Category: Food

More about barley


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Back in January, when I wrote a post about fried barley polenta, I was using organic pearled barley, because that’s what I had at the time. However, pearled barley (though it’s very good) is not really a whole-grain product. Hulled barley is. Today, while it was snowing outside, I did another experiment with barley polenta using organic hulled barley. You can buy organic hulled barley in bulk at Whole Foods. It’s one of the best bargains in the Whole Foods bulk section.

There’s something magical about barley. It sticks to the ribs like nothing else. It’s outrageously healthy, both for the digestive system and for the bloodstream. It’s one of those foods that is pure medicine. No wonder the gladiators ate it. Smart people would figure out a way to make it a staple, using much more barley and much less wheat. The most delicious way to use barley that I’ve figured out so far is to make polenta from barley grits. Once you’ve figured out your method for cracking the barley into grits and working it into polenta, the next step is figuring out ways to season it. I plan to spin it as sausage when it’s served at breakfast (using sage and pepper). And it works great as a binder for vegetable burgers when served at supper. I’m guessing that it also would make a fine raisin pudding. It loves sauces, including gravy. It would make excellent arancini or risotto. It would substitute for meatballs in lots of recipes. It could be combined with soybeans and appropriate seasonings to make a vegan meatloaf. The barley experiments will continue.


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The photos in this post are digital, using natural light from north-facing windows.

Oh no. More low-end grocery stores.

I went into a Lidl store for the first time yesterday. I had no idea what it is, any more than I knew what an Aldi store is the first (and last) time I went into one. I was shocked that this is the way the grocery business is going — extremely wide aisles, not much choice, and sorry looking stuff.

However, I was not too proud to help myself to the 49-cent avocados, which surely were a loss leader. As I waited at the checkout, I noticed a big sign that says, “Carefully curated for you.” That, of course, means that they don’t have everything. It means that they have only what they can sell for cheap.

Thanks, but I don’t want my groceries “curated” for cheapness. Granted, a Lidl store might be a good thing for people who increasingly buy their groceries at stores like Dollar General, which have no fresh food. Lidl does seem to have fast-moving produce, even if it’s not the best quality.

Now I’m even more concerned about the future of Whole Foods. And I wish I liked gardening a whole lot more than I actually do. Especially during the summer, when the sun is hot and the weeds are vigorous, I’m a kitchen creature, not a garden creature.

Fried barley polenta

A good New Year’s resolution would be: Eat less bread, but eat more barley.

They didn’t call the gladiators “barley eaters” for nothing. I think we tend to scorn barley, because it’s old fashioned and common, in favor of fad grains such as quinoa (which I detest for its taste and texture and overpriced fad-itude). Barley, on the other hand, loves seasonings. It has a very meaty bite and chew. The list of barley’s virtues is very long.

Barley grits, I believe, can be bought at health food stores. I made my own from whole pearl barley, using the grinder attachment on my Champion juicer. I cooked the grits slowly in the steam oven until they were well done but on the dry side. I used vegetable broth as the liquid to give the grits a little more oomph.

I wanted a sausage spin, so I added sage, pepper, and garlic powder. I used brewer’s yeast as a binder and to help keep the mixture fairly dry. I rolled the mixture into aluminum foil and let it cool. Then I sliced it into patties and fried the patties in butter on low heat.

I’ve done a lot of experimenting with vegetable protein patties. I’d have to say that this was one of the best.


Fresh-ground barley grits


Cooled and ready to slice

Nikon digital photos

Improvisations on foo yung


Szechuan-style foo yung with yellow squash and store-bought pot stickers.

The chickens are laying so well and I am so rich with eggs that I’ve been eating far too much egg foo yung — and, of course, running experiments. This is a post about Szechuan-style sauce. It’s also a post about MSG.

First, about MSG.

I cannot find any scientific reason for being afraid of MSG. Glutamates occur naturally in many foods, especially the tasty ones such as mushrooms and roquefort. As far as I tell, MSG these days is made through a natural fermentation process. I’ll leave you to read up on all that, though, if you’re interested in the rehabilitation of MSG. As for me, I am increasingly convinced that MSG has its place in a healthy, clean-cooking kitchen.

