Barley Eggs – Cooking Up a Story

Check out the related video story: Community Egg Co-op

This is a good recipe for leftover cooked barley. It’s simple, filling, and tasty.
I’m not going to try and measure everything out here. Just use enough barley for each person, a handful of cheese and 1 or 2 eggs per person*.

Ingredients:

Eggs*
Cooked barley tossed with salt, pepper, and butter
Swiss cheese, grated, mixed with a little grated parmesan

Instructions for making barley eggs:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the barley with most of the cheese (and salt and pepper if you like) and arrange the mixture in a glass baking dish just large enough to hold everything. Top with remaining cheese. 
Make an indentation in the mixture for each egg. Crack each egg into an indentation. Season lightly with salt and pepper. 
Cover tightly and bake at 350 degrees. for 25-30 minutes. Check eggs for doneness at about 20 minutes. When the tops of the whites are set, it’s ready. Serve hot, with coffee or tea and nice crispy bacon.

Notes  from the Cook:

To cook barley: Use pearl barley, at a ratio of 1 part barley to 3 parts water. Cook it as you would cook rice. It works fine in a rice cooker but you could do it on the stove top as well. When it’s done and still hot, toss it with salt, pepper, and butter, and maybe a handful of chopped parsley. This makes a nice accompaniment to cooked greens and probably a lot of other things. Try using it in place of brown rice. It keeps well in the fridge and the chickens adore the leftovers. 
Cooked barley is very clumpy and glutinous. It seems to me it would be a good ingredient in croquettes or veggie-burgers, as it would bind together whatever else was in the mixture. To make the barley less glumpy*, try this trick: Before cooking, rinse the grain with water. Drain, and saute in a little oil until the kernels are dry. Then cook as usual. This technique works wonders for brown rice and I’ll bet it would work with barley too, though I’ve yet to try it.