Spill the grains

I made a casserole with vegan chicken and pearl barley a couple of days ago and cooked far too many grains, so used the left overs up today in a very old fashioned English recipe concept which is basically making a pudding with barley instead of rice. 

My mum was a big fan of pearl barley (which is barley with the husks removed) and cooked it regularly in stews and soups. It’s not very popular these days and deserves a renaissance as it is high in fibre and protein and certain minerals. It has a nutty consistency, soft but not as soft as rice and therefore is not to everyone’s taste. But it is cheap and very filling as well as being good for you.

At Uni I developed a recipe of my own which was chicken and pearl barley in peach wine. The wine was made by the Hampshire brewer Gales and was one of their range of cheap English fruit wines (damson, plum etc) that we would drink regularly as it was cheap and pretty alcoholic. 

Pearl barley should not be confused with the singer Pearl Bailey, although she too was enormously versatile and very popular back in the day.

Today it chucked it down. Really heavy with a few very small sunny intervals. We popped out to the shops and got our timing wrong so got wet.  Miserable day actually.

Tomorrow I am going to London. Apparently it will not rain. Yeah right …