Last week, while sautéeing onions, I added half a teaspoon of MSG, and within a couple of minutes the onions turned very brown, though the heat was low. (I never cook with high heat unless I’m boiling water.) I Googled and couldn’t find a word about any browning capabilities of MSG. But then I read the Wikipedia article, and, sure enough, MSG will get involved in the Maillard reaction — the browning of food. The Wikipedia article says that this occurs under high heat in the presence of sugar, but I can testify that the heat I use is not high, and that the onions brown — very fast! — under much lower heat, and much quicker, than onions would otherwise brown. Onions work well for this, because there is far more sugar in onions than we might think. Now this easy browning is pure alchemy! Not only are your sautéed vegetables nice and brown, the sautée process also leaves a nice brown glaze in the pan which cries out to be deglazed into a savory sauce.

I have been making a Szechuan-style sauce using harisa paste, a pepper paste that actually is Tunisian in origin. I buy it at Whole Foods. But who cares if we mix our regional cuisines. Pepper paste is pepper paste. As readers here know, I almost never write up recipes, because most of the time I don’t use recipes. But the general idea is: Deglaze the sautée pan by bringing some rice vinegar to a boil. Add honey, soy sauce, a little toasted sesame oil, and pepper paste. Reduce it until it foams. It makes a great sauce for tofu, vegetables, foo yung, or whatever.

The pot stickers, by the way, come from the freezer department at Trader Joe’s. They are sold as Thai Gyoza. But I prefer to call them pot stickers. I have tried to make pot stickers, but I just don’t have the touch, and they come out too big and heavy. The Trader Joe’s pot stickers are vegetarian and very reasonably priced.


Onions, sautéed over medium heat until soft


The same onions, same heat, about three minutes after adding a half teaspoon of MSG

Two-course breakfasts?

The French conceive of breakfasts in two categories — sweet and salty. I suppose we Americans do, too, though I don’t recall anyone ever asking, “Would you prefer a sweet breakfast or a salty breakfast?”

Usually we choose. But this morning the cool, gray weather — and the devil — led me to do both. The three-day-old sourdough bread called out for pain perdu. And the hens are laying so many eggs that I can be as lavish with eggs as I want and still have lots of home-laid organic eggs to give away (or to trade for things like the apples and the local greenhouse tomatoes that I traded for yesterday).

It also was an excuse to try out the strawberry syrup that I bought last month. It’s made by Fogwood Farms, which is located one county eastward in Rockingham County. It’s sold in the storefront operated by our county arts council in Danbury. The storefront sells local artwork and handmade items. It’s also a coffee shop and performance space. If you live in this area, look to the opposite side of the street when you pass the old courthouse in Danbury.

Grilled tomatoes, by the way, are a winter standby. The gas grill is on the deck and just a few steps from the kitchen, and I use it all the time. I’m saving the local tomatoes that I got yesterday to use raw (except for the green ones, which probably will end up in a curry). The tomato in the photo came from Whole Foods. The quality of winter tomatoes, I think, has improved. Of course winter tomatoes are never good enough for sandwiches, but they’ll usually do for salads. And they roast very well into a nice breakfast vegetable.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I couldn’t eat all this. But the chickens got the leftovers.

Foo yung to the rescue

I hadn’t made egg foo yung in many years. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about it in many years. I recall that, thirty years ago before I moved to San Francisco, egg foo yung was a popular item in Chinese restaurants in the South. And yet I don’t recall ever seeing it on menus in San Francisco, where the Chinese cookery is much more authentic.

In any case, I am covered up with eggs (each hen has been laying every day), and I can’t figure out what to do with them all. It seems as though half of my driving these days is taking eggs to friends. This afternoon, foo yung popped into my head like a vision, and I was so enthusiastic that I immediately went down to the kitchen and made myself an early supper.

No Chinese vegetables? No problem. I used shredded cabbage, onion, and thinly sliced celery.

It’s the sauce that makes the foo yung. Without the sauce, you’re just eating an omelet in which the cook forgot the cheese. The sauce needs as much zing as you can get into it. I used vegetable bouillon in the liquid in addition to the soy sauce. A teensy touch of sugar and vinegar gives it a slight sweet and sour spin. Garlic powder helps, along with lots of pepper. Cook it well. Make it foam.

