Shepherd Salad with Freekeh

Summer calls for light meals cooked in no time. As the days become hotter my cooking class menus have lighted up and shifted its focus from the hearty mains into the appetizers (meze) showcasing the bounty of the available produce. And when I cook for myself I rarely spend on a meal more than 5 minutes (hands-on) because the summer ingredients are so good and self-sufficient that the only thing they are calling for is chopping them up. So my knife skills are improving day by day.
Over the past week I have often had variations of Turkish salads with my favorite being çoban (shepherd) salad. The classic formula is uber-simplistic: diced tomato, cucumber, green pepper and onion seasoned with olive oil, liberal quantities of lemon juice and dotted with chopped parsley.

But then I love having salads as a main and the shepherd salad surely lacks the substance. Substance can be achieved by tossing a carbohydrate or a protein into the mix, or… Before it got more complicated I thought that for the sake of summer simplicity I need to add only one ingredient - firik, Turkish for freekeh.

I discovered freekeh/firik, a variety of wheat berry, when reading Bulgur, one of the most humble yet well-done cookbooks in Turkish I have seen. Freekeh is rice-like looking small oblong grain of brownish green color. It is a wheat berry that was picked up pre-mature, while still green and then burned. Because the young grain is moist its burning results in the loosened up husks that can subsequently be rubbed off. The grain acquires smoky taste and flavor.

Why all this burning extravaganza? According to some harvesting unripe wheat helps replenish thinned out stock of the staple before the crop and when as the early harvest takes place when the sun is not abundant and generous enough to dry things quickly burning the grain is the most sure way to prevent its perishing.

While many Istanbul shops specializing on grains carry freekeh (even Migros, a major supermarket chain, sells it) you will hardly find freekeh on the restaurant menus, proving its status of a forgotten food. It was a pleasant surprise to find freekeh-stuffed vine leaves at Imbat, a restaurant at the historical peninsula, and see freekeh pilaf at Mikla, an Istanbul fine-dining restaurant on a mission to bring forgotten flavors to the plates of the Istanbul eaters.

I heard from a friend of mine, UK-born chef working in Russia, that apparently freekeh is the new quinoa, an impossibly trendy ancient grain everyone wants to cook with these days in the UK. I read the article he sent me and signed about the imperfection of the world as the Little Prince’s fox regretting that the planet without the hunters does not have the chickens either. The last time I was buying it the vendor offered some to another woman suggesting she could make pilaf with it, and she just shrugged her shoulders. Trendy ancient grain, huh? Definitely, not in Turkey.

I have been experimenting with freekeh quiet a bit over the past half a year. I have discovered I don’t like it with spring produce such as broad beans and artichokes because their colors, flavors and textures are nearly identical. But when making assorted dolmas - stuffed vegetables and leaves - it became apparent that shrugged was created to pair with lamb as the smoky flavor accentuates the gamey taste of lamb.

But also there is something else freekeh works well - fresh vegetables - giving the nutty flavor and satisfying substance. So my shepherd salad seemed like a perfect place for freekeh to be. And if spending 5 minutes at the kitchen I can make a healthy meal and be in trend as well I really don’t mind.