Roasted Vegetable Barley Soup
I don’t cook. I make dishes, but I am not really a cook. I’ve made a few dishes, but not like the one I made for dinner tomorrow. I didn’t have a recipe. All I had was an idea and meager skills gathered from watching television cooking shows or reading Seriouseats.com. Is that enough to make a decent dish?
Last week I went to stock up my cupboard after returning from a long vacation. Since my brother had a heart attack, I thought to buy lots of vegetables. It’s asparagus season, so I bought a bunch. I also bought a pound of carrots, a couple onions, a bag of fresh spinach, and a cucumber. I made lots of asparagus dishes last week, but still had plenty left over. I needed to make a dent in the amount of vegetables in my kitchen.
I formulated a soup. They’re pretty easy to make. I’ll just throw vegetables into stock and cook for an hour. Viola!
All last week I was roasting asparagus. I would trim them and season with salt and ground pepper then throw them in an oven for 15-20 minutes. They came out nice and tender, and I threw them into the dishes I had made. Roasting gave me an idea for the soup!
Today, I roasted carrots, cucumber, onions, garlic, and asparagus. I seasoned them with rosemary, thyme, salt, and ground pepper before placing them on a baking sheet in the oven for 25 minutes. After they cooled down, I chopped them up and placed in a soup base I was making.
The base started out by frying spinach then in went some barley and the beef stock. There was also a little bit of chicken stock left in the freezer so I added it as well. The stock made it 2 quarts, then I added another 2 quarts of water. The roasted vegetables went in, a little bit of salt, a dash of patis, and more ground pepper. I brought it to a boil before turning down to a hard simmer for an hour. Towards the end, I added some lemon juice to brighten the taste.
So far I’ve had a small cup and it was great. Better than I expected. I think that lemon juice brought the whole thing together. Hopefully, this will keep for a few days.
2 Replies to “Roasted Vegetable Barley Soup”
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that sounds incredibly delicious. You cook like you're from Louisiana. Just throw everything in the pot. Do you also have a wok? you could probably go crazy with it.
Hope you're brother is recovering well! I get the CSA from the local farmer's market so loads of veggies. You can blanche and freeze them to last longer. I do that so i don't overdose my tastebuds. I like asparagus wrapped in lean bacon too. Did you do that?
I'm just following after my mom. When I ask her for weights and measures in a particular Filipino dish, she just shrugs and tells me she just eyeballs it. That's what I did with this dish. Actually, I don't know what I did to make it delicious. Most likely it was the lemon, but it may have been the roasting of the vegetables, or the stock I used. Still it was delicious.
Asparagus and bacon? Similar to asparagus and prosciutto. Still yummy except I'm trying to minimize meat in my life at the moment. I need a summer of less red meat… Hot dogs isn't read meat right?