Last night I made an old favorite for supper: lentil barley soup with mushrooms. Living in South Florida, we don’t get much of an opportunity – or inclination – to eat much in the way of hearty soups of the bean-mushroom-barley persuasion. We rarely need to warm up that much! But I’ve had a yen for mushroom barley soup, lately. I was just waiting for our temps to drop enough to justify it. The cooking lentils, pearl barley, and potatoes act as natural thickeners, and give this soup lots of texture and substance. It really is a meal in a bowl!

When I was growing up in Ohio, my Mom used to make a lot of bean/lentil/mushroom/barley soups in the winter. Her soups always had a meat base, usually gotten from throwing a big old beef bone or two into the pot. While not vegetarian by any stretch, I was never really a big meat-eater, either. And modern times being what they are, I live in the wrong end of town to have much access or choices in the kosher meat department. So, my version is completely vegan*, low-fat, and a real budget-stretcher, too.

Mom called her soup, krupnik. No, I don’t know what it means, but it doesn’t sound terribly appetizing, does it? I suppose it would be sexier to call it soupe aux légumes du potager avec champignons et orge – or something – but for now, let’s stick with Lentil Mushroom Barley Soup, okay?

Lentil Mushroom Barley Soup

Ingredients:

3/4 cup lentils
1/2 cup pearl barley
2 Tbs. vegetable oil
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
4 – 5 thin carrots, peeled & cut into 1″ – 1-1/2″ pieces
1/2 cup mushroom slices
4 cups vegetable broth
4 cups water
3 bay leaves
3 – 4 medium potatoes, peeled & cut into 1-1/2″ pieces
2 Tbs. worcestershire sauce* (I used Oxford Falls Vegan, Gluten-Free Worcestershire Sauce)
freshly ground black pepper (optional)

Preparation:

Put the lentils and pearl barley into a strainer or sieve, and rinse under cold water for about 30 seconds. Allow to drain.

Heat the oil over medium heat in a 6-quart pot. Add the onions, garlic, and salt. Sweat the vegetables until the onions are translucent and softened. Add the carrots and mushrooms, and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Add the lentils and barley, vegetable broth, water, and bay leaves, stir, and bring the soup to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for 30 minutes.

Now add the potatoes, worcestershire sauce, and pepper (if using) stir, cover, and simmer for an additional 30 minutes. You may need to raise the heat briefly after adding the cold potatoes, but as soon as the soup begins to boil again, reduce it back down to medium-low. Taste and adjust seasoning, if necessary, and remember to remove the bay leaves before serving.

Notes:

Unlike most other beans, lentils don’t need to be soaked or softened before cooking, so they’re very convenient to have around for what I call “cooking by the seat of my pants”, and they’re packed with protein and other good stuff.

This recipe is a real time saver, if you choose to make it several days ahead of time and refrigerate it. While it’s very flavorful and satisfying immediately after cooking, making the soup ahead of time allows the flavors to meld and deepen. You can also freeze it for later use. Now that’s planning! Which I don’t. Usually. Oh, and if you’re really in a hurry, go ahead and use a couple of 4 oz. cans of mushrooms, drained well. I won’t tell anyone.

I referred to this recipe earlier as a “budget-stretcher”. Here’s why: As the soup cools, the starches from the lentils, barley, and potatoes, um, coagulate (for lack of a better word), and make it twice as thick as it was when it was freshly-cooked. The cooling process turns the soup into more of a soup base. To reheat, you must add more water or broth to the soup so it won’t burn. So, if you’re storing it (either refrigerated or frozen) for later meals, make portions half the size that you’ll need later. When ready to re-heat, just put the soup portion into a larger pot and add a nearly equal amount of broth or water. If you’d like, you can add another cut-up potato to leaven things out, and simmer for about another 20 minutes until the potato is fork-tender.

This soup also lends itself to nearly infinite variation, too, depending on what’s in your fridge. If you’ve got some kale or spinach you need to use up, just cut it into ribbons and toss into the pot for the last ten minutes of cooking. Chunks of squash – either summer or winter varieties – work well in here, too. Fifteen or twenty minutes should do it. So, clean out that vegetable drawer and use your imagination!

Stay warm, friends!

For me, the main reason to live in South Florida is the ability go out in the winter and early spring to the local U-Pick fields to do our produce shopping. The downside to that is, it never fails that our eyes are bigger than our plans and we wind up picking too much. After all, as you know, there’s nothing better than a tomato, or other veggie, picked and eaten the same day – preferably, the same hour – but then what?

