Vegetable Barley Soup with Sage & Ginger

All of this cold wet weather lends itself to warming, nourishing foods - of course the first thing on any agenda would be to cleanse, but once that detox is complete building your body up with some hearty vegetables in soups is a nice way to get back to yourself. 

I like using barley and would make cakes, cookies and breads with barley flour. Of course there is also Barley coffee which is a lovely warming drink especially on a cold winter night such as we have right now. And I love barley grain in a soup or stew.

Barley is a great thickener as well as a filling addition to any meal - it gives an earthy, nutty flavour to the dish and has been used in our foods for thousands of years. It is also easy to use and you don't need to add much.

Yesterday I made Vegetable Barley Soup with Sage & Ginger - this is a combination of tastes and textures that really work well together. And I happen to think that sage is the great underrated herb of all time.

We often only use it in stuffings or for fowl - but it is a very versatile plant and can be used nearly anywhere. I include it in my herbal teas as often as I can and have even made cookies with it - I will do a post on that soon.

To make my soup I started off as usual with the base - seaweed, garlic, onion, leek, salt, pepper, turmeric. I stir-fried the vegetables in a little olive oil then added them into the stockpot with the seaweed. 

Next I chopped carrots, sweet potato, turnip and a little pumpkin. These went into the pot along with only 1/3 cup of barley grain. This was brought to a boil and then turned down to simmer gently for about 45 minutes or so.

Once the soup was thickening and nearly cooked I put in 1/2 teaspoon each of ground sage (from my garden) and some ground ginger. Normally I would use fresh grated ginger for this type of soup, but as it was for my little daughter, I went easy on it so it would not be too strong.

Within about 10 minutes the soup was done, I let it sit for another while to cool - and then served it with a thick slice of homemade spelt bread with butter. It smelled and looked lovely!

April

Vegetable Barley Soup with Sage & Ginger 

Breaking Bread

These past few weeks I have been mentioning bread a lot - but especially one aspect of it. The flour. Continuing on with the theme of getting out of our food ruts, changing or combining types of flours for bread and baking is more then a treat.

I have found myself using barley, oat, gram, lentil and several other types of flours more often these days. Perhaps since the colder weather set in and I think it has to do with wanting some additional variety in our diets, but also to play around with them.

Most of the time for nearly all my baking I use whole grain organic spelt flour and it works out great. Occasionally I throw in some organic white spelt flour if I am making something a little more refined such as cookies or scones. 

But over these past few weeks I have been drawn to using more oat and barley flours in my breads - often mixed in with the spelt, which gives it far more flavour and quite a different texture. These breads are a little denser and heavier then plain spelt flour, however there is something quite nice about all of this experimenting.

Changing out flours can be better for us and most of them are easier to digest then wheat. The other important point here is that they are all nutritionally superior to wheat with loads more vitamins and minerals then even white spelt flour.

Apparently oat flour is one of the best flours you can use in your cooking and baking. I like it because it gives such a nice taste to the bread. It is also low in gluten and offers the goodness of oats. You can grind some yourself easily in a spice mill or coffee grinder in a few minutes. 

Getting a variety of nutrients in your diet is not difficult when you use a variety of foods from many sources. And your food will never be boring - something different each day can be created with just a little effort.

April

Spelt and Oat bread 

Changing Menus with the Seasons...

I realized this week that I hardly ever mention cooking meat on this blog - of course we are not big meat eaters but we do enjoy some lamb once in a while and lamb stew is one of my favourite meals to make. And there are also far more vegetables out in the world that we never use often enough. 

As the days grow darker and somewhat colder our meals take on a different dimension almost as if they also transform into heartier more protein based foods with sustenance. Nothing says winter to me the way a meal of lamb stew, with root vegetables and some warm bread right out of the oven.

This week we had one day where I was feeling wintery enough to make a large pot of this magical elixir and of course there was not a drop left. 

I start a lamb stew in the same way as any other root vegetable soup pot. To a pot of water I add seaweed, sautéd onion, leek and garlic, but with meat I use herbs from the garden such as lovage and French sorrel. 

Then I put in a lot of vegetables such as carrot, sweet potato, pumpkin and this week I had celeriac and sweet corn - which are such great vegetables for stews as well as barley. Each of these would be more winter additions to our diets. 

Root vegetables with celeriac

Once these are bubbling away I get started on the meat part of the meal. We eat meat so infrequently, that sometimes I wonder if I have forgotten what to do with it - but cooking is like riding a bike, there are some things you never forget.

With lamb I have it cut up into large chunks which go into a pan with water, onion and garlic as well as some olive oil. I like to get the meat nicely browned before I add it to the vegetable pot. So, this is usually covered for a little while.

Lamb for stew 

Once the meat is ready the stew is pretty well cooked, the lamb goes in last and I don't leave the heat on for very much longer. I find the flavours blend better when this is allowed to sit and cool for about half and hour - not stirring very much.

This week when I cooked lamb I added extra lovage herb to the meat - this has a taste similar to celery and is very complimentary to lamb. It is also an ancient herb with many nutritional benefits. This particular stew had both lovage and celeriac in it making the taste exquisite - especially if you enjoy old fashioned home cooking!

Next time you use lamb, try it with lovage or sorrel and taste the difference.

Have a healthy day,

April 

Lamb, sweet corn root vegetable stew