Quick Vegetable Barley Soup

Because I use this blog to keep notes to myself, I have to post this savory soup quickly before I forget the recipe. I cook grandma-style, meaning that a little bit of this and that goes into the pot, which is great for getting a meal ready, but not so great if I want to reproduce a memorable meal.

I know I've gone on and on about my pressure cooker, so I'll spare you. If you still do not have one of these time saving tools, what are you waiting for? The new pressure cookers don't sound like angry snakes, and the chances of them becoming kitchen bombs are nil if you're not in the habit of leaving your stove on high and walking away.

Anyway, back to the soup: I wanted to make a potato leek soup, but a quick look at my produce bin revealed carrots, mushrooms, corn on the cob, and a bunch of spinach. I also wanted this to be filling, so in went a handful of barley. To save time, first peel the carrots and potatoes, roughly chop the leek greens, and stem the mushrooms so you can get the vegetable stock prepared. Then, while the stock is cooking, chop the vegetables. From start to finish, this soup took me 35 minutes, but only 10 minutes of active time.

Vegetable Barley Soup

1 leek, separated into white parts thinly sliced and green parts roughly chopped
2 carrots, diced and peels reserved
5 brown mushrooms, diced and stems reserved
2 T butter
2 T olive oil
3 yukon gold potatoes, diced and peels reserved
Kernels from 1 ear of corn
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 bunch of spinach, chopped
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese, grated


In the pressure cooker, add 8 cups of water and the leek greens, mushroom stems, carrot peels, and potato peels, and a pinch of salt. Put the lid on the pressure cooker and bring it to high pressure. Cook for 15 minutes. Release the pressure, and strain the stock. Set the stock aside.

Over medium-high heat, melt the butter and add olive oil. Sauté the leek whites, carrots, mushrooms, and pinch of salt for 4 minutes or until the mushrooms have released their liquid. Add potatoes, corn, and pearl barley, and reserved stock. Put the lid on the pressure cooker and bring it to high pressure. Cook for 20 minutes. Release the pressure, and stir in the spinach. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve in bowls and garnish with a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese.

New Love

Some people love German cars, but my love goes to German pressure cookers. My new tool arrived on my doorstep a couple of days ago, and the more I use it, the more I lurve it.

WMF pressure cookers kick my little old T-Fal's butt. Why?

• No jiggle top. The T-Fal's jiggle top made a loud, annoying "psst-psst-psst" noise like a rotary water sprinkler on steriods. Subsequently, it also lost more liquid during cooking, something that was really annoying when cooking items, like stew meat, that needed longer than 30 minutes to cook because I'd have to drop the pressure and add more stock. My WMF pressure cooker is mostly silent and barely loses any liquid. A few hisses of stem burp out when the unit is almost up to pressure, but other than that, I don't have to worry about waking a sleeping boy up when I get the urge to make dinner at 7 AM on a Saturday morning.
• Thick, even cooking surface. My T-Fal was so thin that simple tasks like sauteing onions and browning meat were dreadful due to sticking issues. Since my normal pots and pans are hearty All-Clads and cast iron skillets, I'd have to recalibrate my cooking style (lower the heat, more frequent stirring). No recalibration is necessary when I cook with the WMF.
• Removeable lid handle. The WMF's removeable handle makes it really easy to clean the lid. The contact surfaces between the lid and the handle are all metal, too, so it is robust.
• Quick pressure release. Instead of running the WMF pressure cooker under cold water (what a waste of water), all I have to do to quickly release the pressures is to slide a button back. For me, this is also a plus because I aim the steam that comes out at my backsplash tiles and wipe them up. Those backsplash tiles get covered in all sorts of greasy junk, and not having to use any elbow grease or abrasives to clean it up is a plus.
• Pressure canning. I can use the WMF as a pressure canner!
  

