Jenmenke

Road Warrior

barley

Kale Harvest and a Winter Soup

Mmmmm. I know I tend to go on and on about Kale. But seriously? It’s that good.

Everyone just assumes it tastes like spinach. But it really doesn’t. Lacking a good comparison, however, that’s what most people say. Including me, I’ll admit. Because there isn’t a good comparison.

It tastes like Kale. Nutty, earthy, sweet… so good!

While spinach can be too earthy, a bit mushy, sometimes harsh tasting. –At least in comparison to kale.

So, if you haven’t tried Kale, then go buy some. Or stop by my house and I’ll give you a gallon freezer bag full.

I’ll also admit: it is very difficult for me to buy Kale at the grocery store. You get about six stems for about $3. Seriously insane. It reminds me of a lunch meeting I had. I was a bit late (always) and came in after they had ordered a couple appetizers. Being polite (hardly ever), I didn’t ask what they had ordered. When the waitress set down two steaming bowls of edamame, I blurted out, “You paid money for these?!”

Of course they paid money for those. Everyone pays money for edamame. Except me, who can’t keep up with the ice cream pails full of pods that start coming out of the garden in August. And they are so much better than the ones at the restaurants. So I encourage you to try planting edamame as well. A simpler crop cannot be found.

Anyway.

Kale.

I will admit one more thing. Processing the kale for the freezer takes about three “jennie days” consisting of anywhere from 1-3 hours each:

  1. Cutting and hauling
  2. Stripping stems from leaves
  3. Boiling, freezing and bagging

Four days this year, due to the volume of stems harvested. (It was a good year for kale.)

I detail my process here, if you are interested. Which, of course, you are not, because who but me does stuff like this? This year, I was able to do all the boiling outside which saved me from the usual three-day kale smell in the house. (Not a good thing. Imagine broccoli times ten.)

I also cut one step out of the process. Instead of chopping the frozen pieces before bagging, I simply crunched up the frozen leaves as I put them in the bags, thereby saving the cutting board clean-up. Always the innovator am I.

I saved about 6 fresh leaves and made this amazing, amazing soup. Sort of a take-off on Italian Kale soup. I substituted barley for white beans, since I had frozen barley left over from my Fall Barley Risotto and didn’t have any white beans in my pantry.

This soup was insanely delicious. And so ridiculously simple. I did start with homemade chicken broth. I’ve got a dearth surfeit** of it in the freezer that I’ve got to use up because I’ve also got a dearth surfeit** of chicken bones waiting to be made into more broth. It’s a vicious circle. I am certain it would also be great with store-bought broth.

Kale Soup with Barley, Sausage and Quinoa

  • 1 pkg hot Italian sausage (I used Johnsonville, but Chorizo with be amazing)
  • 1 medium onion diced or equivalent shallots. (I’ve got to use my dearth surfeit** of shallots up, so I used shallots)
  • 3 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 8 cups chicken stock
  • 4 cups thinly sliced kale, stems removed
  • 1 cup pearled barley
  • 1 cup quinoa
  • 1 T balsamic vinegar (yes, every recipe I use includes balsamic)
  • Salt and Pepper to taste
  • shredded Pecorino Romano for garnish

Slice the sausage into disks if using Johnsonville-type with casings. Otherwise roughly break up if using bulk sausage. In a large soup pan, brown sausage and remove from pan, leaving fat. My sausage did not render much fat, so I added some bacon fat to the pan. Sauté the onions until starting to brown, add the garlic and sauté another minute. Add the the chicken stock and barley to the pot and cook an hour until the barley is just about done (My barley was already cooked, so I added everything at once and simmered for about 45 minutes total). Add the kale, quinoa and sausage and cook another 20-30 minutes on a low simmer. Taste for seasonings. Add the balsmic and serve hot with pecorino (or parmesan) shreds and crusty bread.

Serves: 500 with leftovers*

*kidding. It serves: I don’t know, but I’m guessing 16. We ate a ton. I ate 4 days of left overs and I’ve got a container in the freezer with an additional 4 cups. Hope that helps!

