Wheat Berries Round III: Butternut Squash, Walnuts, Gorgonzola, mmmmm....

Well, I told you you were done with Wheat Berries, but clearly I lied.

I have to post this, because I just made it for dinner AGAIN, and I LOVE IT. It is heavily inspired by the previous 'Balsamic Gorgonzola Deliciousness' recipe, but that was more summery, with crispy apples and fennel, and this is more wintery.



The stuff:
--Butternut squash (I told you that was my new food kick!), cubed and roasted
--wheatberries, about a cup and a half or 2 cups, cooked
--toasted walnuts
--crumbled gorgonzola
--carmelized onions
--balsamic vinegar
--olive oil
--salt & pepper

Now basically, the reason that this is so awesome and delicious and easy, is that you just mix together that list of stuff, taste to make sure you like the proportions, and gobble up. (and trust me, you will gobble). But, some of that stuff is kind of time consuming, so now I'm going to share the system I arrived at for making it weeknight-friendly.

Wheatberries- now, I have mentioned these previously, and they take a LONG TIME to cook. As in, over an hour. Anything cooking for over an hour is not weeknight friendly at all. Knowing full well that I'm obsessed with these things, obviously I had to take action. So, a while ago, I bought a big bag of these little lovelies from Whole Foods, filled up my biggest pot with water, and then let them boil and boil until they were edible (1-1.5 hours). After they were cooked, I scooped them up in 1 or 2 cup increments, dumped them into individual ziplock baggies, and stuck them in the freezer- voila! microwave, and you have instant wheatberries!

Butternut squash- these little bags from trades joes are awesome. Just buy, open, toss with a little olive oil, and put in the oven at 400 until nice and soft and browned (stir as needed). Obviously its always fine to buy a whole squash, seed, peel, and cube it, but thats a lot of work.

Onions- carmelizing onions takes a while, but luckily you have to roast the squash so you have time, because just frying them would not be as delicious. Basically, stick the squash in, and then quickly slice about half an onion, and put it on LOW LOW HEAT with some butter or olive oil. cook them slowly and let them become delicious and sweet and brown (since they're on low, you can just leave them, and go over and stir occasionally).

Roasted walnuts- buy them pre-chopped, and store in the freezer. pull out a handful, put on a cookie sheet, and let them heat up while you stir up all the other ingredients

Gorgonzola- you can buy this crumbled. it is more expensive, but its in a nice sealed container, and is pretty easy to deal with, and is very week-night friendly.

The skinny:
So, here is your system- walk in the door. Toss the squash in the oven and the onions in the pan, remove walnuts and berries from freezer. For the next 30 min or so, do whatever you do when you come home, occasionally going in the kitchen and stirring the onions and squash. When its almost ready, just pop the wheatberries in the microwave and the walnuts in the hot oven. Pull it all out, dump in a big bowl, pour some olive oil, balsamic, salt, and (lots of) pepper, stir in copious amounts of cheese, and you're good to go! So warm and savory and delicious!!