I like to rattle the pans a bit, and I’m a fair amateur cook. One of the things I want to do this year is improve those skills a bit, and branch out into using techniques and ingredients I rarely use. To that end I plan to post up a few recipes of this I enjoy, or have experimented with. I also keep an open Evernote notebook with recipes I am partial to, or plan to try. There’s some crackers in there, so I’d recommend checking it out.
Let me say first of all that I have been massively inspired by the Hollow Legs blog. Lizzy, the author, is one of my favourite foody writers and I love the passion she has for cooking. Go drool over her recipes and photos.
Yesterday was Snow Day, with about 8 inches covering my garden (I got off lightly. A friend has over a foot and lost power!). There’s something about cold snowy days that demands comfort food and rummaging through my fridge I found I had the ingredients to make an old favourite:
400g thinly chopped cabbage
75g barley
250ml chicken stock (I had some I’d made, but if you use a stock cube don’t add any extra salt)
small pack of diced bacon (About 80g I think!)
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
1 onion, chopped
salt & pepper
First of all get the stock simmering in a pan and add the barley. It’ll take about 30 minutes to cook, and should end up with fairly thick, risotto like texture. You might find it gets a bit dry. If it does then stick in some cold water. After the 3o minutes season it with a pinch of salt and a good grinding of pepper and give it a good stir to mix it together.
Meanwhile chop your onion and fry it in a biggish saucepan, or lidded frying pan. Give it 10 minutes or so over a medium low heat, enough so that the onions go soft and golden brown. The add the garlic and give it another 2 minutes. Finally add in the cabbage and stir it around. After 3-4 minutes throw in a little water, just as much as you can cup in your hand and then put the lid on the pan. The steam will help cook the cabbage .
After another 5 minutes, add the barley to the cabbage and mix the whole lot together. Whack it in a couple of bowls and dig in 
This works well with sprouts as well as, or instead of the cabbage – just peel the outer leaves off and cut them up, discarding the root.