I opted for an 8.5-quart (about 8-liter) model because it's bigger than my 6-liter T-Fal and I can still cook small amounts in it if I choose to do so. Sheepishly, I have to confess that I have the urge to add a 6.5-quart WMF to my set, though. What's stopping me is the big downfall of the WMF pressure cooker: its price. Quality like this doesn't come cheap. It was 5 times more expensive than a T-Fal.

So far this morning, I've made brown rice (25 minutes!) and a potato and cauliflower curry (4 minutes!) using my beloved WFM. Next up today are a dal soup with spinach and perhaps a batch of risotto. Upcoming experiments will be chicken broth, cheesecake, and pot roast.

The T-Fal (marketed under the brand name Mirro now) served me well. For soups and steamed vegetables, it was perfect. Artichokes in 7 minutes? You got it! Rather than retire it completely, I'm going to teach a few of my friends the basics of pressure cooking and let them borrow it for a spell. I'll be a traveling, one woman pressure cooker preacher. Hallelujah!

Risotto-Rama

I've been feeling cooped up and experimenty, triggered in part to weather that is a little too chilly and windy for my narrow margin of acceptable outdoor weather. This is the time when I latch on to a topic and bleed it to death (exhibit 1: tawashi). For the past 3 weeks, that topic has been my pressure cooker.

My pressure cooker, or PC, is an old jiggle-top, simply known as JT to those in the PC world. The weight (pressure regulator) sits on top of a post poking out from the lid. It spins and loudly spits out steam when the pot is at its designed pressure. Little did I know that when I bought my JT PC 10 years ago (due to a stint as a vegetarian and swayed by an Indian cookbook), it was already outdated technology. There are wonderfully silent models of PCs, and eventually I will buy one when I can decide what size to get and what country to buy it from. Currently, it's a toss up between a 6-quart (perfect for two people) and an 8-quart (perfect for stocks), and it's a battle between the Swiss and the Germans. The thought did cross my mind that the most elegant solution to this puzzle is to go with one size from one country and another size from the other country. It's not the most elegant solution to my wallet, though.

A couple of months ago, I did dabble with my pressure cooker when I made beef stew, but it was the ease that risotto came together in the PC that made me obsessed. Risotto is not hard, but you do have to be attentive to the bubbling pot of rice and stir, stir, stir. This is fine when I have 40 minutes to mind a pot, but it's not so fine when dinner needs to be done in a flash or I want to spend some time playing with yarn and sticks or climbing up walls.

With my pressure cooker, I can have a pot of risotto done in 20 minutes, start to finish. The actual time that the risotto is cooked under high pressure is only 4-6 minutes, and the results are indistinguishable from my 40 minute risottos. I couldn't say that about the pressure cooked stews (thin gravy that needed a thickening agent like cornstarch or arrowroot to make it palatable).

Artichokes have also been awfully convenient in my PC. I can have them to the table in less than 10 minutes. Not bad! Artichokes and some homemade, lemony mayo have been featured dinner items as well.

The beet risotto I made was wonderful. Beets are one of my favorite things to eat, but they do take at least 45 minutes to roast, my preferred method. What if I want a quick beet fix? The solution is two-fold: pressure cooker and grated beets. Using Deborah Madison's recipe for "Beet Risotto with their Greens" in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone as an outline, and Lorna Sass's risotto techniques in Cooking Under Pressure, I had a heavenly risotto in no time at all. I upped the amount of greens used in this recipe by adding one bunch of dino kale.

Since peas are also in season and I scored some dry farmed English peas, into the risotto they went! The batch pictured below had English peas, basil, and fresh shitake mushrooms.

I also made an asparagus and meyer lemon risotto, but that was inhaled too fast for pictures. We ate risotto for 7 days straight. This is not a bad thing, but an odd thing.

Another odd thing is this miniature Mingus. My brother gave it to Mingus for Christmas, and we finally gave it to him. This is how I found Mini Mingus when I returned home.


Mini Mingus likes to mimic Giant Mingus. Giant Mingus is not impressed and does not like being mocked.


And let's throw in a picture of Vespa, just because I love her bat ears. As you can see, Vespa is also not impressed.