**Update, 11/16/2010:
dearth (noun) LACK, scarcity, shortfall, deficiency, ANTONYMS surfeit.

Meatless Monday 42

Fall Barley Risotto

Mmmm. I did it! I finally made a winner. Here’s the thing. In busy times, I tend to do some version of the following for dinner:

  • around 3:30pm when the kids get home, and having lost all track of time, I get up from my computer and look in the freezer
  • I take something out and plop in in a bowl of water to defrost
  • then I forget about it until…
  • somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 pm when one of the kids needs to be somewhere: band, soccer, robotics, yearbook…
  • at which point I usually tell Charlie to have a bowl of cereal, or
  • tell Morgan to stop eating ice cream (or macaroni and cheese or some other large dinner-type substitute)
  • then, I start driving
  • when I return around 8pm, I
  • quickly and randomly throw something together from the defrosted item in the sink and anything I can find in my fridge

It doesn’t leave a lot of room for recipe research. I does leave a lot of room for improvement.

Maybe I have been made delusional from watching Top Chef to think that I, too, can throw some interesting ingredients and flavors together to create a harmonious and delicious meal in 40 minutes or less.

Yes, delusional.

Because it hardly ever works when I wing it. But there is always the exception. And Meatless Monday 42 is just that. The bummer, of course, is that I don’t document anything. I might take one picture and then as the cooking spirals downward, I stop. I mostly laugh.

And drink red wine.

So, I can’t really relate this recipe to you verbatim. But I can tell you the basic outline and structure of the dish. It certainly wouldn’t suffer from variations in ingredients or quantities. The fact that it is a barley risotto, rather than a traditional rice risotto, is simply because after having set my sights on squash risotto, I found I did not have enough rice to make it. Nothing new there. But I did have enough pearled barley. I had tried making a barley risotto sometime last year that was rather disastrous, but I did not let that distract me! Ed on Top Chef made a risotto out of corn! So there!

Here is a comparison of the grains. As you can see, they are somewhat similar. But guess what? Pearled barley (and squash, for that matter) takes over an hour to cook! I didn’t have an hour! (It was already 8 pm at this point, mind you.) So I got out the pressure cooker and dumped the barley in with water (about 2 cups more than the basic recipe on the package called for), a bit of wine and plenty of salt and got it cooking while I put two sweet potatoes in the oven at 425 and sauteed some shallots.

In my brain stem, I felt a familiar stirring: I think I have actually heard of a risotto made entirely in the pressure cooker. Anyone else know of something like that? I know I’ve never tried it, but based on how the barley turned out, I can certainly see promise in concept. The barley was perfect, and the water had turned somewhat risotto-ish — as if I had been stirring it all along.

Anyway, I used water for the broth, rather than stock, because sweet potatoes (or squash) are rich enough. To the sauteed shallots I added a couple of cloves of garlic, then the 1/2 cup of risotto rice I had left in the container. Next, I added about 1/3 cup of white wine, stirring all the while as I normally would with risotto. When the barley was done (after about 15 minutes), I dumped half of it (I froze the other half. Do you have any idea how much two cups of dried barley actually makes? It’s INSANE!) along with it’s cooking liquid into the pot and simmered it with some slivered sage leaves.

When the sweet potatoes were done, I added those to pot, gently stirring to break them up. When everything was cooked to al dente — and barley is very forgiving in this respect, I added about 1/2 cup of finely shredded pecorino and garnished each bowl with a little more. The main spice I used was sage, but in retrospect I would choose rosemary. For whatever reason — and I normally LOVE sage — on this particular night the smell reminded me of cat pee. It seriously bummed me out.

I would also probably choose butternut squash over sweet potato if given enough time to roast it. The sweet potato was good — and very similar to squash — but had a vibrant, Tang-like color that wasn’t all that appealing. I continued to add more pecorino romano, which I have come to love more than aged parmesan, probably because I am cheap. But I really do love the flavor. It’s not quite as strong or sharp. Or something.

Of course the next day NOT being Meatless Monday, I added one small, but spectacular, topping for my lunch: Leftover pot roast!!

Sacrilege!

Meatless Monday Eleven!

Make that Meatless THURSDAY, instead.

Yes, it’s been a harrowing week. I’m sick (again) and life is spinning out of control. It doesn’t help that I’m not taking it seriously.

Seriously.

Because all I really want to do is get up from my computer and go read a book.

Or go work outside.

Or go for a walk.

Or eat.

And eat.

It doesn’t bode well for clients, the blog or for soccer. I know. That soccer thing came out of left field, but the truth is — though I try to hide from it — I run the the soccer program in our small town. It is a mind numbing amount of work. I try not to complain, but complain constantly to anyone who will listen. And I seriously try not to talk about it, but the reality is, it’s my one valid excuse for everything. So, I tend to talk about it incessantly, too. Who can resist making excuses?

