Back to Some Family Recipes

1 cup raw barley
6 l/2 cups stock (chicken, beef, or vegetable) - we always need more than 6 l/2 cups
1 tsp salt (careful, if you have salty stock)
3-4 TBS dry sherry (but we use cream sherry)
3-4 TBS shoyu (soy sauce)
3 TBS butter
2 cloves finely minced garlic
1 cup chopped onion (heaping)
1 LB fresh sliced mushrooms

Cook barley in l l/2 cup stock until tender, adding more stock if necessary (we always need a lot more stock).* This takes l - l l/2 hours.

Add remaining stock, shoyu, and sherry.

Saute onion and garlic in the butter until softened. Add mushrooms and salt and continue cooking until mushrooms are done and begin to give up their liquid. Put mixture into blender or food processor to chop if you don't care for mushrooms in larger slices. (Rhona did this and it was probably better - but we never chop/blend the mushrooms).

Add barley mixture.

Add a generous grinding of black pepper.

Simmer 20 minutes covered.

*The barley package recipe actually uses 3 cups liquid for l/4 cup barley!