Barley cake

During some really busy weeks I haven't really had time for cooking, but I wanted to post something that I tried some weeks ago for the first time at home, a barley cake or a barley ring! In my childhood memories barley equals to barley porridge, sticky, sweet, oven-cooked yellowish mass of something unidentified extra-terrestial material, which I didn't like to eat even if I saw how my daddy carefully prepared it! However, now it's time to get rid of my barley fears, so I picked a recipe which I had seen being prepared on a climate-friendly vegetarian cooking course in January.

It seems that there's a growing interest in eating healthily, but also take other point of views into consideration: fair trade, organic, demeter, vegan-friendly and so on seem to be already widespread terms. Climate-friendly (or maybe in a broader sense environmentally friendly) food is considered to be vegetarian, simple, following the natural cycle of seasons, locally near your home grown, organic...in fact we should look at the whole process: less processed and overpacked food with tons of plastic, cooking big quantities at the same time, using all the stuff you have grown or bought etc. So that has an impact not only on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, but aims to more sustainable, environmentally-friendly food production.

Here are some good links to read more about climate-friendly kitchen and labelling climate-friendly food in Sweden and about global picnic (in Finnish).

And here's the recipe. It's translated from the notes I got from the teacher of the cooking course, Päivi Mattila, an author of climate-friendly vegan cookbook (available in Finnish only: Härkäpapua sarvista)

2 tbsp oil
1 onion
0,5 tsp sugar
1 tsp paprika powder
0,25 tsp turmeric
100g piece of swede turnip
3 dl barley grits
1 vegetarian stock cube or 1 tbsp of vegetarian stock powder
8 dl water
1 tbsp dried basil
(0,5 dl roasterd hemp seed)

Peel and chop the onion, cut the swede turnip into small cubes.
Heat the oil in a kettle and fry the onion lightly. Add swede turnip cubes, paprika powder, turmeric and sugar. Cook for some minutes.
Add barley grits, vegetable stock and water, cook on a low heat for around 35 minutes. Stir every now and then, in the end swich off hotplate and let it cook without the lid for some five more minutes. Add basil and hemp seeds.
Rinse a round, deep cake mould with cold water and pour the barley mass into it. Press it tighly to the mould and let it cool for 5-10 minutes. Turn the cake out of mould on a plate and serve e.g. with vegetarian patties.

Tips: if you like spicy food, double the amount of spices and add some chili and cumin :) I used brown mascobado sugar and other organic ingredients. Wholegrain barley grits were ready in around 35 minutes, as mentioned in the recipe, but check the cooking time on the barley package.