Not me.

Anyway, soccer is in full-out spastic mode and I do little else but fire out emails, talk to coaches, update the website and answer questions. All the live long day.

Enough of that. I’m just making excuses.

Here are the rest of them:

Monday was bookclub. Tuesday Dave was out of town, and you know how I feel about him missing our delightful Meatless Monday! Wednesday was St. Patrick’s Day and we had our traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage meal. So Meatless Thursday it had to be!

And I made it up!

I did get one idea from a cookbook I bought at Miraval Spa from a vacation long, long ago…

Before the austerity program…

Anyway, it was delicious. I’ll get right to it.

Butternut Squash Barley Risotto with Morels and Asparagus

The idea I got from the cookbook was to toast some of the barley before cooking it. To be honest, I don’t know if it made any difference. Perhaps it enhanced the flavor, but I really couldn’t tell you.

The other thing I should mention is that I do love risotto, but I often find it to be too rich. In fact, when I make it at home, I never use homemade chicken stock because I find it to be too strong. I like to use canned or boxed broth, mixed half and half with water. But since I couldn’t use chicken stock on meatless monday(!), and since I recently decided I am not a big fan of my veggie bouillon cubes, I came up with a different flavoring idea.

I sautéed the onions to just the carmelization stage

Added three cloves of garlic. (This, by the way, is still my garden garlic harvest last August. Still looks and tastes pretty good even though it is just starting to sprout)

Then added water, deglazing the pan.

I added a bit of salt, dried thyme, and then some dried morels to the liquid and used that to cook the risotto.

It worked great! Lightly flavored, but not overpowering. Well, truth be told, once you add all that butternut squash, who’s to know what the stupid broth tasted like?!

Toward the end I added pre-cooked butternut squash which I had in the freezer from another meal.

And finally, I added steamed asparagus that had been shocked in ice water at the last minute.

I was stunned to find no shredded parmesan cheese in my fridge, so I used Dubliner White Cheddar instead, which tasted delicious…

I forgot to add the pine nuts I was thinking about. They would have been good. I’ll add them to my leftovers, which I plan to have for lunch today.

The verdict? Sweet, but really good. There is no avoiding the sweet when using butternut squash. I would definitely make it again.

Butternut Squash Barley Risotto with Morels and Asparagus
  • 1 cup pearled barley
  • 4+ cups water (just use a bit more hot water if you run out of broth and need more liquid to finish cooking the barley
  • olive oil
  • 1 medium onion diced
  • 3 cloves garlic crushed
  • 10 dried morel (or other variety) mushrooms
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine
  • 2 cups cooked butternut squash
  • 1 small bundle asparagus spears, cut into 2″ long pieces
  • 1 bay leaf
  • shredded parmesan (or other) cheese for garnish
  • salt and pepper to taste

Heat a large saute pan on low, film with olive oil, add onions and slowly saute, stirring often, until lightly and uniformly browned, about 15 minutes. Add three cloves of crushed garlic and stir 30 seconds or so, until fragrant. Don’t let garlic burn. Add 4 cups of water, and stir, scraping bottom of pan to get all the caramelization into the liquid. Add dried mushrooms, 1 tsp salt and thyme. Keep over very low heat.

Add 3/4 cup of barley to heavy bottomed dutch-oven type pan. Heat on medium to medium high and stir often until barley is slightly toasted, about 5 minutes. Add remaining 1/4 cup of barley and about 1 tablespoon of olive oil, stirring to coat. Add 1/2 cup of white wine (if using) and stir until liquid is mostly absorbed.

Begin adding heated broth mixture 1/2 cup at a time, stirring often. Adding more as liquid is absorbed and gets thicker. Don’t worry about the mushrooms and onions, just add them along with the broth. Stir and add liquid, stir and add liquid. When you have only about 1 cup of broth left, add the butternut squash to the mixture in heaping spoonfuls, continuing to stir. Add the rest of the broth, taste and adjust seasoning. The whole process will take about 30 minutes.

During the cooking time, steam or boil the asparagus and shock in cold water. You want the asparagus to retain a slight crunch and be bright green. Stir the asparagus into the finished risotto until warmed thru. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, topped with grated cheese and crusty bread on the side.