Sprout & Pea

I had some bar­ley left over from last week’s savory pump­kin and goat cheese dish so tonight I decided to go the oppo­site direc­tion and use it in a refresh­ing salad.  I still have yet to mas­ter cook­ing the bar­ley itself, but the rest of this dish was so sim­ple to toss together.

Both times that I have attempted bar­ley, I’ve wound up with a large layer of it stick­ing to the bot­tom of the pot. This time around, it also had more of a risotto like tex­ture, so I strained it with some cold water when it was fin­ished cook­ing which seemed to do the trick. You’ll want the bar­ley to be cool and a slightly drier con­sis­tency.  For this salad, I just mixed in some fresh arugula, chopped red onions, olive oil, apple cider vine­gar, lemon and parme­san. The only thing I would do dif­fer­ent next time is to shave the parme­san instead of grate it. It was a per­fectly refresh­ing dish to top off this week­end of gor­geous weather, long bike rides and fam­ily time.

1 cup pearled bar­ley
1 1/​2 cups of water
1 1/​2 cups of veg­etable broth
1 box or batch of fresh arugula
1 tbs extra vir­gin olive oil
2 1/​2 tbs apple cider vine­gar
Juice of half a small lemon
1 tbs grated or peeled fresh parme­san cheese
salt and pep­per to taste

Com­bine bar­ley, water and veg­etable broth in a medium pot and sim­mer for 1 hour and 15 min­utes (check instruc­tions on the pack­age of bar­ley as it may vary). If you find that the bar­ley comes out a bit sticky/​gooey, rinse in a strainer with cool water. Once bar­ley is cooked and cooled, com­bine 1 cup of bar­ley with 2 cups of packed arugula. Mix in olive oil, apple cider vine­gar and lemon. Add salt and pep­per to taste and top with parmesan.