I've been feeling a craving for soup made with rich meaty stock lately. I made soup from lamb shanks the other night, cooking the bones for two hours on the stove with lots of veges and barley and lentils, then after I'd cut most of the meat off, chucked the bones into the slow cooker with another couple of soup bones, onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, and a slug of vinegar (to help release the calcium from the bones, according to Sally Fallon) and simmered it for about 24 hours. I took some of it out halfway through and refilled the crockpot with more water, and ended up with one litre of thick, gelatinous stock, and two litres of thinner, but still tasty broth in the freezer.
Today was definitely a soup day, so I defrosted a litre of the broth and added half a cup of soup mix (the packet stuff from the supermarket, or just use whatever combo of barley and legumes you prefer), a sauteed onion, and a couple of cups of diced root vegetables. I ended up adding probably close to a litre of water as the soup simmered away for an hour while the lentils and barley cooked, but just keep an eye on it and make sure the water level never gets too low. Then just before serving I added some diced zucchini and Brussels sprouts. We ate it with grated cheese on top, and warm cheese and chutney pinwheels on the side.
Cheese and Chutney Pinwheels
(recipe adapted slightly from Alison Holst's Dollars and Sense Cookbook)
2c flour (I used 1/2c wholemeal and 1 1/2c plain)
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
25g olive oil
1/2c milk
1/4-1/2c cold water
~1/3c chutney
~1/2c grated cheese
Stir the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Pour in the olive oil, milk and 1/4c of the water, and stir. Add a little more water if necessary until the dough comes together. Roll it out on a floured bench - or, if you're like me and your children have stolen the rolling pin - pat it into a rectangle shape about the size of your average baking tray. Spread it with chutney and sprinkle with grated cheese, leaving a 2cm clear edge on the long side which is furthest away from you. Moisten the clear edge with water or milk to help it stick, then loosen the dough with a palette knife or spatula and roll it up from the long side which is closest to you. Cut it into 2cm thick slices with a sharp knife, and lie the slices flat on a greased baking tray, leaving room to spread. Cook at 220C for 10-12 mins or so, until the pinwheels are golden on top and cooked through. Makes about 15.
Showing posts with label barley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barley. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
O Dumplings, glorious dumplings!
Time to revive this blog from its hibernation. After our epic holiday and 3000km drive to our new home (during which our camera met an Unfortunate End, so alas this blog will be returning to bland monochrome for the foreseeable future), we've settled in happily over the last week. Part of the process of making a house into a home for me always involves cooking, putting my the skill of my hands and heart into filling the house with familiar scents and energy. I've been experimenting with perfecting a bread recipe, kneaded in the bread machine to spare my RSI but baked in the oven, baking muffins and cakes, and taking advantage of the glorious bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables on every roadside farmstand.
While I might be waking the blog from a hibernation, the weather is definitely encouraging the reverse. Since we arrived in the Huon Valley, the weather has been rainy and autumnal, blessing us with sunshine, fogs and a multitude of rainbows, but over the last two days we've had a real taste of winter's blast on our hilltop. So tonight was definitely a night for a rich, warming winter soup of grains and root vegetables, topped with the glorious fluffy clouds of dumplings.
I love dumplings. They are not, as they are for my Beloved, a childhood comfort food - indeed I don't recall my mother ever making them when I was a kid - but I discovered them a few years ago in Sara Lewis' cookbook, Veggie Food For Kids. Since then, I've made them innumerable times and this particular recipe has never failed me. Tonight, however, I absentmindedly mixed up two recipes I had been reading, and made the dumplings with different proportions and added an egg. The dumplings attained gigantic, saucepan-dominating proportions with the larger quantities, and the addition of the egg seemed to make no particular difference, so I'm giving my usual recipe here instead.
Barley and Lentil Vegetable Soup with Dumplings
Soup
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 potatoes, diced (I used Dutch Cream, grown ten minutes up the road from here, and they were superb)
1 carrot, diced
1/2 sweet potato, diced
2 tbsp pearl barley
2 tbsp red lentils
2 tbsp Puy lentils
lots o' stock, or 2tsp stock powder and water
1/2 tsp each cumin and coriander
2 bay leaves
black pepper
1c frozen peas
Saute the onion until tender, add chopped garlic and fry until fragrant. Brown the root vegetables for five minutes or so for deeper flavour. Cover the vegetables generously with water or stock and add stock powder (if using) and other seasonings. Toss in the barley and legumes of your choice (I like the way that the red lentils cook down and thicken the soup and Puy lentils are just divine, but use whatever you have or prefer), bring to the boil, and simmer, covered, until vegetables are almost tender. Add the peas just before you're ready for the dumplings, but make sure the water comes back up to the boil before you add them.