By the way, someone recently told me the price of eggs at Walmart these days. If I’m not mistaken, it was something absurdly cheap like 46 cents a dozen. How can that be? Is it that they’re importing eggs from China now? What scares me about egg prices that low is what the chickens are fed and what miserable lives they must lead. In the best of all possible worlds, the animals that help provide us with food would live behind our houses. And they would have names.

Domesticated muscadines

From my years as a young’un, I have clear memories of picking strawberries by the gallon. Mama made strawberry preserves. Mama also made grape jelly, but for some reason I don’t have recollections of picking grapes wholesale for the kitchen. Wild muscadines, though, grew in lots of places at the edges of the woods, and I have climbed trees and foraged for them often enough. I rarely see wild muscadines anymore, but lots of people cultivate them.

I have never made grape jelly, maybe because I’ve never had enough grapes, and grape jelly isn’t my favorite. So what do you do when you have nice mess of grapes but not enough to preserve them? Answer: You eat them raw.

Muscadines are seedy. The only way I know to seed them is to squeeze them until the skin bursts. Unfortunately, most of the pulp comes out with the seeds. The skins are delicious, and no doubt the healthful qualities of grapes are where the color is — in the skins. If you then put the pulp in some cheesecloth and squeeze, you’ll get some juice. Lacking any method of squeezing the pulp really hard, too much of the juice is wasted.

Still, it was a nice breakfast.


The above grapes produced only a shot of juice.

Eggplant bacon?


A homegrown organic eggplant

Two days ago, a friend sent me a Facebook video on making vegan bacon from eggplant. The next day, when I took a dozen surplus eggs to friends (among the few superb gardeners in the county who can outgarden the abbey when Ken is in residence) they gave me eggplants, green peppers, and fresh-picked native muscadine grapes. I took the eggplant coincidence as a hint that, now that the weather is cooler, it’s time to get back to experimenting in the kitchen.

Eggplant bacon seems to be a vegan staple. My version of it was very tasty — smoky and nicely seasoned — but I just couldn’t get it crisp. If you’d like to try, here’s a recipe.

For this recipe, I got out the kitchen implement that I despise and fear the most — the mandolin. But, much as I hate the mandolin, it did an excellent job of making the 1/8-inch slices of eggplant. The seasoning and marinating are a snap. Baking the eggplant is no big deal. But even though I baked the eggplant 15 minutes longer than the recipe requested, the bacon was still flabby. Still, it was tasty enough that I may try it again. Next time, I’ll probably extend the drying part at 225 degrees. Then I’ll spray on some olive oil, turn up the heat in the oven, and make it sizzle. Another option might be taking the bacon to the flabby stage in the oven, then finishing it off in a skillet with some oil.

This is a short post, so I’ll digress into a lifestyle question. One of the cool things about rural agricultural counties like Stokes County is that — though most people long ago gave up gardening — some people still do it. As I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, you want to get to know the agricultural extension folks in your county. The gardener who gave me the eggplant is retired from the agricultural extension service. Once you’ve built a network of gardeners, people trade or give away their surpluses. I remember how it was when I was a child. We’d give people strawberries. They might bring us corn. It’s a nice way to live.

Now if I could only locate some wild abandoned apples to trade for some organic eggs.


Ready for the dreaded mandolin


Marinating


Ready for the oven


A vegan supper: Tofu scramble, eggplant bacon, and sourdough toast. The chardonnay is off-camera.

The kraken vine

Last year, a friend sent me a gift from his garden. He called it a squash, I called it a little pumpkin. Save the seeds, he said. Plant in early summer, he said, feed it well, give it lots of room, and it will become a kraken plant. The vine will spread like kudzu, and it will eat you alive if you don’t watch out, he said. They’re still blooming! The photo is of two baby kraken with a teacup for scale.

These little things are outrageously magical. They mature just before Hallowe’en. They’re probably winter squash. Like winter squash, they like to be cured, and they keep for ages. But in a pie they taste just like pumpkin.

Next year, I’d like to have a lot more of these things and do a better job of cultivating them. A good crop of them probably would last for most of the winter.

Update: The friend who sent me my first little pumpkin identifies these as “Long Island cheese pumpkins.” Here’s a link to some history. They’re an old variety, rescued by an heirloom seed project in the 1970s. He bought his first one at a farmer’s market, he says. Nothing could be easier than saving pumpkin seeds, by the way.

