Beef Barley Soup

A couple of years ago, we were at an Italian restaurant in Markham, Kara Mia.  The soup of the day was Beef Barley Soup.  My husband ordered a bowl to share and really enjoyed it.  After I tried re-creating the soup at home and today I'm sharing what I came up with.  I started with a recipe from Skinnytaste and made some adjustments.  The soup we had at Kara Mia had some tomato in it so I added tomato paste.  I also added in some thyme and paprika.  This is an easy recipe to make and is very filling.  I use my pressure cooker to speed up the cooking time.  I've also used dried porcini mushrooms that add a lot of flavour.  I am not able to always find this at the grocery store, so if you don't have if, feel free to proceed without it.

Barley Risotto with Peas and Asparagus

We all loved the Spring Green Risotto I had made awhile ago.  What I didn't like was that there was not a lot of fibre in the dish.  I had read about making risotto using barley.  It sounded interesting and I always have barley around for making Haleem.  So I gave it a try and it turned out great!  I changed the method for this using a bouillon cube instead of stock.  I found this method at Aurora Importing.  Also, I didn't have all the ingredients so made some substitutions.  Either way it will turn out well.