mushroom & barley soup

This recipe is vegetarian, but it certainly feels meaty.

Perhaps it’s because there are so many chunky pieces of mushroom and a rich earthiness to the broth, but it’s so “meaty” some vegetarians might be concerned about what they’re eating!

Never fear, this truly is a vegetarian recipe submitted to the vegetarian food blogging event No Croutons Required. January’s theme is ‘vegetable soup’ in order to built up the nutrients lost during the excesses and gluttony of the festive period.

Our host, Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen, wants us to focus on vegetable concoctions so instead of using a variety of different veggies I've gone with a variety of mushrooms. The barley just adds to the hearty, nutritiousness of it all.

Although I’m in the middle of my summer, and this soup is suited to cooler weather, I thought I’d offer it up to my blogging pals in the northern hemisphere who are shivering through one of the coldest winters in a long while.

Mushroom & Barley Soup

Recipe by Maggie Beer. Serves 4.

Ingredients:
850ml vegetable stock
200g pearl barley (cooked in 1½L water for 1hr)
200g onion, diced
100g shitake mushrooms
200g Swiss brown mushrooms
200g field mushrooms
80ml sherry
40g butter
20g dried porcini (soaked overnight in 500 ml hot water)
20g salt
10g garlic
10g rosemary
3g fresh thyme
1g pepper
Chopped fresh parsley, to serve

Method:

1. After barley has cooked in 1½ litres water for an hour, strain.

2. Melt butter and fry onion until translucent.

3. Add garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and cook together.

4. Reserving the liquid, strain the porcini (which were soaked overnight in water) and chop.

5. Add chopped porcini, reserved porcini liquid, precooked barley, stock and sherry to the onion mixture.

6. Chop the shitake, swiss brown and field mushrooms

7. In another pan, sauté the mushrooms in olive oil, seasoning with salt.

8. Add mushrooms to the barley and stock.

9. Cook for approx 10 minutes and season with black pepper.

10. Serve topped with chopped parsley.

Note: This can of course be made with all one kind of mushroom to equal 500g.



UPDATE: Thanks to all the wonderful people who voted for my soup! My soup has officially made me the No Croutons Required January Winner! Can you believe that this is the first ever blogging competition/honour I have won? I've come in a close second before, but never won. Thanks everyone! And thanks Maggie Beer for the recipe in the first place.

Tags: morsels and musings food blog food and drink australia recipes barley mushroom barley soup mushroom soup soup vegetarian recipes barley soup recipes mushroom soup recipes barley recipes mushroom recipes soup recipes

rujak, spicy tamarind fruit salad

Surprisingly, yesterday I made an impromptu dinner and covered off another three 2008 Food Challenges! The first was to make rujak, a wonderful sweet and sour salad, popular in Indonesia and Malaysia, the second was to cook a Balinese feast and the last was to taste test crocodile meat.

Yes, that's right. Crocodile meat. And I can tell you it's very good!

My sister, Shamu, has been feeling a little down lately, so I decided to cook her Indonesian food since she learnt the language in school and has always had a fascination with the country.

Cooking the dishes was surprisingly easy and I was impressed with how well everything turned out. It was really yummy!

Here is what I cooked:
Rujak (spicy tamarind & fruit salad)
Sambal Tuwung (roasted eggplant salad)
Tahu Goreng Pedas (spicy fried tofu)
Buaya Tabiabun (long-pepper crocodile)
Acar (pickle condiment)
Nasi Kuning (fragrant turmeric rice)
Sago Gula Bali (sago in spiced coconut milk)



I will eventually post all the recipes, but be patient!!!

For now I will write about one of my all time favourite salads, rujak. Popular in both Indonesia and Malaysia, apparently this spicy, sweet-sour salad is a favourite afternoon snack in Bali for people of all ages.

I first tried rujak at a cooking class in Bali and have since seen the instructor’s recipe printed on this website, making it easy for me to reproduce the flavours.

Be careful not to make the dressing was too runny. It needs to be quite thick (almost like honey) and coat the fruit in a brown sauce. The key to this is making sure you cook your palm sugar syrup until very thick and sticky.

The flavours are delicious and I will make it again. It could become a summer favourite and will be a great salad alongside grilled meats and seafood.

Rujak (spicy tamarind & fruit salad)
Recipe from Fragrant Rice by Janet De Neefe. Serves 4-6.

Ingredients:Dressing:
1-2 red chillies, trimmed (use long for mild or small hot flavour)
3 tablespoons tamarind pulp
4 tablespoons palm sugar syrup
7 teaspoons lime juice (optional)
Sea salt, to taste
Salad:
¼ pineapple, peeled
1 nashi pear
1 apple
2 cucumbers

Method:

1. In a mortar and pestle, grind the chilli and salt.

2. Mix in the tamarind pulp, including the seeds (if using a food processor, the seeds will need to be removed).

3. Add palm sugar syrup. Add sea salt to taste and the lime juice, if using. It should resemble chutney.

4. Check flavours. It is important to achieve a balance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy.

5. Chop the fruit into bite size pieces and mix well with dressing. Serve at room temperature.

Note: Traditionally this recipe includes roasted shrimp paste. Put ½ teaspoon of shrimp paste on a small square of aluminium foil and grill under a pre-heated griller until slightly toasted (30 seconds). Add to mortar and pestle when making dressing.

