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I'm fascinated by food history. Some foods we eat today our ancestors ate basically unchanged. Most have risen and fallen in favor across times. While people of our modern societies essentially feast every day, people of old survived on various staple foods.
A staple was usually a grain or root vegetable that would keep trough the lean times. Some of the big grains, or corns, of old Europe were rye, oats, wheat, and barely. These days, wheat is used almost exclusively, rye is mixed so parsimoniously with wheat that it hardly counts, and oats are rolled.
And barley? It's like the red headed stepchild of the old world grains. I found this fun fact at http://www.barleyfoods.org/facts.html : Of the barley consumed in the United States, nearly 55% of the crop is used for animal feed, about 40% for malt production, about 3% for seed and about 2% for human food.
That 40% is mostly for booze, at least, and not that crappy Budweiser swill either ( they use rice ).
So, when I saw a bag of honest to God whole grain barley at the Polish mart, and not the weird over polished American stuff, I had to give it a go.
In the barley recipe I came up with, all flavors were intended to enhance a smoky flavor in the dish. I really didn't have an onion, so I used some onion paste; wonderful stuff, flavor with no work. Garlic was a heavy hand with the stuff in the jar, another good shortcut. All ingredients are used in Polish dishes, I even stayed my hand heading for the olive oil, in favor of butter.
( Recipe )
A staple was usually a grain or root vegetable that would keep trough the lean times. Some of the big grains, or corns, of old Europe were rye, oats, wheat, and barely. These days, wheat is used almost exclusively, rye is mixed so parsimoniously with wheat that it hardly counts, and oats are rolled.
And barley? It's like the red headed stepchild of the old world grains. I found this fun fact at http://www.barleyfoods.org/facts.html : Of the barley consumed in the United States, nearly 55% of the crop is used for animal feed, about 40% for malt production, about 3% for seed and about 2% for human food.
That 40% is mostly for booze, at least, and not that crappy Budweiser swill either ( they use rice ).
So, when I saw a bag of honest to God whole grain barley at the Polish mart, and not the weird over polished American stuff, I had to give it a go.
In the barley recipe I came up with, all flavors were intended to enhance a smoky flavor in the dish. I really didn't have an onion, so I used some onion paste; wonderful stuff, flavor with no work. Garlic was a heavy hand with the stuff in the jar, another good shortcut. All ingredients are used in Polish dishes, I even stayed my hand heading for the olive oil, in favor of butter.
( Recipe )