Beef and Barley Soup from the Careless Cook

 

Beef and Barley Soup from the Careless Cook

 

As my three faithful readers know, I do not make difficult recipes.  It’s a confession that while I like to cook, I’m an impatient eater.  So, if a recipe is difficult, I make it simple.  If I don’t have the exact ingredients, I unapologetically grab something similar.  That’s especially true of herbs.  Hey, I have a small, polite herb garden … ok, it’s not a REAL half acre garden, just a few pots of the standard perennials. But, moving past herbs, I may also grab whatever my careless eyes spy in the refrig or the pantry. Example: Going to make black bean soup, but don’t have black beans?  No prob!  Pinto beans work and I have two cans.  Call me a rule breaker, or just a Careless Cook! 

 

And with measurements I frequently use the T-LAR method, That Looks About Right.

 

I look at a recipe as a good place to start.  Where it ends is up to you.  Hey, you’re the chef!  Make it like you want it! If the diners don’t like it, meal’s over!

 

In the case of my barley soup, I added sausage to the mix because it seemed like a good idea, and besides a half-pound was left over from a previous recipe.  

 

Enough blather. Time to don that apron, pour yourself a proper goblet of a nice, polite red wine and let’s get cooking your very own delicious Beef and Barley Soup!

 

Beef and Barley Soup 

 

Ingredients (you’ll need both a skillet and a large cooking pot)

 

1 pound lean ground beef (90 to 93% lean)

½ pound Jimmy Dean Sausage (Hot, or Natural, or Original)

3-4 peeled and chopped carrots

1 large sweet onion, large dice

3 large ribs of celery, chopped

3 tablespoons tomato paste (It’s why I buy tomato paste in a tube.  Seldom does a recipe call for a whole can.)

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

2 (24 oz) cartons of beef broth

3 tablespoons soy sauce 

3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

3 generous sprigs of fresh rosemary, or a heaping tablespoon of dried

3-4 generous sprigs of fresh thyme, or a heaping tablespoon of dried

1-2 cups of pearl barley (use one cup for soupy, or two for very thick)

salt and pepper to taste

 

Note: I don’t strip the leaves off herbs when I use them in soup or stew.  I wash them and toss them in, stems and all.  The leaves cook off and I can pluck out the stems easily before serving.

Puttin’ It Together

 

Fry the sausage in a skillet, breaking up the meat as you cook, then drain and reserve.  Do the same with the lean ground beef, but add a little olive oil, and when it’s finished cooking, don’t drain it.

 

In the large pot, add a splash of olive oil and toss in all the chopped vegetables.  Cook and stir for about 3 minutes.

 

Add the tomato paste, stir and cook a minute or two.

 

Add beef broth and everything but the barley, to the pot and bring to a simmer.  When it simmers, stir in the barley. (you can always add more barley later)

Cover the pot and reduce heat to low.  Cook about 45 minutes or until the barley is tender.  Consider barley a tough version of rice, so it needs to cook longer.

 

I served my thick soup in bowls, accompanied with chunks of warmed baguettes and refills of that polite red wine.   Salut!  Prost! Cheers!

 

Your guests may not talk much, but you’ll know they love it by the rude slurping and sipping. Several of my guests required bibs, but I did get these heathens to use spoons; apparently a novelty for some.  Guess I should have passed out straws for the wine.

 

Beckham's Bookshop New Orleans

Decatur Street in New Orleans is one of the few thoroughfares in the French Quarter that isn’t pockmarked and doesn’t share the squalid conditions found on the back streets.

 

Matter of fact, this broad street has quite a few wonderful spots worth a visit, some of which I wrote of earlier:  Café du Monde, Jackson Square and the Red Slipper breakfast spot. There’s also the old Jackson Brewery, now a high-end conglomeration of shops.

 

On my last trip to New Orleans, I found a gem on Decatur Street, and what for me is a very special place, Beckham’s Bookshop.  I confess I’m addicted to bookshops, especially those dusty places that have a cluttered, backroom ambiance, with a fabulous array of used books, stacked carefully on worn and a seemingly endless array of book cases and also stacks of books on the floor by wooden chairs that creak when you sit down.  With all this and more, Beckham’s has found a proper spot near the top of my list.

 

Two older men, seated in their own creaky chairs looked me over when I walked in, or at least one of them did.  The other one was involved with a magazine and in a battle to overcome poor eyesight. The one who wasn’t involved was bald, wore glasses and had on a dress shirt and jacket.  He smiled.  I smiled.  End of conversation.

 

I looked around. At once I knew I was in a place to linger, to marvel.  Paperbacks, leather bound classics, best sellers of yesteryear.  It’s the kind of place where, no matter your level of education, you are overwhelmed with how much you don’t know and how much you want to know.  I asked myself how long has it been since I’ve read the authors of the twenties.  Too long. Then I found a biography of this and that well-known classicist, whose names I recalled.

