This is a series of posts about native cooking in various parts of the world and food made by home cooks. It is not very inventive and hasn’t changed for decades. But it contains living history which is a combination of the physical setting, season, mood .. etc and this inspires and influences the taste.  All this details lends itself to invention in the contemporary style of cuisine- plating, seasonal ingredients and indigenous flavour pairings, accompaniments.. etc

The one very important aspect of history is being able to integrate the ‘experience’ into the dish.

Beate works to restore heritage buildings, furniture, decorative artifacts. She knows interesting bits of history and art. So while cooking a pot of soup, I wanted to ask her about it. It is a beef and barley which is not unusual but I wanted to know why she was making it.

I know as do many well experienced cooks that barley is a nutty tasting grain with a nice bite and is difficult to overcook. But what are its origins and how was it traditionally cooked? What flavour combinations work with it and can a barley dish give an ‘experience’ ?

So barley grows on mountain tops and is used often for hearty soups. When one is hiking up the mountains in Germany , there are refuge huts along the way that have their own cattle and make cheese and offer soups to the hikers. And this is one of the origins of the barley soup.