When it comes to quick and easy comfort food to brighten up yet another snowy day there are few things that beat a filling barley soup. It’s basically the soup that keeps on giving as the next day (if you’ve any left) the grains will have swollen and soaked up more of the soothing liquid and transformed it into a rib sticking stew.

If you are familiar with this blog you will already know my love for using a rich, full bodied cream sherry in my dishes, it’s much cheaper than Marsala which I also adore using and kept nice and chilled in the fridge makes for a nice little cook’s tot as the soup gently simmers.

There’s a lot of snobbery about sherry, especially when it comes to cream sherries, I’ve never understood this, it’s often from people who care more about what their food looks like and who made it rather than what it actually tastes like.  To those people I say embrace ingredients, ditch the wanky food snobbery and fill your bellies with this really cheap and ace soup/stew/bowl of comfort 🙂

Ingredients:

• knob of butter
• 1 red onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp dried fennel seeds (plus extra to serve)
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 mugs of dried pearl barley
• 750ml- 1L stock approx  (I use a mixture of chicken and veg from Essential Cuisine)
• 1 tsp garlic granules
• 2 bayleaves
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 courgette, diced
• 75ml cream sherry (ish)
• celery salt and white pepper
• handful of chopped fresh carrot tops

Method:

1. Melt the butter in a big saucepan, add the carrots, onion, garlic, fennel seeds and cook for a couple of minutes whilst stirring. 
2. Add the barley, thyme, bay leaves, garlic granules and stock. Bring to a boil then simmer for about 15 minutes, add more water if needed.
3. Add the diced courgette and sherry, continue to cook until barley is cooked then season with celery salt and pepper and stir in most of the carrot tops.
4. Serve topped with a few fennel seeds and carrot leaves