I'm Trace Barnett and welcome to Garden Party.

Let's fall into the season with a harvest grain bowl that's packed with all the root vegetable flavor that we want.

A little bit of my favorite grain Farro with a maple Dijon dressing.

Has me hungry already!

To begin our harvest grain bowls let's first start with our grain.

Today we're using one of my favorite ancient grains.

And that is Farro.

Pharaoh has a really good nutty flavor which complements our root vegetables well, and it also doesn't stick to them for presentation purposes.

Because this bowl is going to really be pretty.

I've prepared my Farro by first boiling some water, add the Farro to that, cover it, and just let all of that water evaporate.

I then just fluff it with a fork and set it to the side.

I prefer to have my grains for my grain bowl already prepared and kind of waiting on me.

You can serve this dish warm or at room temperature, so I don't want my grain bowl to be scorching hot when I throw my vegetables on it.

So let's get started with our root vegetables fresh from the garden.

So this harvest grain bowl features a lot of my favorite vegetables of the season, which are brussel sprouts, parsnip, carrots and butternut squash.

So for this recipe you need one small butternut squash.

And I had a large to medium here, so I halved it.

My favorite mode of kind of getting into a butternut squash.

Because if you've ever used them, you almost need like a little pocket chainsaw to get into this thing.

But what I like to do is I halve them, which kind of gives me an even surface to work on, and also a little bit of a grip.

And then I just use a good peeler.

We want to cube this butternut squash, so we want to peel the outside off first.

A lot of times when I prep and work with butternut squash, I will also roast it whole.

But we want to retain our texture and shape for this recipe.

Use a good high quality peeler for this, because you don't want to be using a paring knife or anything that you might slip and cut your fingers on.

A once you have your butternut squash peeled, any sturdy spoon will work and you just want to kind of dive and to that flesh and pull those seeds and just a little bit of the strings out.

So that looks sufficiently done.

And I'm going to take off each end.

Now the key to this recipe really is kind of prepping your vegetables and then also chopping them in the same size.

Parsnips and carrots are one of my favorite root vegetables, simply because they are so bright and color and also packed with flavor.

And they also have a really good texture.

I've gave these a good thorough wash and again, I'm going to just remove the skins a lot of root vegetable skins are tough, so when you cook them up or roast them, they kind of have that really residual chewy texture there, which we don't want in our bowl.

And a lot of them honestly just taste like dirt.

And we don't want that either.

You want a couple medium to large carrots and a couple medium to large parsnips for this recipe.

So like I said, the key to this is you want your vegetables to be at the same chopped ratio.

We don't want all of these vegetables, some of them cooking sooner than others.

They might char a little bit.

We don't want them to be a little tough.

So uniformity is the key to chopping these root vegetables.

And really any root vegetables that you're cooking this season do need to be chopped uniform.

So I'm going to take my knife and I'm going to run right through these parsnips, right down the middle.

Also guard your fingers when you're chopping root vegetables, because they tend to want to run all over your board, and your knife wants to run onto your fingers, I'm going to cut those in a pretty substantial chunk.

because I really want them to hold their shape.

I really want them to have that charred outside edge, but also still have that really good soft texture on the inside, which we want with our Farro Grain Ball.

Also, it's a little bit more filling, and your root vegetables are going to go a lot farther.

Our butternut squash.

I'm going to run straight down the center, and I'm going to do that with the inside facing down.

But I'm going to cut it with the outside facing up.

And simply because it's going to be easier to gauge our chopping here.

I'm going to leave those the exact size of our parsnip.

So now to our brussel sprouts, which I love because, I mean, they're just like cute little cabbages on just a big long cabbage Stalk and we need about one cup of halved brussel sprouts.

Now, I'm just I've washed these and I'm going to remove the ends, and I'm going to chop them directly down the middle.

Now, when I do brussel sprouts, whether I'm just roasting them as a side or in a bowl like this, I love the little leaves that kind of come off the edges.

They kind of make that little crisp char-y crunchy texture, and that's going to be perfect for our grain bowl.

I really love the colors of this bowl too, because you have your bright oranges, you have your greens, a little bit of beige from the parsnips, and that's really what we eat with Is our eyes.

So very exciting Fall dishes.

I'm going to transfer all of these root vegetables to a cast iron skillet.

The reason I like to use cast iron is because cast iron really holds the heat evenly throughout the entire dish.

Also, all of that really good seasoning that's in our cast iron is going to help us caramelize our root vegetables.

I'm going to take a couple tablespoons of olive oil.

Use good olive oil for this because we want that olive oil flavor to come through in our vegetables.

I know you hear that on every other cooking show but like use a good olive oil.

But when you're roasting vegetables that are the star of the dish definitely use that better grade.

I'm going to sprinkle that with a little pepper, a little bit of salt and a little bit of garlic powder just for a little bit extra flavor.

Now to that on top I'm going to add just some cut up kale.

I've washed our kale.

I've gotten all of that sandy dirt that likes to hide up in kale.

Gotten it washed away.

And then I've just loosely chopped it.

I'm also going to add just a little bit of mustard green to this too, because mustard greens have that really good tangy taste that I love.