Variations: rujak can be made with any combination of apple, starfruit, pineapple, pear, jicama, cucumber etc. The dressing is also delicious with grated carrot or grilled meat.

Palm Sugar Syrup

Makes around 1.5cups
Ingredients:
500 grams brown palm sugar
2 cups water
1 pandan leaf or vanilla bean

Method:

1. Put palm sugar, pandan (tied in a knot) and water in a saucepan.

2. Bring to boil and simmer for 15 minutes without stirring until liquid has reduced by nearly half. Syrup is ready when large bubbles appear on the surface (as when making coffee).

3. While warm, strain into jug and leave to cool. It will thicken up at this point. Store in refrigerator.

This recipe is my contribution to the blogging event No Croutons Required, which this month has a fruit theme. The event is an opportunity for bloggers to share vegetarian salad or soup recipes and is hosted by Holler, the Scottish author of Tinned Tomatoes.

Tags: morsels and musings food blog food and drink australia recipes rujak fruit salad salad rujak recipes rojak recipes tamarind recipes spicy recipes fruit recipes salad recipes balinese recipes balinese food balinese cuisine indonesian recipes indonesian food indonesian cuisine

tamarind & peppercorn broth

Legumes are a vegetarian’s delight. They are any plant (or fruit of a plant) from the family Fabaceae (Leguminosae) and include alfalfa, clover, peas, beans, lentils, lupins and even peanuts.

Since the No Crouton Required team have requested a soup or salad featuring legumes for there monthly recipe collection, I thought it might be interesting to use some pigeon peas in an unexpected way.

In India, dried, split pigeon peas become known as toor dal, lentils which are often cooked into a side dish or ground to make a flour.

Apart from the usual contributions to stews and soups, dals can act as a thickening agent. For instance, if you dry fry then grind the dal and add it to soups it will help to thicken the broth the same way flour is used in European cooking.

Rasam, a Southern Indian soup, is an excellent example of this cooking technique in practice.

Traditionally rasam is a sour and spicy water (broth) flavoured predominantly by tamarind and pepper or chillies. In most cases it’s served in a clear, liquid format but occasionally cooks add a little dal flour to thicken the broth into something a little more substantial.

This Tamil Nadu version, based on black peppercorns and tart tamarind is a good example of a thicker rasam. Although I compiled the recipe myself, I drew it from numerous sources across the blogosphere to ensure my own personal version was still true to traditional rasam principles.

Puli Milagu Rasam (Tamarind & Peppercorn Broth)

Anna’s adaptation of various blogger’s recipes. Serves 2-4.

Ingredients:2 tablespoons toor dal
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
½ small dried red chilli
2 tablespoons tamarind purée
1 tablespoon fresh coriander, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
½ teaspoon mustard seeds
½ teaspoon yellow asafoetida (hing)
15 curry leaves
1 teaspoon oil or ghee
Salt to taste

Method:

1. Dry fry the toor dal for a minute then add cumin seeds, peppercorns, coriander seeds and chilli. 2. Fry a little longer or until fragrant. Remove from heat and grind to a powder in spice grinder.

3. Mix tamarind purée with 2½ cups of hot water.

4. Heat oil/ghee in a saucepan and fry mustard seeds until they start to pop.

5. Add garlic, asafoetida and curry leaves and fry for 30 seconds.

6. Add spice and dal powder and fry for another 10 seconds.

7. Add tamarind water, half the tomato and salt. Boil for 10 minutes.

8. Strain broth into a clean bowl, press pulp to extract liquid then discard.

9. Rinse saucepan and return broth to saucepan. Add remaining tomato and boil for another 5 minutes.

10. Serve with rice or pappadums or both.

Note: I know this suggestion is going to bring shrieks of horror from Indian readers, but if the rasam is too spicy, you could always add a few spoonfuls of yoghurt. It won’t be the traditional broth anymore, but you’ll still taste the key flavours of tamarind and pepper and it’s very delicious.

The pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan, syn. Cajanus indicus) has been cultivated for 3000 years and most likely came from Asia to Africa and then through the slave trade to the Americas and Caribbean.

It is widely cultivated in more than 25 tropical and semi-tropical countries of the world, with India producing around 82%. It’s not hard to see why toor dal is India’s most popular dal, especially when you know it is very drought resistant and has huge levels of protein and amino acids (methionine, lysine, and tryptophan).

In India, toor dal is known by many names: tuvar dal (Gujarati), arhar dal (Uttar Pradesh, Orissa & Bengal), togari bele (Kannada), kandi pappu (Telugu), tuvara parippu (Malayalam), tuvaram paruppu (Tamil).

Cooking the rasam from Tamil Nadu (Wikipedia map below), accomplished another of my 2008 Food Resolutions and provided me something to contribute to the June challenge for No Crouton Required: a monthly vegetarian soup and salad blogging event.

Tags: morsels and musings food blog food and drink australia recipes soups rasams tamarind rasam pepper rasam legume recipes toor dal recipes spicy recipes broth recipes pepper recipes tamarind recipes rasam recipes soup recipes tamil nadu recipes indian recipes indian food indian cuisine