Spring cleaning menu #2:
Not beautiful, but neither would you be if buried in a glacier for 10,000 years.
Part of spring cleaning is to eat everything in the freezer and the cupboards. Yesterday we had corn pudding and cluster beans amandine with Ötzi upside down cake.
Today, barley.
Barley is the mother of all stodge. Cut it with a very bright citrus vinaigrette and lots and lots of well-caramelized sauteed mushrooms.
Barley salad, with mushrooms, leeks, kale and an orange-lemon vinaigrette
1 c unhulled barley
2 c boiling water, with a vegetarian bouillion cube
1 T butter (or olive oil, for salad)
(1 hour, plus up to 30 mins in 375 oven, tightly covered. After one hour, keep checking it and tasting it until all the liquid is absorbed and the kernels are tender.)
Vinaigrette
1/3 c orange and lemon juice, plus zest of one orange (one orange, 1 1/2 lemons)
Hot sauce, a sufficiency
Whisk in 2/3 c olive oil, saving some 4 T for sauteeing veg
Plenty of salt and freshly ground pepper
Salad
8 oz Crimini mushrooms, cleaned and sliced (next time I will do 1 lb.)
2 leeks, washed and sliced
Saute, stirring, in hot reserved oil until mushrooms have given up their juices and the juice has reduced away so the mushrooms can brown, and add to the large bowl into which you have put
8 oz. kale, ribs removed, rolled into cigars and cut into 1/4 inch slices (chiffonade)
Boiled for 10 or so minutes, drained well and all water pressed out.
Add the vinaigrette and the hot barley to the cooked veg, s + p, toss. Serve at cool room temp.
This is a riff on Alton Brown’s adventures in barley.
www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/baked-barley-reci…
www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/barley-salad-reci…
And this stew from Bon Appetit which sounds kind of dreary:
www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Barley-Stew-with-Le…
(c) 2012, Jeannette Smyth. All rights reserved.
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