Roasted vegetable and freekeh salad that actually holds up

I picked up a kilo of cracked freekeh from the wholefoods bloke at the Beaumont Street markets in Hamilton on Saturday, mostly because the pumpkin next to his stall looked better than anything at the supermarket that week. Freekeh’s one of those grains people buy once, cook badly, and never touch again. That’s a shame, because when you roast it right alongside a decent tray of vegetables it’s the sort of lunch that still tastes good on Wednesday, which quinoa rarely manages once it’s been in the fridge for two days.

Why a roasted vegetable freekeh salad earns its place in the weekly rotation

Freekeh is young durum wheat that’s been roasted and cracked, and that toasting is doing a lot of the flavour work before it even hits your pot. It’s got more fibre and protein than white rice, and unlike couscous it actually keeps some bite when it cools, which matters if you’re making lunch on Sunday for the rest of the week. The Australian Dietary Guidelines are pretty clear that most of us aren’t getting enough vegetable variety or wholegrains in the one sitting, and this dish quietly fixes both without feeling like a compromise. It’s not a side dish pretending to be lunch. It’s lunch.

The other thing going for it is temperature. Warm, room temperature, cold from the fridge the next day standing over the sink. It works at all three, which is more than you can say for most salads built around leafy greens that go sad and watery by the second day.

Ingredients

• 200g cracked freekeh
• 500ml vegetable or chicken stock
• 600g pumpkin (butternut or Kent), cut into 2cm chunks
• 2 red capsicums, cut into thick strips
• 1 large red onion, cut into wedges
• 400g tin chickpeas, drained and patted dry
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for the dressing
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 2 cloves garlic, finely grated
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 80g baby spinach or rocket
• Small bunch flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• Small bunch mint, leaves picked
• 100g Danish or Persian feta, crumbled
• 50g pepitas, toasted
• Sea salt and cracked black pepper

Method

1. Get your oven to 220°C fan-forced. This isn’t a dish for a timid oven – you want proper heat, not a warm suggestion of heat.
2. Toss the pumpkin, capsicum and red onion with 2 tbsp of the olive oil, the cumin, smoked paprika, a good pinch of salt and pepper. Spread across two trays, not one – crowd the vegetables and they’ll steam instead of roast, and steamed pumpkin is a sad thing.
3. Roast for 20 minutes, then add the chickpeas to one of the trays and toss everything through. Roast a further 15 to 20 minutes, until the vegetables are properly caught at the edges and the chickpeas have gone slightly crisp.
4. Meanwhile, rinse the freekeh under cold water, then simmer in the stock for 15 to 18 minutes, until tender but still with a bit of chew. Drain any excess liquid and spread it out on a tray to cool a little – this stops it going gluggy.
5. Whisk the remaining tablespoon of olive oil with the grated garlic, lemon zest and lemon juice. Taste it. It should be sharp enough that it wakes the whole dish up, not just a polite drizzle.
6. In a large bowl, combine the warm freekeh with the roasted vegetables and chickpeas, then fold through the spinach or rocket while everything still has some heat in it – the greens should wilt slightly, not stay stiff and separate.
7. Pour over the dressing, add most of the parsley and mint, and toss well. Check the seasoning again – freekeh drinks up salt more than you’d expect.
8. Scatter with the remaining herbs, the crumbled feta and toasted pepitas just before serving, so the pepitas stay crunchy and the feta doesn’t melt into a puddle.

Getting a decent char without turning the kitchen into a smokehouse

The whole dish falls over if the vegetables come out soft and pale instead of properly coloured. That means don’t muck about with a low oven because you’re worried about burning things: 220°C, two trays, room to breathe. If your oven runs hot at the back like most home ovens do, rotate the trays halfway. I’d rather pull a tray out slightly early with good colour on it than leave everything in until it’s cooked through and grey.

Honestly, I think people over-season the dressing and under-season the vegetables, which is backwards. Salt goes on before roasting, when it can actually do something. The lemon and garlic are there to lift the whole plate at the end, not to compensate for a bland tray of veg.

What goes on top and what doesn’t

Feta’s my choice here because it holds its shape and doesn’t melt into the warm grains the way goat’s cheese does, but a firm marinated ricotta works if that’s what’s in the fridge. I’d steer away from a creamy dressing on this one. You want the vinaigrette style to cut through the roasted vegetables, not sit on top of them. If you like a bit more crunch, toasted almonds instead of pepitas do the job, though I’ll admit pepitas are cheaper and I’m not above that being a factor on a Sunday grocery run.

Serving it up

This one’s happiest served warm straight after roasting, piled into wide bowls with the feta and herbs scattered last. For lunches through the week, pack the salad and the fresh herbs separately if you can be bothered: the freekeh and vegetables hold up fine in the fridge for three or four days, but wilted herbs after two days start tasting more like compost than garnish. A dollop of yoghurt on the side isn’t traditional but it’s not wrong either.

If you’re after something in a similar register, the roast cauliflower steaks with tahini use the same high-heat roasting principle, and the warm grain bowl with roasted roots and labne is basically this dish’s cousin with a different grain and a dollop of labne instead of feta. Both are good evidence that roasting vegetables properly, rather than steaming them under foil, is most of the battle.

If you want to swap something

No freekeh in the pantry, pearl barley or brown rice will do the job, though you’ll want to add a squeeze more lemon since neither has that faint smoky flavour freekeh brings from the roasting process. If you’re feeding someone who needs it gluten-free, quinoa’s the obvious swap, cooked the same way in stock rather than water. For a heartier version I’ll sometimes add roasted haloumi in the last five minutes, which turns lunch into something you’d happily serve at a Sunday table with people over. The chickpea and roasted vegetable salad with red capsicum mayo takes the same base further down the capsicum path if that’s more your thing.

For the bigger picture on why vegetable variety and wholegrains matter beyond just this one salad, the Eat for Health guidelines from the Australian Government are worth a look, and CSIRO’s ongoing work on gut health and fibre backs up why a bowl like this does more for you than it looks like on paper. If you’re trying to build better habits into the weekly shop generally, our piece on setting up a healthy weeknight pantry that actually works is a decent place to start.

Anyway – get the trays in hot, don’t crowd them, and taste the vegetables before you decide the dressing needs fixing. Most of the time it’s the roasting that needed the attention, not the lemon.

– Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen