This recipe was a happy accident. As I was making pizza the other night, I made a mental list of the toppings to use from the veggie basket: cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and onion. Except, when push came to shove (ie. cheese grating) I had completely forgotten about the mushrooms. <silence> Fudge.

Sidebar: We were watching Bridget Jones’s Diary on CBC last night and they muted out the swear words. It felt so wrong.

And we’re back. Ok, so the pizza turned out just fine sans fungi, but we were now left with a real mishmash of vegetables in our fridge. Feeling a bit on the cheap side after the holidays, I didn’t feel like taking these mushrooms to Chef City so I set them on the fast track to Affordableville.

Enter barley.

For less than $2 a bag, we have enough barley to fulfill our bran requirements for months to come. I chose pot barley because it’s less refined than pearl barley. Sure, you have to cook it a scooch longer, but you get a bit more bran. Sweet. God, my 30th birthday is speeding towards me faster than I can say riboflavin.

Mushroom and pot barley risotto

• 5-ish cups of chicken stock
• Dash of sherry (1/8 cup)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 cup barley
• 1 yellow onion - diced
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 package of mushrooms
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4-ish cup of Parmesan

Method:

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat.  Add onion, thyme and bay leaves.
2. When the onion is soft, stir in barley and add 2 cups of stock.  Cover and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed.
3. In a separate pan (I used a non stick fry pan) add the olive oil, garlic and sliced mushrooms.   Cook for 3-ish minutes until the mushrooms are soft… or however soft you like your mushrooms.
4. In the barley pot, keep adding the stock 1/2 cup at a time and stirring.  I found I used about 5 cups of stock in all.  I should have used a bit more since my barley was a bit chewy when served.
5. Remove the bay leaves and add the mushroom mixture to the barley.
6. Stir in parmesan.