Barley buttermilk soup

Swedish lunch cleaning is how Dave refers to my latest "decluttering" of the pantry, refrigerator and freezer.

Sometimes it works better than others. The freezer yielded chicken broth, cooked beans, roasted vegetables from after a farmers market trip last fall, and some pesto from (oops) 2018. That was a pretty tasty lunch. 

Another winner in the pantry-clearing category involves two cups of cooked beans, 11 ounces of salsa, a half cup of broth, 1 tablespoon chili powder and 1 teaspoon ground cumin. Heat it through about 20 minutes. The recipe is sort of half of a Washington Post recipe for mock chili fries.

But strange times lead to strange recipes. It hadn't occurred to me to put buttermilk in soup, but apparently in the region of Italy from whence this recipe springs, they've got a lot of it on hand.

What's on hand drove this recipe selection on my part. I found myself with buttermilk in need of using, so when I ran across this recipe and realized I had nearly all of the ingredients in the house, it seemed like a sign. I wasn't sure I had enough barley, since it's something I haven't ever gotten in the habit of using. Turns out that due to bad inventory control, I had a copious amount.

The only thing I didn't have was anything that approximated a ham shank, but the recipe noted that in some areas speck was used so I got rid of the end of a package of bacon and used bacon fat to cook the veggies in. 

 Barley buttermilk soup

(Adapted from Barley Mountain Soup from“The Italian Country Table" by Lynne Rossetto Kasper)

Ingredients

2 medium onions, chopped, divided

2 medium carrots, chopped, divided

¼ cup fresh parsley leaves, chopped, divided

2 large garlic cloves, chopped, divided

4 medium red-skinned potatoes, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced

1 cup barley

2 rashers of bacon (original recipe calls for ½ pound ham shank or hocks)

3 rosemary sprigs, divided

1 quart buttermilk

4 quarts water

2 tablespoons bacon fat or olive oil

Method

In a large pot, add half the onions, half the carrots, half the parsley and half of the garlic. Add potatoes, barley, meat and 2 rosemary sprigs, buttermilk and milk. Simmer for 50 minutes until the barley is almost tender.

Heat fat or oil over medium low heat. Saute remaining onions, carrots and garlic. Add to mixture in pot and cook another 30 to 40 minutes. Remove meat shank, if using, and remove meat from the shank and add it back to the pan to heat through. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with remaining herbs (chop up the leaves of the last sprig of rosemary).

Rating: Odd, but not unlikable. From the looks of it, I thought it might turn out to have the texture of glue, but it's really just creamy. It's very hearty, even without much meat to toss in, and it makes a ton. I'd be curious to try it again with an actual ham shank, because the bacon flavor was overshadowed by the buttermilk. The broth seems like rosemary-infused watered-down buttermilk. That description doesn't sound good, but it actually works OK.  

It does look pretty pale, so it qualifies as Swedish lunch cleaning even if it's Italian.