Wheat Berry Spinach Salad

I was looking through a cookbook "Super Natural Cooking" by Heidi Swanson, the other day and came across this recipe for a salad using wheat berries. Back in my hippy days I remember fondly one of my college roommates cooking up wheat berries and combinding
them with peanuts and maple syrup for breakfast, it was a weird dish but for some reason I loved it.

I have not used wheat berries since then except in their processed form of flour. I decided to give this recipe a try. The first thing I discovered is that Heidi uses "soft" wheat berries and even our extensive natural grocery store did not carry them. I was undaunted and bought "hard" wheat berries instead. As you will discover the results were good :-)

As usual I messed with the original recipe.

Ingredients

Salad
2 cups wheat berries, soft or hard
6 cups water
2 teaspoons sea salt
6 ounces of fresh baby spinach ( 6 cups loosely packed)
1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes, chopped 
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

Dressing
zest and juice from one orange
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 olive oil

1) Combine the wheat berries, water and salt in a large pot and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Lower the heat, simmer covered for over an hour, mine took about 80 minutes. Keep checking for tenderness and water. They will still be "al dente" but chewable.

2) While the wheat berries are cooking you can prepare the rest of the salad.
    Wash the baby spinach. It turns out 6 ounces is about 6 cups of spinach loosely packed.

3) Cut the dried tomatoes into small pieces. I love to use scissor for jobs like this. I have three or four pairs in my kitchen.

4) Make the dressing: Combine orange juice and zest with the lemon juice.

5) Whisk in the half cup of olive oil, add a dash of salt and pepper.

6) Once the wheat berries are done, drain them and while still hot toss in the spinach, dried tomatoes and the dressing. Add the feta cheese last or for a vegan salad leave it out.

This salad really is better once it had cooled down, it is even better the next day.
I served it with curried potatoes and summer squash, pita bread and chutney. Great dinner !!

As you can imagine this salad lends itself to lots of variations, try adding olives or garbanzo beans, toasted walnuts or dried cranberries, fresh corn or fresh peas. Change the dressing as well !!