myself thinking of the seasons to come. Wouldn’t a warm winter salad of dried fruit and farro be delightful? What about a farro porridge, drowning in piping hot milk? Or a mock risotto of sorts, farro kernels plumped with broth and speckled with reconstituted dried mushroom? Ah yes, so near, so farro…