Recipe 16- Barley Asparagus Risotto

Recipe 16- Barley Asparagus Risotto

So my cooking days for the last few weeks have landed on Mondays. For the last year we host a 'friends get together" night every Monday, well this week was the ultimate hang out with recipes 16 &17!  These were recipes have to be the BEST yet! and that is hard to say, as ALL of the recipes have been terrific.
I have noticed our monday gatherings have been getting larger in people volume, word has spread about my Michael Smith journey and we have had a lot of company lol!

Like I have said before, some of the recipes have been 'intimidating' this is because I know I have never made them before and more often its because I have never eaten or used the ingredients.
But this recipe called to me, asparagus is one of my favourite vegetables!  I have to say I have been eyeing this recipe from day one and was really excited to make it!
Surprisingly this recipe wasn't too ingredient 'heavy'. I pretty much had everything on hand and only required a copious amount of chicken broth and some pearl barley.

Like many of Chef Michaels recipes, this started off with some chopped onions and garlic. I also pre chopped my asparagus. Into a pot went some oil, garlic and onions and then the pearl barley. Here the recipes says to really stir everything around so the barley gets a nice coating of oil. I let this all hang out in the pot until I smelled the nice warm aroma of the barley toasting up a little bit. 

Next I added in the white wine. The recipe says to choose your favourite kind and I just happened to have a nice bottle of my favourite white wine, Pelee Island Chardonnay. 

 After I added the wine, minutes later it was completely evaporated. On my stove the entire time, I had a separate pot filled to the brim... literally... of chicken broth that was at a slow simmer. My kitchen was kinda looking like an assembly line. 

Now insert some Rocky theme song music here :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhlPAj38rHc

 and get your sweat bands and arms ready for 45 minutes of NON STOP STIRRING! The process here is to add one ladle of broth and stir until it has evaporated, then add another ladle and repeat the process until you have got that entire ^ pot of chicken broth into the other pot. 

My only slight complaint about the recipe instructions is that its not quite specific of when to add the broth. It says 'evaporated'... does that mean completely? kind of evaporated? when?

So what worked for me is, as soon at the barley was kind of peeking through after stirring in the ladle worth of broth, I added another one. You do need to keep in mind that you WILL have liquid in the pot, except it will be creamy and not 'brothy' .. I hope that makes sense. 

At about the half way point I noticed that my barley was starting to get nice and puffy, and near the end of the process, I had created a nice creamy bath that all my barley was soaking in. 

Now I have never made risotto or eaten it for that matter, but for some reason I was envisioning that the barley was going to taste like "mush"? ... Boy was I in for a surprise... ! 

As I had finished my last stir for the end of the broth, I added in my asparagus. It really didn't take long for this to cook. Maybe 5 or so minutes. I also use the 'poke' test with a fork. 

After that, your final step is adding in some freshly grated parmesan cheese. 

At this point, the cooking is complete and the heat is off. The risotto was hot enough to melt that beautiful cheese right into the mix. 

All that was left was getting the masterpiece to the plate. 

Now after a long hour and repeating my stirring mantra " just keep stirring, just keep stirring, stirring, stirring" ... here it WAS! First bite was like one of those "ahhhhhhhhhhh clouds parting moments" 

It was so creamy and delightful I can barely explain it. Everything was just perfect. The barley still had texture and defiantly was NOT mushy in the slightest, and the asparagus was perfectly tender. This was the star of the show when it came to dinner time. I paired this dish with Recipe 17- Pot roast with aromatic vegetable gravy ( IT WAS AMAZING).

As always my compliments to the Chef and cheers to you, my friends! 

* I sincerely apologize for the delay in posting, 2 of my children celebrated birthdays this week and I was busy making Cakes! 

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