I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of long-term food preservation – that is, boiling water canning, but it scared me to death! What if something goes wrong? What if I poison myself, or G-d forbid, someone else?!? I’ve owned books on the subject for years, but never actually dared to try it. The whole process seemed so, well, arcane.

Then the stars aligned in the heavens. First, MJ showed me all this canning equipment in some folksy holiday catalog, and with my hesitant consent, ordered a funnel, a jar lifter, and a lid rack to hold the lids while sterilizing. Purely by coincidence, almost immediately after that, Michelle of Big Black Dog asked if I was going to participate in Tigress’ Can Jam. After some persuasion (and knowing I had this pile of stuff coming), I agreed, and at literally the last possible moment, I asked Tigress if I could join. With that, I have officially joined the ranks of the “Canners”!

Once a month, someone will pick (you’ll excuse the expression) a theme produce item that’s in season and/or generally available locally, and all the participants will choose a canning recipe appropriate to the selected produce. This month, citrus is in season, and that’s our assignment. Well, hello! I live in Florida, you know – that’s a gimme!

Ever holding to the principle that “more is better”, I made two different marmalades.

The first recipe I tried seemed pretty simple – Ruby Red Grapefruit Marmalade out of The Complete Book of Year-Round Small Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard. Easy enough: Zest the grapefruit and a lemon, boil the zest, remove the bitter white pith, throw it in the food processor, boil some more, etc. But they never mention anything about the inner membranes, so I took it upon myself to filet them (I think the right phrase is something like “cut supremes”, but believe me when I tell you that there was nothing “supreme” about The Great Grapefruit Massacre of 2010!). Here’s the end result:

Flavor-wise, I think it turned out a little strong. Despite my careful zesting & fileting, it’s still got an “edge” to it that needs some moderation. On buttered toast, totally yummy. Even better with cream cheese!

But there was one other recipe in Small Batch Preserving that intrigued me, the Five Fruit Marmalade. Lemon, lime, orange, tangerine, and grapefruit. But again, there was all that zest this, but not that. Boil the piths with the zest, but don’t use the lime pith. Fish out all the pith and… well, you get it. I don’t have that kind of concentration. I knew I was going to screw something up.

As luck would have it, one evening I caught an episode of Good Eats on Food Network. Guess what old Alton was talking about. C’mon, guess! Preserving! He was making orange marmalade! And he wasn’t zesting and pithing and chopping – he was using a mandoline! What if I could adapt this recipe to his method? Hmmm….

So, I pulled out the old cut-glove and the little hand-held slicer I gave MJ for Christmas, a couple of years ago, and with apologies to both Alton Brown and Mesdames Topp and Howard, I give you

Four (and a quarter) Fruit Marmalade
(yields about 7 cups)

Ingredients:

1 large lemon
2 large limes
2 medium thin-skinned oranges
3 clementines
1 key lime (optional – because I had one)
4 cups water
1/4 tsp. baking soda
5 1/2 cups sugar

Preparation:

Wash all fruits thoroughly. Slice off the stem-end of each fruit, far enough to reveal the flesh.

Using a mandolin or hand slicer, slice each fruit as thinly as possible, until you get to the point where there’s more pith & rind than flesh. Do this over a bowl (like a flat soup bowl) to catch the fruit and juices. Take care to remove seeds as they appear. If you get any large slices, take a knife and quarter them. You should wind up with about 5 cups of fruit.

Place the shaved fruit in a large saucepan (4 quart capacity) along with the water, bring to a boil, and boil rapidly for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the baking soda, lower heat and boil gently for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. The baking soda will make the contents foam up rather suddenly, so don’t be alarmed.

Add the sugar, mix well, and raise the heat. Boil rapidly, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes, or until the mixture passes the “gel test.” (See notes, below)

Ladle into sterilized jars and process (boiling water canning method) for 5 minutes.

Notes:

Gel Test – Place a couple of small dishes in the freezer during the last phase of cooking. About 5 minutes before the end of the approximate cooking time, take the plate out of the freezer and put a small spoonful of the mixture on it. Immediately return the plate to the freezer for 2 minutes. Remove the pot of food from the heat during the test time. At the end of 2 minutes, take the plate out of the freezer, and with the tip of the spoon, push the mixture on the plate. If it’s thick and “wrinkles”, you’re good to go! Move on to the processing stage. If it runs, return the food to the heat and boil for another 2 minutes and test again.

