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BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal
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BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal |
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Subject: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: CapriUni Date: 06 May 10 - 04:18 PM (Posted a version of this to my private journal a few days ago; I've got another pot of barley soaking on the stove now, so I'll have a hearty dinner ready for me in while) As of tonight, barley is my favorite grain. Even more than rice, or bulgar (aka wheat) or corn. Period. Om-Nom. More, please. Yes. I've loved pearled barley for years. And came up with this vegan recipe a few years ago: Chickpea and barley vegie stew (substitute vegies and spices as taste and/or allergies require. I imagine it would also be yummy with black beans, or white navy beans, or... whatever). Pearled barley is the refined, "white" version of the grain. And even refined, it has just as much fiber as brown rice, and takes just as long to cook (Exactly the same grain-to-liquid ratio and exactly the same cooking time). So I took cookbooks at their word that unrefined (aka "hulled,") barley was basically inedible. But then, I started tofind recipes for hulled barley online, that made it seem like it was even easier to cook, if you just pre-soaked it -- presoak it for a couple of hours, and then it only needs half an hour on the boil. So, since barley isn't available in my local grocery any more (at least, not in the summer, when people don't think about cooking stews), I looked for, and found, a five-pound bag of hulled barley online. So I done bought it. And tonight, I cooked some up for the first time. I presoaked it for ... oh, I dunno, 2 and a half hours, maybe, drained off that liquid, and then boiled it in fresh water (since rinsing it in a sieve is recommended, but I couldn't find my sieve). Sure enough, it was all puffed up, and perfectly al dente in half an hour, and it didn't need as much water as I used. And when I took the lid off the pot, I swear -- it smelled like warm toast, drizzled with honey. Didn't taste exactly that sweet, but it was still nutty and chewy, and ... om-nom. One cooking/recipe site online suggested substituting cooked and chilled barley for pasta in any of your favorite pasta salad recipes. And I can totally see that. NB -- I'm imagining an om-nom Barley poured into the bowl, and raised in a toast to the host is wonderful -- but -- I've got a mini-mission to spread the word that barley is all 'round edible, so I can find it easily at my grocery store, without having to hunt it down, and pay extra for it, at health food stores. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: Rapparee Date: 06 May 10 - 04:21 PM Try it as the base for a pilaf. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: MMario Date: 06 May 10 - 04:35 PM Barley is a great grain! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: CapriUni Date: 06 May 10 - 04:35 PM Try it as a base for for a pilaf. Indeed. Barley can be eaten in any recipe where rice is used, and it has a milder taste than brown rice. Also (and I know rice is very variable, depending how old and dry it is) but the brown rice I bought most recently has disappointed me in recipes twice in a row (in recipes where I've had great success in the past). And since this current batch of Barley pleases me, I will be substituting rice with it. (and I'll have some leftover, so I'll warm it up for tomorrow's breakfast, with some raisins and walnuts and cinnamon and sugar.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: CapriUni Date: 06 May 10 - 05:10 PM Barley is a great grain! It is that. I've read that it is the third largest grain crop in the United States; about half of that goes toward beer making, most of the rest goes for animal fodder, and only a small portion given over for human eating. I don't want to begrudge our four-legged friends any goodness -- I just want my bipedal companions to join in on the party. Barley trivia: I read, about the time that I originally posted the entry at the start of this thread, that the old legal standard for an inch as a unit of measure, was derived from three barleycorns, dried, laid end-to-end. Today, since I was curious, I laid three dried barleycorns end-to-end. Sure enough, they equaled the length of the first joint of my right thumb... which, as "a rule of thumb," can also be taken as a casual inch. Neither barleycorn nor thumb are standard enough for the Department of weights and Measures, but both are close enough to give credance to the oral tradition... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: CapriUni Date: 06 May 10 - 05:47 PM I didn't realize until just now that my link to the chickpea & barley stew was bad. Here's the recipe I was trying to link to: Put into a two quart pot:
Bring to a rapid boil, and add:
