Mushrooms and Chard Over Barley

As much as I love to eat healthy foods [I actually enjoy them vs. feeling like I have to eat them], sometimes they don’t live up to being a awesome as I would have expected. I mean, I love mushrooms. I love chard. I love barley. How could this fail?

Well, it didn’t exactly fail, but it left me feeling slightly underwhelmed.

That, my friends, is why they make things like hot sauce. I have a decently high spice tolerance, but I tend to use it sparingly so it doesn’t overwhelm what I’m eating. If I wanted to eat hot sauce, I’d just drink the bottle. Y’know?

Andrew found this Aardvark black bean sauce at the co-op awhile back. The hot sauce is good, so we had to try out this one. While it’s a black bean sauce, it’s very heavy on the soy sauce. That’s definitely the dominant flavor. It went really well on top of this dish. Slightly salty, but not overwhelming. Pretty good.

Inspiration: NY Times

Ingredients

• 1 cup barley
• 1 quart water
• 1 bunch Swiss or rainbow chard
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1lb mushrooms, trimmed and quartered
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 teaspoon thyme, chopped
• ground pepper
• 1/2 cup barley water

Preparation

1. Bring the barley and water to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce the heat, add salt, and allow to simmer about an hour.
2. When draining the barley, retain about 1/2 cup of water.
3. While grains are cooking, rinse the chard, chopping it up into pieces.
4. Heat one tablespoon of oil on medium-high heat in a large skillet or wok.
5. Add the mushrooms and chard stems.
6. Stir frequently for about 3 minutes.
7. Add the garlic, thyme, and salt and stir for another 30 seconds.
8. Add the chard (in batches if necessary), turning up the heat and stirring until it wilts.
9. Season with salt and pepper.
10. Add the 1/2 cup of barley water and cover, allowing the chard to become tender.
11. Serve over barley. Drizzle with any sauce.