Use Your Booty: Barley Salad with Burrata

I meant to to get this post up before this holiday weekend started. This salad is a great healthy, vegetarian, colorful side dish that goes well alongside grilled meat. It also improves with age - so you can make it a day or two ahead. I fancied it up with a large chunk of burrata cheese - feel free to omit it if you prefer.

Black Barley Salad with Burrata

Serves about 8-10 as a side dish, makes a generous 4-6 main course servings.

I liked the richness added by the burrata - if you don't have any at hand, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese or ricotta salata would be great. Or go dairy-free and toss on slices of hard-boiled egg.

• 1 cup uncooked black barley or 4 cups cooked barley (or pearl barley or "regular" barley - this salad would also work with farro or wheatberries)
• 2-3 small zucchini, diced
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 2 handfuls purslane leaves
• 1 small onion, sliced into thin rounds
• red wine vinegar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 8 ounces burrata, left whole (preferred) or torn into shreds

Cook the barley, if needed: pick through the uncooked grains to remove any stones or bits of twig or chaff. Place in saucepan and cover with water by two inches and bring to boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, add a healthy pinch of salt and cook until the grains are tender. This will take from 45 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the grain you're cooking and how old it is. Add more water as needed to keep the barley covered.

When the barley is cooked, drain it in a colander and set aside to cool.

Toss half of the cooked barley with the vegetables. Add more barley until you have the vegetable/grain ratio you like. (You may not use all of the barley. Any leftovers can be frozen for future use.)

Sprinkle the salad with red wine vinegar and a healthy glug or two of olive oil. Season to taste with more vinegar and oil and salt and pepper. Top the salad with burrata and serve.

This Summer, I am chronicling my first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) experience. My CSA share is from Arrowhead Farm, a farm based in Newburyport, MA. Each week, I am posting about what was in my share and what I'm doing with it. By way of full disclosure, I won my share through a raffle and am not paying for it. However, Arrowhead did not know I was entered in the raffle, and I received no special consideration because of this blog. I paid for my livestock share. A full set of all the photos I've taken of this share is here.

Ribollita

Ribollita is a Tuscan stew, named for the fact that it's "reboiled". What's more important for you and me, is that it's a super delicious soup/stew and a perfect weeknight meal.

The traditional approach to ribollita is to take leftover minestrone soup and stale bread and boil them together to thicken the soup. This can make a really THICK soup - I hav a recipe for leftover ribollita that suggest you cut the leftovers into slices and fry them up. I didn't have any leftover minestrone, but I had stale bread on hand (I have been cooking from Jim Lahey's My Bread like a demon - thus, lots of stale bread. more to come on My Bread shortly.).

The recipe I'm giving you is based on what I did for dinner; I make no claims as to its authenticity as it's a much faster version of what should be a two-day dish. Substitute whatever vegetables and beans you have on hand. If you don't have stale bread, you can use fresh bread and dunk it instead. Whatever bread you use, make sure it's a "rustic" style loaf - it should have a sturdy crumb and can be white or whole wheat.

Weeknight Ribollita
Serves 3-4 hearty appetites

• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• piece of parmesan rind, optional - this is the hard rind on a hunk of parmesan
• 1 large can (28 oz.) whole tomatoes
• 2 small cans (15 oz.) of kidney beans, drained - I used dried beans that I had cooked and stored in the freezer for this, but I figure most of you would use canned beans (as I would if I didn't have cooked beans on hand)
• large bag of frozen chopped spinach - use cabbage, kale, collards, broccoli rabe, or any other combination of greens. This is what I had on hand.
• 2-3 thick slices of stale bread, from a rustic loaf, see note above
• salt and pepper
• good quality olive oil

In a soup kettle or large pot, saute the onion, celery and carrots in a little olive oil until starting to soften, but not browned, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and saute another minute or two, until fragrant.

Chop the tomatoes up and add to the pot (the easiest way to do this is crush the tomatoes with your hands as you add them to the pot, second easiest is to cut them up in the can with a pair of scissors). Add the beans and parmesan rind, if using, to the pot. If using cabbage or another tough green, add it to the pot now. If the pot seems too dry add a little water to the pot. Stir, reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes; the carrots should be tender.

Add the chopped spinach to the pot, if using, and simmer another 5 minutes or so. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. Adjust the texture of the soup with water: it should be on the soupy side of stew as it will thicken up once you add the bread. Check again for salt and adjust if necessary.

Tear the slices of bread into crouton-sized pieces and lay into the bottom of soup bowls. Ladle the soup over the bread and then drizzle with olive oil. Don't eat the parmesan rind.

Mangia!

Ugly but Good

Can we agree that sometimes really ugly food tastes pretty good? This lentil salad is a perfect entry into that category (in fact I just made a tag for it - ugly food deserves respect). It's another one of the dishes I made for the WBUR meet up. Clearly, even I wasn't enamored of its looks - this is the only picture I took of it.

Lentils are a great budget-conscious food. But they can also be jazzed up with some pretty elegant ingredients. In addition to lentils (just regular green ones from the supermarket), this salad contains roasted kohlrabi pieces, caramelized onions, parsley and feta cheese. It's seasoned with a toasted cumin and red wine vinaigrette.

Treat this recipe as more of a guideline. Hold back some lentils when you're mixing everything together - add more in as you: you want a nice blend of lentils and vegetables. You'll know when it looks right. Keep checking your seasoning: shoot for a nice contrast between salty and sour. If you're adding feta, keep that in mind and don't oversalt before you add it to the salad. To make this a full meal, add a hard boiled egg to each serving and serve the salad over or alongside a green salad with some pita bread or foccacia.

Lentil Salad with Kohlrabi and Caramelized Onions
Serves about 8

• 1 pound lentils (pick through them for stones and give them a good rinse before cooking them)
  
• 2 large onions, peeled and cut into thin slices
• 2-4 cups of "roastable" vegetables, cut in chunks (I used kohlrabi, but you could broccoli or butternut squash or peppers or mushrooms or what have you - left over cooked vegetables would be great in this)
• 1/2 - 1 cup chopped parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 pound feta (or goat cheese or farmer cheese)
• red wine vinegar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Cook the lentils: In a large saucepan (the lentils will nearly double in volume) place the lentils are cover them with 2" of water. Add a generous pinch of salt. Bring to a simmer and cook until the lentils are tender. Depending on how old the lentils are, it will take between 30-45 minutes for them to cook. When they are cooked, drain them and set them aside.

Make the rest of the vegetables: Saute the sliced onions over medium heat until dark brown (not burned) and caramelized. Roast the chopped vegetables in a 400-degree oven until they are cooked through to your taste.

Put the onions and roasted vegetables in a large bowl with the parsley and cumin. Add half of the lentils and stir gently to combine. Add more lentils until you get the proportions you want. Drizzle the salad with vinegar and oil (about equal amounts of each). Sprinkle with salt and a good amount of freshly ground pepper. Add the feta and stir to combine. Taste and adjust for acid and salt as needed.

This is good right away, but also holds really well so you can make a day or so in advance. It tastes best at room temperature.