Dumplings
200g plain flour (I use a mix of wholemeal and white, but it works with all wholemeal too)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground parmesan or 1/2c grated cheese
50g butter, diced
enough cold water to form a soft dough
In a food processor, whizz the flour, baking powder and cheese to make sure it is evenly mixed, then add the butter and process until it forms coarse crumbs (don't overprocess). Gradually add water and knead gently until it comes together into a sticky dough; try not to handle it too much or the butter melts and the whole thing goes horribly squoogey. Quickly form into a log, and cut into 12 equal pieces. Let your kids practise their ninja playdough rolling skills and make them into rough balls, then drop them into the gently boiling stew, evenly spaced out. Put the lid on and simmer for fifteen minutes or until light and fluffy - don't take the lid off if you can avoid it. They should double in size into gorgeous fluffy pillows of carbolicious goodness. Devour!
While I might be waking the blog from a hibernation, the weather is definitely encouraging the reverse. Since we arrived in the Huon Valley, the weather has been rainy and autumnal, blessing us with sunshine, fogs and a multitude of rainbows, but over the last two days we've had a real taste of winter's blast on our hilltop. So tonight was definitely a night for a rich, warming winter soup of grains and root vegetables, topped with the glorious fluffy clouds of dumplings.
I love dumplings. They are not, as they are for my Beloved, a childhood comfort food - indeed I don't recall my mother ever making them when I was a kid - but I discovered them a few years ago in Sara Lewis' cookbook, Veggie Food For Kids. Since then, I've made them innumerable times and this particular recipe has never failed me. Tonight, however, I absentmindedly mixed up two recipes I had been reading, and made the dumplings with different proportions and added an egg. The dumplings attained gigantic, saucepan-dominating proportions with the larger quantities, and the addition of the egg seemed to make no particular difference, so I'm giving my usual recipe here instead.
Barley and Lentil Vegetable Soup with Dumplings
Soup
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 potatoes, diced (I used Dutch Cream, grown ten minutes up the road from here, and they were superb)
1 carrot, diced
1/2 sweet potato, diced
2 tbsp pearl barley
2 tbsp red lentils
2 tbsp Puy lentils
lots o' stock, or 2tsp stock powder and water
1/2 tsp each cumin and coriander
2 bay leaves
black pepper
1c frozen peas
Saute the onion until tender, add chopped garlic and fry until fragrant. Brown the root vegetables for five minutes or so for deeper flavour. Cover the vegetables generously with water or stock and add stock powder (if using) and other seasonings. Toss in the barley and legumes of your choice (I like the way that the red lentils cook down and thicken the soup and Puy lentils are just divine, but use whatever you have or prefer), bring to the boil, and simmer, covered, until vegetables are almost tender. Add the peas just before you're ready for the dumplings, but make sure the water comes back up to the boil before you add them.
Dumplings
200g plain flour (I use a mix of wholemeal and white, but it works with all wholemeal too)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground parmesan or 1/2c grated cheese
50g butter, diced
enough cold water to form a soft dough
In a food processor, whizz the flour, baking powder and cheese to make sure it is evenly mixed, then add the butter and process until it forms coarse crumbs (don't overprocess). Gradually add water and knead gently until it comes together into a sticky dough; try not to handle it too much or the butter melts and the whole thing goes horribly squoogey. Quickly form into a log, and cut into 12 equal pieces. Let your kids practise their ninja playdough rolling skills and make them into rough balls, then drop them into the gently boiling stew, evenly spaced out. Put the lid on and simmer for fifteen minutes or until light and fluffy - don't take the lid off if you can avoid it. They should double in size into gorgeous fluffy pillows of carbolicious goodness. Devour!
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Tomato-Barley Soup
I wanted something a little less ambitious after the last couple of recipes. I'm not overfond of tomato soups personally, but my family loves them, and I figured this one sounded interestingly chunky and encouragingly simple.
