[Sca-cooks] Period or no?

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

-----Original Message-----
From: Maggie MacDonald <maggie5 at cox.net>

Theres always a nice barley pottage, with whatever root veggies you want to 
add. Enrich it with onion soup, garlic broth, or whatever.

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I just tried one of the recipes in Henry Marks' book on Byzantine cooking.  Most of them are conjectural, since they are based on descriptions of food, and monastery menus, but this one is pretty straight forward.

To paraphrase, the original description says to cook lentils in water with barley, leeks, dill, oil, and vinegar; and if you desire, savory or pennyroyal.  (As pennyroyal can be unsafe, Marks substitutes mint, which is in the same family.)  Use less barley than lentils, so they don't absorb all the liquid.

I used
1 cup lentils
1/2 cup barley
1 cup finely chopped leeks (white part only) = 2-3 leeks
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
3 TBS olive oil
2 TBS white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp ground savory

Cook the lentils with the leeks in 5 cups of water until the lentils are tender.  Meanwhile, cook the barley separately, according to package directions.  In the last half hour of the lentils cooking, add the other ingredients, EXCEPT for the barley.  When the lentils are done, add the barley, and cook for another 10 minutes.  Salt to taste.

This was very, very good, and much more flavorful than I would have expected from a meatless lentil dish.  A mundane vegetarian co-worker liked it very much.  It imporves with age.




Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
rcmann4 at earthlink.net