Getting Tibetan With Beef And Purple Barley Soup

• Mike Sula
• Hazzard Free Farms’ purple barley

Last month when I was going on about the panoply of locally produced foods at Ravenswood’s River Valley Farmer’s Table, I neglected to mention the small stock of obscure grains grown by Hazzard Free Farm in Pecatonica, near Rockford. Hazzard grows a bunch of cool-looking heirloom grains, many sporting unusual colors like Floriani Red Flint cornmeal and Hopi Blue polenta, but what caught my eye was a bag of dusty-looking whole-grain Tibetan purple barley. Besides looking cool (once washed), this is hull-less barley as opposed to pearled, which means it still has its nutritious bran, but also means it takes a long time to cook. I soaked it overnight before I made beef and barley soup, then cooked it for a whole day without breaking down the grains. They were nice, though, chewy and nutty and a bit like wheat berries, which the package says they make a good substitute for in salads. I say, eat some purple barley.