Consider: what to cook on a mild-ish February evening?
Still dark; still chill; but something with bite, something with a hint of the outdoors tucked into it. Something that suggests adventure, or at least something unexpected. Something cosy without being stodgy; something flexible, easy, and— crucially— something that makes a dent in the eight million Kilner jars of dry goods I hoard all winter like a squirrel.
Enter, then: this garlic mushroom barley risotto, created by Rich, and copied endlessly by me, slippery, rich, deep, never cloying, never heavy, and wreathed in spinach for nourishment and vitamins.
Fresh regular button mushrooms; a tub of dried shiitake rehydrated in stock; some dried woodsy morels my brother-in-law gave me two Christmases ago; some of my beloved porcini powder. You could use any mushrooms— we have done it with just regular shop mushrooms!— but this is what we need to use up, so it’s what we used. The mushrooms, then, and a fistful of garlic; a knob of butter and a splash of olive oil; the mushroom stock slowly stirred through the barley to soften it down to just the right bite. I had no idea barley could do this! If you stir it, like risotto but less demanding than risotto, and let it simmer until it absorbs back all the starch from the water it cooked in, and if that water is instead mushroom broth and chicken stock, oh man, it is so nice. It is so nice, and so wholesome, and everything in it is good for you, and it’s not complicated at all, and it’s impressive because it’s sort of weirdly fancy, and it’s a one-pot wonder.
Crucially, too, it is a one-pot wonder that wins you a magnificent handful of points in the new game.
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