When slicing the clementines (you could probably substitute tangerines), about 3/4 of the way down, the skin will loosen and pull away. At that point, don’t worry about the skin, just dig out the remaining flesh and go on to the next thing.

Isn’t she a beauty?

Oh, and the “quarter fruit”? My poor little Key Lime shrublet had just one little fruit on it and it was ripe and ready to go. I had no clue what to do with one key lime (they’re about the size of a walnut), so I decided to add it to the mix. I don’t believe it necessarily added much of anything, so don’t knock yourself out trying to find one just for this.

You guys, this worked out so well, I can’t begin to tell you. Using the mandoline shaved loads of time off of the prep process. No pun intended. The result was fine, even shreds which allowed the sweet liquid to permeate every cell, and no bitterness.

Okay, I’m hooked! Can’t wait to find out what’s in store for February!

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday. That happens a lot around here.

In case you hadn’t heard, it’s been downright frigid around these parts for the last week or so – at least frigid for us! And unless you’re living south of the equator, it’s pretty darn frigid where you are, too, I’m betting. Time for some hearty 5 Bean Barley Soup! Want some? It’s easy-peasy!

5 Bean Barley Soup

Ingredients:

1/4 cup Great Northern or Navy beans
1/4 cup Roman (a/k/a Cranberry) beans
1/4 cup Small Red beans
1/4 cup lentils
1/4 cup split peas
1/4 cup pearl barley
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 large carrots, cut into 1 inch chunks
2 Tbs. canola or olive oil
4 cups broth of your choice (vegetable, chicken, or beef)
8 cups water
2 tsp. kosher salt (or more to taste)
1 tsp. ground black pepper

Optional: 1 large dried chipotle chili pepper or
2 tsp. Liquid Smoke

Preparation:

At least eight hours before cooking, rinse the beans, lentils, split peas, and barley and put them into a large bowl. Fill the bowl with cool water to cover by about 2 inches. Leave to soak overnight or for 10 – 12 hours. Drain, then rinse again.

In a 5 – 6 quart pot, sweat the onions and carrots in the oil over medium-high heat, till the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the beans/barley mixture, give it a stir, and add the broth, water, and seasonings. Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil, then cover partially (leave the pot lid a bit askew) and simmer on low for approximately 2-1/2 to 3 hours, till slightly thickened. Toward the end of the cooking time, taste the soup and adjust your seasonings – you may want to add a bit more salt and/or pepper – or even more Liquid Smoke.

Notes:

Stir occasionally during the cooking time to keep from scorching, and to scrape up any yummy bits that might have stuck to the bottom – they add flavor!

You can use whatever beans you happen to have, but keep in mind that cooking time varies according to the age and size of the dried beans you’re using.

Don’t have any broth handy? Use the equivalent amount of water and crumble in bouillon cubes or packaged dry soup mix!

Obviously, this makes a lot of soup – intentionally. The leftovers freeze beautifully – just thaw on your counter or in the microwave, add a little water or broth to thin it out a bit, and heat. There are two of us, and enough soup left over for 3 more meals! How’s that for delicious, satisfying, and budget-friendly?

Didn’t I tell you it was easy?

I’m serving mine here with pretzels I made from the Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes Whole Wheat Master Recipe.

To review, Michelle over at Big Black Dog, organized a new bread baking group, baking from the new book by Dr. Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe François, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The current challenge is to bake 3 different things using the Whole Wheat Master Recipe: a loaf of bread, an epi (you’ll see), and crackers. Only I didn’t feel like making crackers, so I made pretzels!

It all started with the loaf:
I made a boule topped with sesame and flax seeds. Here are a couple of slices topped with my homemade Ruby Red Grapefruit Marmalade – my very first effort in canning! But that’s a story left for next week’s “Can Jam” post.

This is an epi:
Isn’t it cute? Okay, so very non-pro, but fun to make – you just form a thin baguette and snip it with kitchen shears! It was a lot of fun to eat, too, breaking off the “leaves” and dipping them in our soup! The epi came out very crispy and crunchy, and became the inspiration to make pretzels.