And I really like the texture of mustard greens because they're really kind of light and fluffy.

So this is going to sound a little weird, but I'm going to drizzle just a tiny bit of olive oil right on top of our kale.

Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of take our kale on top of our root vegetables, and I'm going to kind of massage the olive oil into the kale.

Now, we are going to put this in a preheated 425 degree oven for roughly 30 minutes, depending on how your oven cooks and the level of kind of caramelized char you like on your vegetables.

Now, as we cook these, we're going to want to stir them up.

But I layer the kale and the greens directly on top.

And I allow those root vegetables to cook for a good 25 minutes on the bottom before I flip it.

That way our kale doesn't get super, super crispy, but it's going to be so perfect in our grain bowl.

So let's transfer these to our oven.

So the grain bowls are a wonderful way to utilize produce that you might just have in your pantry or on your cabinet.

And root vegetables especially have like a really long shelf life, and they do seem to accumulate over time.

So the grain bowl is a great way to utilize all that produce.

Not to mention that the grain itself is so protein packed, it's going to make you feel really full without being overly full.

Loaded with good fiber.

It's just really good for your body.

So the whole marriage of all of these ingredients really equals a dish that's nutritionally packed, visually appealing, and it's also tastes really good too.

While our vegetables are roasting up in the up oven, I'm going to caramelize some onions for us to top our bowl with.

If there's any way to my heart, it's a caramelized onion.

Use a red onion for this, because not only does red onion have the best flavor to impart on our bowl, but it's just also beautiful and they really caramelize up a lot better than, say, a sweet onion.

So I'm going to take my knife and just run right through.

And I want just half rings here.

Thinly slice so they caramelize evenly and nicely.

The best way to cut an onion is what I just done.

Slice it down the middle, peel it, and then cut the onion face side down.

It's going to take away a lot of tears unless you need the sympathy, then cut an onion always works for me.

I'm gonna throw this in a skillet here with just a little bit of olive oil, a little bit of melted butter.

I'm going to put a little bit of sugar on those onions.

Just a little bit of sprinkle.

And I'm going to give them a good toss.

Now what the sugar does when we transfer this to our stove top.

The sugar really helps to latch on and pull out those sugars inside the onion.

It's going to give them that really good caramelized color and flavor that we want.

You're going to want to put these on medium high heat and cook them for about 20 minutes.

but just keep an eye on them while you're doing it and just give them a stir every now and again.

So let's take these to our stovetop.

While our veggie cook.

Whoooo!

almost need a little mini forklift for that cast iron skillet.

But look how beautiful those vegetables are.

It's exactly what we're looking for.

Everything's married together.

Perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked.

Let's make our dressing.

Now.

This dressing is super easy.

I love this on salads.

Not necessarily just grain bowls.

And it has maple and Dijon.

Which could that sound any more like Fall?

Maple syrup and Dijon mustard.

Yum.

So we need three tablespoons of olive oil.

I actually can count.

I know it surprises a lot of people.

Two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar.

This is one of those vinegars you can't use just like distilled vinegar.

So you have to use apple cider.

We need a good tablespoon of Dijon mustard.

And that put this little extra in there for me because I'm a real Dijon person, and we need a tablespoon of maple sirup.

And a teaspoon of lemon juice.

Add a little bit of salt and pepper to that.

And give it a good whisk.

Now I have waited till right before I serve the grain bowls to make my dressing.

The reason being is this is not something you want to make up and store in the refrigerator before you assemble your grain bowls, because it's going to solidify and you'll have to wait for everything to kind of de-amalgamate.

Is that even a word?

Sounds good though.

I love that vinaigrette.

And look how pretty it is too.

You can really see that mustard come through.

So now that our dressing is done, let's assemble our bowls.

You roughly need about one cup of Farro per individual serving here.

Throw in our root vegetables here.

If I'm making mine, which this is mine.

I'm going to fish out all the brussel sprouts.

Cook gets first choice right?

Top that with our caramelized onions.

A little bit of green onion.

Just because I love green onions so much.

So let's pour our dressing directly over our grain bowl here and be mindful and not oversaturate your grain bowl with dressing because we don't want it swimming around in there.

And now all I need is the fork.

I'm always left without a fork here on this set.

Spoke to soon.

No.

It's crazy how the maple on the Dijon really come through on these root vegetables.

Give that a good stir and you're all set.

I'll see y'all later.

Happy Fall y'all.

Root vegetables aren't very glamorous to eat on camera.

Now for our brussel sprouts.

So Brussels sprouts are one of the best.

Like they're like mini cabbages on a cute little mini cabbage stalk.

Oh, Murphy's also laying under me so I'm sure he'll burp while we're here.

and then just flup it fluff.

fl-fl-fl-th I'm so close.

Not really, but pretty close.

Yeah I don't even want to add the parsley because then we'll have to chop some, Nobody got time for that.

whatever flavor boat you want to sail away on this fall season.

So cheesy.

Let's just quit on that now all I need is a spoon.

Once again, I don't have one.

I'm just going to dive right on in without it.