Barley Pilaf

I decided I wanted to see if I could make BARLEY PILAF in the rice cooker, and it sort of worked out. This also could be made easily in a saucepan, though.

Ingredients

1/4 cup — almonds, chopped

1 — small onion, chopped

1 tblsp. — olive oil

2 cups — hulled barley, rinsed

4 cups — water

1 tsp — tamari

 

Method in Rice Cooker or Pan

In a rice cooker, saute a quarter cup of chopped almonds and a small chopped onion in a tablespoon of olive oil. Add two cups of rinsed hulled barley.

Hulled barley is not as polished as pearl barley, and it requires a longer cooking time. Cover and wait a minute or two until the button pops up, which I took to mean it was time to add a little less than four cups of water and a teaspoon of tamari and press the button down again. Cover and cook past the button popping up for an additional fifteen to twenty minutes.
In a pan, after the sauteing and adding the barley, add the water and bring to a boil. Boil for five minutes, reduce heat to lowest setting, cover, and cook for forty-five minutes like you would for brown rice.

Serving Suggestions

I served it with long tofu strips roasted with olive oil and tamari; some mixed cherry tomatoes; some sliced zucchini sauteed with olive oil, salt, 21 Salute seasoning, and at the end add sliced garlic; and some steamed sliced red russian kale dressed with balsamic vinegar, agave syrup, tamari, and toasted sesame oil, as pictured.

 

Thoughts on Shiitake Mushrooms

Not in the picture was the fourth of a shiitake mushroom we each got from our log. I just roasted it along with the tofu, after removing the stem, since there was only one of them. My partner came home from visiting friends the other week with the best present ever: a log impregnated with shiitake mushroom spores, with three mushrooms already growing on it.

We sauteed those up right away, and they were delicious. With the dry weather and our forgetting to periodically water the log, which is sitting out under some trees, it hadn't produced again. Yesterday we remembered to check it, and it had finally rained and there were two mushrooms growing from it.

Unfortunately they looked different from each other, so we had to look up what shiitakes looked like to be sure which one to eat. Maybe the other one was also a shiitake, but maybe it wasn't, so we sadly composted it. Still, better one mushroom than no mushroom. The oak log should produce mushrooms for five to seven years.