Lately, life’s been busy. So I’ve been reaching into my stack of homemade meals in the freezer or into the pantry for ingredients for a quick pasta. We all have those days, weeks, even months, when you don’t have the time for a big grocery store trip, or you want to pinch a few extra pennies at the end of the month.
One of my favorite things to have my grandma cook is arroz cubano. When she and my grandpa come to visit from Brazil the menu usually looks something like this:
Tortilla de Patata
Paella
Pollo Tia Ely
Arroz Cubano
Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
One of these things does not fit. But that’s a long story.
Arroz cubano is pretty fancy. It’s white rice shaped into a mound using a mug, then topped with tomato sauce and a perfectly fried egg. Definitely a classic stretching-the-grocery-budget meal, and definitely a kid-pleaser. Anything is immediately more exciting when it looks like a volcano and can be smashed. That’s a fact of life.
Luckily, these days I’m about 1% more sophisticated than my rice-volcano-smashing 8-year-old self, and so I came up with this warm farro bowl that has all the nostalgic goodness of arroz cubano. This is the perfect starter meal if you’ve never cooked farro before—it’s quick cooking, simple, and pretty darn foolproof. The key is to keep tasting your farro and adding more liquid if it needs it—it’ll be done when it’s firm but not crunchy.
