Now, I’ve sure eaten risotto.  Good risotto.  When the Unicyclist was living in Europe for a year for his studies, we were fortunate enough to take a month to explore.  While I may not be able to recall just exactly  what all our particular priorities were for our travels, I do remember that art, architecture, and food figured pretty high on the list.  That’s how we wound up in Italy.

Enter risotto. Well, and pizza and a plethora of amazing pastas and calzones and fabulous beans, but that’s all off-topic.

Risotto.  Mmm-mm, risotto.

See that?  That’s butternut squash risotto with fried sage leaves and toasted walnuts.  This picture makes my knees weak even now.

For those of you not in the know, risotto is a dish traditionally made from Arborio rice cooked into an amazing creaminess along with a healthy dose of white wine and cheese, usually with some various and sundry flavorful ingredients of choice (think spinach, mushroom, squash, etc.) thrown in.

The story of this particular risotto goes back a ways.  About a year ago, I bought Heidi Swanson’s excellent cookbook, Super Natural Cooking.  The pictures caught my eye (the woman takes a good picture), but the mesquite cookie recipe sealed the deal.  I’d seen it on the internet months before and decided it would be a good one to try with the mesquite pods I’d gathered and milled.

Holy cookies, Batman.

I think the earth moved with those cookies.

But I digress.  What were we talking about?  Ah yes.  Risotto.  We’re getting there.

The mesquite cookie recipe made me buy the book.  In that book, Swanson has a recipe for a risotto-type dish that features barley.  Yup, barley, the stuff that seems to exist almost exclusively with limp vegetables in canned soup in this country.  It turns out that lightly pearled barley can also cook into that creamy, silky sort of dish that risotto is, but it’s hearty, chewy, and satisfying in a way uniquely its own. I have to say, barley is seriously under-utilized.  If more people knew how good it was risotto-style, there would probably be a run on it in the grocery stores.

Anywho, barley can be polished (or “pearled”) to varying degrees, removing more of the bran, germ, and endosperm, so look for barley that hasn’t been polished to death to get more nutritional bang for your buck.  (I used the pearled barley I bought at Di Bruno’s in Philadelphia.)  I’m not sure how whole barley would cook up, but I’m willing to invest the time at some point to find out.

The recipe I used is somewhere between Swanson’s recipe in Super Natural Cooking and the traditional rice-based risotto in Russ Parsons’ How to Pick a Peach.  It’s also a little bit my own, and far enough off from a traditional risotto that it doesn’t really deserve the name.  But who’s going to eat something called “Cheesy Barley Pot of Yum Yum and Deliciousosity?”  Besides me, I mean.  And probably the Unicyclist.  And maybe you.

Here’s the thing about this risotto.  Not only is it not made with rice, but it doesn’t have any wine in it.  Neither I nor the Unicyclist is known for our prodigious drinking talents, so I cringe whenever I see a tasty-looking recipe that calls for wine.  We use a half cup in the recipe, and then we just don’t get through the rest of the bottle.  And the wine mopes around, all lonely and neglected, and then I feel bad.  Plus, I’m cheap, and a lot of drinkable wine is not.  All of which means that I took a gamble and made this bad boy with a tablespoon of white wine vinegar mixed with a tablespoon of agave nectar.  Not surprisingly, it didn’t have that risotto winey taste when it was finished.  However, it was really, really good.  Together with the butternut squash, the agave and vinegar lent it a gentle sweetness which I set off with some chiltepines (little wild chiles) for a slow heat.

It was creamy, cheesy, and sweet.  It was also a brilliant orange from the squash.  Simply, it was like some sublime reincarnation of macaroni and cheese.

I’m not even kidding.

Of course, we dressed it up with the fried sage leaves (so good!), toasted walnuts, and aforementioned chiltepines, but it occured to me that on its own, it was an affordable and supremely kid-friendly meal.  Of course, you’d have to let your kids actually get a chance at it.  It really is that good.  Or at least, we thought so.  Try it yourself—see what you think.

You’ll need about an hour to make this, and you’ll wind up with enough for 4-6 servings, depending on appetites.  Also, it reheats very well on the stovetop with just a bit of water and low-medium heat.  For the vegans or vegan-curious, I encourage any interested party to try adapting it using olive oil instead of butter, unsweetened soy milk in place of the cream/milk, and some nutritional yeast to replace the Pecorino (you’ll have to play with this to find the right amount).  If you try it, let me know how it turns out!

For a healthy twist, try tossing in steamed broccoli or raw spinach at the very end.  Vegetables are your friends!

Guten Apetit!