 

You have to understand me to understand my passions.  I’m stuck in the 20s, 30s, and 40s.  Books and music. Wit as well as somber novels.  Raymond Chandler, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, to name a few. Writers and artists from their most productive years in Paris and London and New York.  I spotted a book: a bio of Dorothy Parker.  Remember her and the Algonquin Roundtable, meeting at the eponymous hotel in Manhattan?  Care to read a few lines from her pithy mind ?

 

“This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible.  This was terrible with raisins in it.”

 

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”

 

“Tell him I was too fucking busy -- or vice versa.”

 

And one of my favorite bits of Parker verse:

 

By the time you swear you’re his,

Shivering and sighing.

And he vows his passion is,

Infinite, undying.

Lady make note of this—

One of you is lying.

 

I asked the clerk, Do you have any books in French?  Yes?  Plenty.  Upstairs in the back, left corner.  Ah, yes.  Books that stretch my memories of high school when I swore I would learn French, while my grades offered different options.

 

A bookstore, especially an old one, like Beckham’s, on a passible street in an old and crumbling city, is like a diamond of a thousand facets, sparkling in every direction.  A place of dreams, wrapped in clouds of self-promises.  Or maybe it’s an older woman, face streaked with ancient wrinkles, and yet whose beauty shines through the years and the pages.

 

Yes, I bought some books, a couple of them in French.  Hope undying. Vive l’espoir! Long live hope!

 

 

New Orleans French Quarter

 

When I speak of New Orleans, I speak of the French Quarter, the land of dreams, the rhythmic notes of jazz, a gracious lady and tangled upstart of languages and conquests that treads the dusty path of history. But, let’s not mince words.  New Orleans today is a decrepit, scrappy, moth-eaten town, the kind of place that makes you want to scrape the bottoms of your shoes and replace the axles on your car.

Robed in a colorful history and still offering the flavors of France and Spain, spiced by the making of America, it now lies desecrated by cracked third-world streets and sidewalks, adorned with drugs and filth. 

 

Night sneaks into the city like a creeping, feral cat. Back streets in the French Quarter, le Vieux Carré, all except restaurants and bars, are closed with chains and iron grills, and the quarter is home to rabble in filthy, garish clothes, stumbling and yelling, their unshaven faces reddened by drink and plenty of it.  Small groups of beggars clog the street corners, singing off-key songs with high pitched voices, and tin can and tambourine for drums, plastic buckets on the edges of the broken streets, waiting for the gullible to drop coins and bills.  Of course, you can get out of the old quarter, but then in my mind you are out of New Orleans and into the scabs of modernity, with casinos and shopping malls and buildings that reach to the clouds.

 

Remarkably, some small parts of the old city retain their history and beauty, gently whispering to sit, relax, ponder and read. 

A black wrought iron fence surrounds Jackson Square, one of the few places of solitude. A heroic statue of the 7^th President and ‘Hero of New Orleans’ astride his horse marks the center.  The square languishes just in front of the St. Louis Cathedral on a corner side, opposite the famous Café du Monde, home to rich chicory coffee and beignets, French-style fried donuts, dusted with white powdered sugar.  Coffee called and so did beignets. 

 

While I sat and sipped and tasted my feather-light treats, a small combo played wonderful notes of When the Saints Go Marching In, the happy sounds so far removed from the screech on the corners of the night. When they tired, a smooth as glass saxophone artist took over, calming, soothing and leaving promises that the soul of this city lived on.

 

Coffee sipped to the last bean, I followed the call of the book I’m reading, Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf.   Across the street in Jackson Square, I settled into a seat on one of the wrought iron benches that form a semicircle close to the Jackson statue.  I guess I should have been reading some Faulkner.  After all, for six months he lived in Pirate Alley (1925-26, called Orleans Alley until the 1960s), between the Cathedral and the Cabildo, the old Spanish governor’s mansion.   Faulkner wrote his first novel there, Soldier’s Pay. Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain also spent a lot of time here and  famously said, “New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.”

 

You may wonder if I ever made it to some of the fine restaurants.  Yes.  On one of the back alleys, I watched my step and dined on seafood pasta and some flame-charred oysters at a crowed, rundown eatery, that was close to my hotel.  Delicious, but more was to come.

 

The next morning I wove my way through a light, foggy drizzle to meet friends at the Red Slipper, a breakfast joint I’ve written of previously.

 

That night, we took an Uber to Dragos at the Hilton Riverside, all agleam in tile and stainless steel.  We sat at the bar, and once again dined on chargrilled oysters.  Delicious!  It was a remarkably quick addiction. 

But, all in all, it will be a while……never say never…..before I return to this city, the Queen of the Mississippi.  And when I do, I’ll stay at a hotel away from the French Quarter, enchantingly romantic as it may seem. I remember New Orleans as one would remember a charming lady, well dressed and well spoken.  That lady has aged in heartless ways, lost a few teeth, still wearing the same dress that now has rips and stains.  With whiskey breath she slurs her words and offers a crooked smile.  

 

Oh, my darling, whatever has become of you?