It's been hot and humid as blazes but I keep making soups and stews for dinner. It's not intentional; I'll have random ingredients and when I figure out what to do with them, I realize it's soup. My family is great though; they like soups and will eat them even though we're already hot, dripping with sweat and otherwise disgusting.
I had some beautiful crimini mushrooms from one of the local farms. I could have fried them up with onions and butter and served them with steak. But no. It's soup.
Here's the cast!
Dehydrated porcini mushrooms were put in water to soften.
In the meantime, pancetta got browned up in a bit of olive oil.
Onions, celery and carrots...
...and a shallot were added to the pancetta.
They were cooked till softened.
Roughly chopped crimini mushrooms and crushed garlic were added next.
The recipe didn't call for it but I always add some kosher salt when I cook mushrooms; it flavors it but also helps the mushrooms to release some liquid.
The porcini were drained and chopped and added to the pot as well.
That beautiful soaking liquid? Keep it, of course! There's tons of flavor in there.
The barley was added to the vegetables--the recipe called for pearl barley but I only had the hulled variety. I thought I had the pearled one but it turns out I was looking at pearl couscous. Duh. At any rate, the hulled barley is more nutritious than its pearl counterpart. Win-win, really!
A good dollop of tomato paste went into the bottom of the pot to caramelize for a couple of minutes before being stirred in. Everything smelled so good at this point, I would have eaten it, as is, and just flicked out the uncooked barley.
Sherry! The mixture is cooked down until most of the liquid is gone.
Then the stocks were added. A quart of chicken.
Half a quart of beef.
Don't forget the porcini liquid!
I chopped some parsley for later. The whole mixture was left at a high-simmer, covered, for nearly two hours. I always underestimate how long barley takes to cook!
The barley hadn't completely soaked up enough liquid to get soft and puffy but my family liked it anyway; Chris said the texture reminded him of brown rice--soft enough to chew but with a slight nutty bite. The soup was rich and full of mushroom-y goodness. We ate nearly all of it along with oven-toasted ciabatta rolls topped with Gruyére and salami on the side. Definitely a "make again" but maybe I'll wait till the weather gets a bit cooler. Like 80 or something!
Here's the promised link:
Mushroom Barley Soup
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