I made different sizes of pretzels – the smaller ones were made with balls of dough about the size of a ping pong ball, and the larger ones from dough balls about the size of a golf ball. I rolled them between my hands into long, thin snakes, twisted the ends a couple of times, and folded the twisted part over the loop of dough on my baking sheet. I misted the pretzels lightly with water and then sprinkled coarse sea salt on them, and baked in a 400º oven for about 20 minutes.

They came out golden brown and crunchy – and a perfect topping for my hearty soup!

Enjoy!

It’s 49 degrees with a windchill. Tourist.

I know it’s a little chilly this morning, but were your flannel
pajamas the best you could do? And your bedroom slippers? On the street? Downtown?

Really?

Little travel tip for you: Never go on vacation outside of your natural germ-zone during flu season. Even armored with a well-aged flu shot and having religiously ingested what MJ calls my “witches’ brew” of vitamins and herbs for months ahead of time. One of those little beggars is going to catch up with you. Out of spite. Because you planned so meticulously and for (almost) every eventuality, for a change.

MJ has a convention (work-related and therefore tax-deductible) in, of all places, Charlottesville, Virginia. Nearby Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson. We looked at maps, Googled, etc., and thought: Hey! Wouldn’t it be a great vacation to get out of suffocating South Florida for a week or so, have us some REAL winter, see Colonial Williamsburg for the first time in about 15 years. Then we could drive over to Charlottesville, stop and see Monticello along the way, then have fun at the convention. Right?

So, we (rather, I) studied maps and timetables and crafted a schedule with only a modicum of structure. It was after all, primarily my vacation in a Winter Wonderland. And for the first couple of days, it was fine. We wandered, we ate at Colonial Taverns, we attended concerts in the Royal Governor’s Palace. And then, I literally could not drag my sorry ass out of bed one morning. I sent MJ out to the museums alone and I slept. All day. And then, how shall I say this delicately? I suffered a digestive failure. I couldn’t eat. At all. Water and ginger ale and the occasional cup of coffee (and if you know me, you know that coffee is like mother’s milk to me — I carry my own Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and filters with me on vacation so I won’t have to drink the swill they stock in the hotel rooms and so I can have as much as I want, whenever I want — and that’s another beef I’ve got with Doubletree: they don’t have real coffeemakers in the rooms! They’re those little individual “pod” things! Now I’m stuck drinking “pod” coffee for the next 3 days!), so one lousy little cup of coffee, drunk nervously because I don’t know how my body is going to react, is not one of life’s little pleasures. I’m not sure at what point that sentence got away from me, but you catch my drift.

Now, on day four, I have managed 4 little cheese cubes, a strawberry the size of a thimble, and 5 green grapes. And Wednesday evening, MJ had a little nap before supper and I went down to the hotel restaurant to bring back some food. When I got back, he sat down, had 5 or 6 spoonfuls of soup, and became violently ill. Same as me, but more intense. WAY more intense. No, not just in the “I’m a man and therefore a delicate flower” intense. This will sound completely wrong. I know it, but I’m going to say it anyway. I feel cheated. The last time I was this sick – and I’m not writhing on the floor or anything – was when I had my gall bladder out 3 years ago. Upstaged again. ->Smack!<- OK, I’ve punished myself.

Being the less ill of the two of us, I got us packed up and out of the hotel in Williamsburg this morning to drive here. It was 27 degrees. There was ice on the car. The automatic window on the driver’s side was frozen shut for awhile. And there was my (almost) 50 year old, 6′ 2″ toddler, bundled in his parka, whining “Can’t we just hibernate here for another day?” No. We can’t. There’s a “Winter Storm Warning” for the entire area we have to travel through for tonight. If we wait till tomorrow, we might have to deal with snow and/or ice and/or sleet, none of which either of us has any adult experience with driving in, and I’m not starting now. I don’t feel so great myownself, remember? I just have more experience acting.

I will say this much, though. Aside from the mentioned skinny bitch manager type in the previous post, I don’t think you’ll find any nicer people than the ones here in Virginia. From the housekeeping lady who, with a couple of jokes and a “blessing on the day!”, came back twice with more towels and coffee (“I knew it was for you!”), to the serving lady at the convention “snack stand” who only charged me one dollar for the chicken soup that was really supposed to cost $2.75 because I only wanted the broth (for MJ) “and there ain’t nothin’ in it!” So sweet… really… not fake “hotel-employee-trained-by mindless-Disney-automaton-hospitality” sweet, either. The real deal. It still exists. Cool.