The recipe comes from Nava Atlas' quirky cookbook American Harvest: Regional Recipes for the Vegetarian Kitchen. This is yet another one from my mother (I swear I have actually bought some of my own cookbooks in the last twenty years). I really like reading this cookbook because, as you can kind of see in the last photo, it is full of funny little pencil drawings and snippets from historical cookbooks and other sources. But I hardly ever cook anything out of it, which seems like a shame. It just doesn't quite match up with my usual cooking style, although it's much less stereotypically American than most of the internet since it relies on fresh unprocessed ingredients and does not contain any mention of either Velveeta mock-cheese or cream of lark's-vomit soup. But I now have a list of recipes I like the sound of (including the Virginia Peanut Soup on the facing page), so hopefully I shall use it more often, since I can't bring myself to put it into my cull pile.
Tomato-Barley Soup
Ingredients
oil
2 large onions, quartered and thinly sliced
3/4 cup pearl barley, rinsed
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 medium turnips or 2 smallish potatoes, peeled and diced (I used potatoes)
2 large stalks celery, diced
One 28-ounce can imported plum tomatoes with liquid (1 used 2 x 400g tins)
2 bay leaves
5 cups water
3 tbsp fresh dill (I didn't have any)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oil in a large soup pot or Dutch oven. And the onions and saute over a low heat until they are golden. [Endeavour not to get distracted and burn the crap out of them, especially if they were your last ones, because otherwise you might have to go to the lengths of emptying them out of the saucepan into a colander and scrubbing out the saucepan before putting the slightly singed pieces back in, and that would be just silly.] Add the barley, carrots, turnips or potatoes, celery, tomatoes with their liquid, bay leaves, and water. Turn up heat to bring to the boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 1 1/4 hoursstirring every 20 minutes or so [I didn't cook it for that long; probably only 45 mins]. At this point the barley and vegetables should be done, or nearly so.
Add the dill and season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer, covered, another 10 or 15 minutes...Adjust the consistency with more water, if necessary [it was]. The soup will thicken as it stands [oh boy, did it just]. Adjust the liquids and seasonings if necessary, but let it stay nice and thick.
Verdict
Filling and tasty. We served it with grated cheese on the top, which worked well. I could have added more water before serving, but I liked it as a stew. Will probably make again, anyway.
The recipe comes from Nava Atlas' quirky cookbook American Harvest: Regional Recipes for the Vegetarian Kitchen. This is yet another one from my mother (I swear I have actually bought some of my own cookbooks in the last twenty years). I really like reading this cookbook because, as you can kind of see in the last photo, it is full of funny little pencil drawings and snippets from historical cookbooks and other sources. But I hardly ever cook anything out of it, which seems like a shame. It just doesn't quite match up with my usual cooking style, although it's much less stereotypically American than most of the internet since it relies on fresh unprocessed ingredients and does not contain any mention of either Velveeta mock-cheese or cream of lark's-vomit soup. But I now have a list of recipes I like the sound of (including the Virginia Peanut Soup on the facing page), so hopefully I shall use it more often, since I can't bring myself to put it into my cull pile.
Tomato-Barley Soup
Ingredients
oil
2 large onions, quartered and thinly sliced
3/4 cup pearl barley, rinsed
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 medium turnips or 2 smallish potatoes, peeled and diced (I used potatoes)
2 large stalks celery, diced
One 28-ounce can imported plum tomatoes with liquid (1 used 2 x 400g tins)
2 bay leaves
5 cups water
3 tbsp fresh dill (I didn't have any)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oil in a large soup pot or Dutch oven. And the onions and saute over a low heat until they are golden. [Endeavour not to get distracted and burn the crap out of them, especially if they were your last ones, because otherwise you might have to go to the lengths of emptying them out of the saucepan into a colander and scrubbing out the saucepan before putting the slightly singed pieces back in, and that would be just silly.] Add the barley, carrots, turnips or potatoes, celery, tomatoes with their liquid, bay leaves, and water. Turn up heat to bring to the boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 1 1/4 hoursstirring every 20 minutes or so [I didn't cook it for that long; probably only 45 mins]. At this point the barley and vegetables should be done, or nearly so.
Add the dill and season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer, covered, another 10 or 15 minutes...Adjust the consistency with more water, if necessary [it was]. The soup will thicken as it stands [oh boy, did it just]. Adjust the liquids and seasonings if necessary, but let it stay nice and thick.
Verdict
Filling and tasty. We served it with grated cheese on the top, which worked well. I could have added more water before serving, but I liked it as a stew. Will probably make again, anyway.
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