I’ve long proclaimed my love of farro. I especially love its chewy texture and the way it absorbs flavors while still maintaining its own subtle nutty taste. A perfect grain for make-ahead salads.

As I was leafing through the latest Food & Wine magazine this weekend, I spied a recipe for a prosciutto cafilulower farro salad and immediately bookmarked it. I bookmark a lot of recipes on websites, in magazine, in cookbooks. I email them to myself and print them out, but never seem to get around to making them. Mostly they sit in my Inbox, or get sandwiched between my cookbooks for months. So, I think this might be a record for me. Bookmarked on Sunday, eating by Tuesday…It looked that good.

But as with every recipe, I couldn’t leave it alone. In fact, I swapped some of the ingredients and left most of them out. They just didn’t seem necessary. Instead of cubed prosciutto (cubed prosciutto is wrong – very, very wrong), I used bacon. Really good Niman Ranch Applewood smoked bacon. I love the sweet smokiness it added to the salad and it played very well with the cauliflower. I also added some arugula because a salad needs its greens, and some lemon juice to brighten it up.

I had this salad for lunch and absolutely love it as main dish. It’s rich and hearty, but still feels light and healthy. How can it be? I don’t know. It just is.

Update: Added pecans to this, which made it even better.

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