"barley" news and stories

A stalk of barley. Photo courtesy of Pardesi*/Flickr

• Barley inspires delicious obsessions, and a recipe for Barley with Walnuts and Roasted Spring Vegetables.
• Lies in advertising: Anti-microbials are slipping into our antibiotic-free meat.
• Coffee can kick food, like sleepy humans, into high gear. You can braise, rub and sauce with it -- and that's just for starters.
• Ducca's gets a new executive chef in Erica Holland-Toll, previously of Lark Creek Inn.
• A whole lot of love for the hot eateries and bars of San Francisco: Fly Bar gets a second location on Divisadero; Pleasant Hill's Sichuan Fortune House offers a plentiful menu of good eats; Outerlands dishes great food if you get there before it runs out; Foreign Cinema offers family fare with foreign flicks; Town Hall still rocks with notable service and Southern flavor; and Michelle Mah goes European with Midi.
  

Inspired by fellow Slashfoodie Monika Bartyzel's recent post on using ingredients we already have, I decided to cook up a few of the many grains I've hoarded over the past few months...okay, more than just a few months. There's no other kind of food I buy more compulsively. Stone-ground grits, hard red wheat flour, orzo, coarse polenta, pasta in a variety of shapes, fregola sarda - shall I go on?

The starch closest to my heart, though, may be jasmine brown rice. I first learned of this lovely product during a charmed encounter at Bangkok Center Grocery, a jewel box of Thai ingredients in Manhattan's Chinatown. Another customer, a Thai lady, had taken an interest in me because she saw that I was buying ingredients to make my own curry paste and, after I had paid, she, along with her equally winsome Chinese friend, urged me to buy a shrinkwrapped bag of jasmine brown rice imported from Thailand. The price of the rice alone did not meet the credit card minimum, and I had no cash, but the store owner saw my distress at turning down the ladies' recommendation, and he let me take the rice on credit.

"Pay next time," he said. In Manhattan. And I a first-time customer. I thought that only happened to valued clients in tiny towns.

I gave away most of my foodstuffs when I moved from Atlanta to New York, but I did transport a half-empty bag of jasmine brown rice (pictured). Like regular jasmine rice, it cooks up to be fragrant and fluffy, nutty and chewy - perhaps even nuttier and chewier due to its being brown. The method for and a picture of my pilaf - not very Thai at all, mind you - follows the jump.

It's not as cool a it sounds. They won't be brewing the beer in space, or even using ingredients grown on space. Sapporo brewers are going to use barley grown (on earth) from seeds that spent time on the International Space Station.

The Japanese beer company said they expect to get about 100 bottles from this batch, but they won't sell it. I say, why even advertise that? Why get our hopes up in the first place? Even if it wasn't brewed in space, it's still pretty neat. Maybe this will lead to bigger batches, though, that Sapporo actually will sell. All I know is that I want space beer.

[Via RealBeer]

Move over Taco Town. The good folks at at Australia's Vomino's Pizza have cooked up a fast-food monstrosity that rivals the pizza-crepe-taco-pancake-chili bag. The mindboggling commercial desrcibes the Batterered Sav Supreme Pizza as the the ultimate fast-food pizza. This awesome new menu item was designed to appeal to customers who can't get enough of Vomino's Meat Lover's Pizza. Vomino's artery-clogging new pie is topped with a layer of saveloy's, or spicy red pork sausages, kranskies, another type of Australian sausage, nuggets and chiko rolls. As far as I can tell, the Chiko roll is an Aussie taquito filled with mutton, celery, cabbage, barley rice and carrot. Before I forget the whole affair is also loaded with "anything else left unsold from a milk bar bain marie, topped off with our fizzy cola sauce." All this writing has made me hungry. Since there's no Vomino's in the States, I'll be settling for Taco Bell.

[via: SupersizedMeals]

Unfortunately for those who are gluten-intolerant, the standards for gluten-free foods aren't exactly standard, so it can be risky when buying many foods, especially processed foods, at the store. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in charge of regulating the nutritional information that gets put on food labels and they have drafted a proposal that would set a standard definition for the term "gluten free" and set standards for food producers to follow to meet it.

"Currently there is neither a regulatory definition of the term 'gluten free,' nor is there agreement among manufacturers or consumers as to what this term means," said the FDA. Their new rules state that "gluten free" foods must not have any type of wheat, rye or barley, including hybrid grains that use them. They allow for the use of such grains if the gluten is completely removed before processing, however. The terms that will be imposed on those who violate the new guidelines, assuming that they are accepted, has yet to be determined. The FDA will take comments on the proposal (PDF) for several weeks before revising it and making their final ruling.

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