Eastside Road, November 13, 2011—
When I was a boy we bought rolled barley in 75-pound sacks. It looked very much like rolled oats, the sort you used to cook for oatmeal — Quaker Oats. It has quite a different taste and texture. We bought it for the pigs; it was my job to dump the barley into a big vat into which we also poured the surplus skim milk. (We sold the cream.) I never tasted the result, which we always referred to as "pig slop," but I did eat the occasional handful of barley, and always rather liked it.
Pearl barley goes into various soups. Beef and barley soup is a favorite of mine. But this is made with whole-grain barley, which also goes into our old dependable Bog-Man Cereal. Tonight's recipe makes a sort of barley pilaf, and the lightly browned butter gives it a nutty flavor that nicely complements the chopped scallions, which aren't cooked at all except by the retained heat of the barley, into which they're dumped — like barley into pig slop — just before serving. Delicious.
Rosso da Monferrato, Tenuta la Pergola, 2009
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