Stir it in, cover the pot tightly, and lower the heat to a simmer. Cook without stirring 45 minutes, or until the barley has absorbed nearly all the liquid, and is tender to the tooth (basically, cook the barley just the way you'd cook brown rice). If you're using hulled barley, instead of pearled, increase the simmering time to an hour. If you want to preserve the quality of vitamin C in the spinach, you can stir it in at the end, and just let it simmer till it's heated through. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: Dave the Gnome Date: 07 May 10 - 04:02 AM Is barley OK for people with a wheat intollerance? I don't have one but family members do and it would be worth noting for others I guess. DeG |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: gnomad Date: 07 May 10 - 10:09 AM Useless info thread-drift: the barleycorn measure 1/3 inch is used in UK footwear sizing, so a shoe 3 sizes larger is one inch longer. I tend to get my barley in liquid form these days, but sometimes use pearl barley in a soup or stew, as a kid I hated it, but my tastes have changed. The only wholegrain barley I've eaten was nibbling the grain straight out of the field as a kid (rub the head between your hands to remove the outer layers and beard) it tasted OK as I recall. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: MMario Date: 07 May 10 - 10:10 AM Barley would be okay for people with WHEAT intolerance - but may or may not be okay for people with GLUTEN intolerance. Many people have the latter but say they have the former. (and some vice versa) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: CapriUni Date: 07 May 10 - 12:36 PM Barley has less gluten than wheat, but it does still have some. Therefore, it doesn't make as "fluffly" a yeast bread as wheat (and this is one reason why it fell out of favor with the "proper" people in society who craved fluffy and refined foods). So -- Yes. What MMario said. Rice is still best for true gluten intolerance, I think. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: MMario Date: 07 May 10 - 01:02 PM Back in the day - before our local Health Food Store Owner retired and the place closed... I used to make pilafs using mixed grains....rice, barley, wheat, rye, and oat..... There is a commercial rice blend out now with barley and wheat berries mixed in with it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: CapriUni Date: 07 May 10 - 02:35 PM MMario -- there's a food company that my aide introduced me to, called Kashi. they put out a mixed grain pilaf of [TM] "Seven whole grains* and sesame" Oats, Brown rice, Rye Hard red wheat Triticale (a wheat-rye hybrid) Buckwheat Barley, Sesame Seeds. The straight pilaf blend is kind of hard to find in stores, but they also make a "crispies" breakfast cereal version, and frozen dinners with that pilaf as a base. To pull this back from the thread creep: Last night, I cooked up my barley (keep wanting to type "Barely") in the same water I soaked it in, rather than draining it and using fresh. It turned out more porridge-like and less pilaf-like, which, once I thought about the mechanics of starch dissolved in cooking water, made perfect sense. And as I type this, I'm wondering if I could figure out a way to cook up a single serving of this porridge in the microwave, for breakfast. ...Because when I'm newly awake and hungry, I'm not one for decision-making and multi-step processes. Hm. *Though they include buckwheat as a grain, and actually buckwheat is not a grain, but a member of the spinach family -- at least, that's what it's counted as now. ...now that we're starting to study plant genomes, botanical families are getting rearranged like mad. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego Date: 07 May 10 - 03:59 PM Lordy; the things you find on this site! I was raised on a ranch where, among other things, we farmed about 80 acres of barley. It was mostly used for cattle or chicken feed. We used to keep a couple of large Butler grain bins full of the whole hulled grain. I never thought of eating it, though I did experiment (badly) with some home-brewed beer. At your suggestion,I must return to my roots! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: MMario Date: 07 May 10 - 04:10 PM Buckwheat is usually classed as a grain; as are amaranth and quinoa. Botanically they are not grains, but then again, botanically eggplant and tomatoes are berries. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Mr Barleycorn: More than a drinking pal From: CapriUni Date: 07 May 10 - 05:42 PM botanically eggplant and tomatoes are berries. Yes. Which is one reason why I'm just a tiny bit perturbed that the FDA reordered their recommended food pyramid to separate fruit and vegatable servings into two distict catagories. Should I count my gazpacho for lunch as a serving of vegies, or a serving of fruit? ;-) Oh, and remembering that tomatoes are close cousins to raspberries makes a recipe like this Tomato soup chocolate cake seem a lot less bizarre. Guest: TJ in San Diago -- Yay! I wish you much epicurian joy. I'm also reminded that, in medical / food history, the vitamin Thiamin, and its role in preventing beriberi, was discovered by switching the brown rice in chicken feed for white rice, and the chickens developed the disease. Maybe we'd all be healthier if we deigned to lower ourselves to eating chickenfeed on a regular basis ;-) |
