Scotch Broth

Eastside Road, March 8, 2011—

LINDSEY PUTS ME to shame, and so effortlessly. Yesterday's so-so lamb stew — pappardelle with lambscraps, actually — became today in her hands a much more nicely balanced dish: a little salt, a little pepper, some judicious cooking-down, and barley.
When I was a boy, barley was something to be fed to the pigs. It came in 80-pound sacks, which pleased me, as other grains arrived in hundred-pound sacks, to be avoided when carrying them out to the barn.

We have plenty of grains and pulses on hand in the pantry — this is only a small corner of the room — so she had no trouble finding some pearl barley, in a much smaller sack. I remember how much I used to like the canned Campbell ”Scotch Broth“ soup when I was a boy, no doubt because the very name had a romantic, exotic sound. Tonight's was better, and who knows: maybe partly because yesterday's lamb stew wasn't all that disgusting itself.

Pinot grigio, La Familglia (Monterey, California), 2009 (sweeter than I'd noticed yesterday: but then, a bad cold has begun to break)