Ottolenghi's Hot Yoghurt and Barley Soup

Though this blog is unlike a proper news website in other respects, here is an article in the 'filler' tradition for the holidays.

Hordeum — barley
Photo courtesy USDA,
via Wikipedia

The new cookbook Jerusalem has been well received and has even landed in the bookshelves of Gwyneth Paltrow. I received it for my birthday and have made a handful of its Middle Eastern recipes already. The latest is the hot yoghurt and barley soup.

The barley and the water it is cooked in are enriched by sautéd onions, yoghurt, mint, parsley, and spring onions to make the soup. Further details shall be kept unrevealed for reasons of not spoiling the mystery (and, copyright).

Yesterday I made it the first time and left the barley too long; it was waterlogged and much of the cooking liquid had disappeared. The right response to this contingency was, as it proved, not to make up the difference with more water; that otherwise vitally important compound of hydrogen and oxygen was in the end the defining flavour of the broth. I tasted the soup toward the end of proceedings, then rushed in some 70 g of butter to thicken it; fortunately we were philistines and had wieners with it, so no one went unsatisfied. Today the grains were on the hearth for roughly twenty minutes' total, not even counting the simmering time, but they rested in the pot soaking up water while I prepared the rest of the recipe. This may not be ideal either, but everything retained its flavour and the barley's texture was quite nice.

As far as the garnish is concerned, I sautéed the spring onions until one or two bits were a little browned in the same pan (pot, but we'll pretend it was a better-suited pan) which had held the onions, so that the spring onions would be even more flavourful but gentle. It proved to be a good idea, though the pristine white-and-green contrast of the soup was further marred by this step.

***

Jerusalem
by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi
[Ebury Press]

Cracking the Nut

The Guardian has been showing the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker, presented in the UK's Covent Garden in 2009, in two parts on its website.

So I watched it the day it went up on the internet. I thought the standard of acting was astonishingly good, as well as the detail in the costumes, which are distractingly Jane Austen adaptation-like; the settings, mannerisms and dress all seem to hearken quite faithfully to the ideal of domesticity in 19th-century Germany. In this sense it is probably not as close to the source material; E.T.A. Hoffmann was I think a subversive writer and his Nutcracker is dark and trippy and funny like many of his other works. On the other hand, I once saw an unhealthy interpretation on television, which inflicted some emotional scarring which I've fortunately for the most part forgotten, so there is no need to go to the other extreme! Either way, this Covent Garden imagining is self-consciously indulgent and much like Zeffirelli's Metropolitan Opera art direction seems to be — perfect for people who like tradition and like to be pampered. The question of its balletic nature is probably best left to more knowledgeable heads than mine.

Since the Guardian film is only temporarily available,  here is this production from 2008 — in the same opera house, much the same cast and same stage direction, with the notable difference that another ballerina (Alexandra Ansanelli) is the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

From the Book of Hours for Engelbert of Nassau (1470s)
By an unknown Flemish miniaturist, manuscript in the Bodleian Library.
Courtesy of Web Gallery of Art, via Wikimedia Commons.