SC - Re: A couple questions . . .

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Decker, Terry D. wrote:

> Somewhere in my period recipe collection, I have one which calls for
> cooking the barley for 3 hours.  This causes the barley to become
> creamy, which is the idea behind risotto, if I am not mistaken.  In
> extended cooking of grains, I almost always have to add liquid, and I'm
> fairly certain medieval cooks would need to do this also.  I have met no
> one who can tell me precisely how much fluid a given batch of grain will
> absorb.

I believe the difference between cooking barley for three hours until
creamy, and cooking risotto for the fifteen minutes or so that it takes
for it to become creamy, is that while risotto is  grains of rice with
some structural integrity in a thick starch solution, barley cooked
until creamy is more like Cantonese jook or congee, which would be more
like what is sometimes translated into English from period sources as
"cream of barley soup". Period recipes for barley frequently call for
the barley to be pounded into grits before cooking. Of course, they
presumably wouldn't be working with pearl barley anyway, so it's hard to
tell how it would behave after the three hours are up.

I just saw a barley recipe last night in Chiquart's Fait du Cuisine, but
as I was actually looking for something else, I didn't stop to read it
through carefully (yet).

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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