Wintertime table lighting


W.T. Kirkman No. 1 “Little Champ” oil lanterns

For many years, I have been weird about how the table is lit for supper. Electric light is not allowed. It’s not just an affectation for when there is company. It’s an everyday thing, even when I’m having supper alone. During the summer months, supper is over well before dark. But as the days get shorter, it was time to rethink table lighting yet again.

For years, my solution was ordinary tapers of the type that can be bought just about anywhere. But they’re too small. They don’t last long enough. And I don’t much like tapered candles. A year ago, I ordered a box of church candles. They’re very expensive, but they’re great candles. They’re 50 percent beeswax with a nice, straight, ecclesiastical shape. They’re 7/8 inch in diameter and 12 inches long. One box of 24 candles lasted all winter. But the price rose from $50 per box for the first box I ordered to $89 per box now. That’s just too much. All candles gutter and sometimes make a mess. Removing the drippings from the candleholders and replacing spent candles is an unpleasant chore.

My next idea was to try the little blown-glass oil candles made by Firefly. I thought about it for a long time before I ordered a pair, for safety reasons. Flammable liquid inside a glass vessel with a wick is the very definition of Molotov cocktail. What if one of them hit the floor and shattered? But eventually I ordered a pair and tried them out. I hated them. They produce a tiny little dot of light. I should have realized that before I bought them, because the wick is tiny. They are useless, except perhaps as votives, and I’m not a very votive person.

My next idea was an oil lamp, or chamber lamp, of the type that was very common in the days before electrification. They burn kerosene, and they’re easy to find today, both new and antique. But they, too, are usually made of glass. I made a new rule for myself: No glass oil lamps.

Then I admired the yacht lamps and miner’s lamps made of brass, often plated with stainless steel. But they are extremely expensive, and they’re often poorly reviewed as not being well-made enough to be worth the cost.

So then, the last option was oil lanterns.

Obviously there is still a thriving market for oil lanterns. Many people buy them, I believe, as backup lighting for power failures, which makes a lot of sense. They’re made of metal, and the larger lanterns have nice big wicks that are 1 inch wide. As I read reviews of lanterns on Amazon, I finally settled on lanterns made by W.T. Kirkman. Kirkman lanterns get the best reviews and were said to be better made. I ordered two of the Kirkman lanterns from Amazon. Here’s a link to the Kirkman web site. Kirkman sells several models and options in its lanterns, but not all of those models and options are available on Amazon.

I settled on the No. 1 “Little Champ” cold blast lantern. It’s 12 inches high with a 5/8-inch wick. So what does “cold blast” mean? It has to do with how the flame gets its air for combustion. It’s a clever bit of 19th Century technology. In a cold blast lantern, the air is taken in at the top of the lantern and travels down through the side tubes. This is said to give a whiter, brighter flame. Also, cold blast lanterns are said to self-extinguish if tipped over. I’m not going to try that out, but I’m glad to hear it.

The lanterns burn clean and aren’t affected by drafts or blasts of air. Once they’re lit and glowing, they look more domestic and less like something you’d see in a barn. They’re brighter than candles. And they give off a certain warmth (1,100 or 1,400 BTU per hour depending on the model) which should be very welcome in the wintertime.

Kirkman also makes a larger lantern, 15 inches tall with a 1-inch wick. I might just get myself one of those for outdoor use. All the lanterns are galvanized steel. Options include a black enamel finish, round shades that reflect the light downward, and globes in several colors of glass including red, yellow, green, blue, and frosted. Lantern technology is alive and well! You also can buy kits to electrify the lanterns, including with LED bulbs. But why would you want to do that?

When I was a young’un, my grandparents had an oil lantern that they had had since the days before rural electrification. I used to love to play with it. Though I suppose it’s a bit eccentric to have oil lanterns on the supper table, I’m pretty sure that will be my method hereafter. I’ll save the pricey church candles for special occasions.

My grandparents also always kept a 5-gallon tank of kerosene. These oil lanterns will, of course, burn kerosene. But these days most people use the newer lamp oils, which burn cleaner, make less odor, and are said to be safer.


A box of church candles