This is a nice dish for the transition from summer to autumn. You can use some of the last tomatoes and peppers from the garden, but it also has the nutty, chewy fall flavor of barley. It’s tasty, fairly quick, and the kind of dish that begs for adding your own twists. It was great just like this, but next time I might add garlic and a bit of cumin. The original recipe doesn’t call for avocados, but we had two beauties on the counter, so in they went. We serve this for a main dish but it also makes a great side.
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| I took the picture before deciding to add another tomato and scallion |
2 ½ cups water
⅔ cup pearl barley, rinsed and drained
1 teaspoon salt
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 bell pepper, any color, seeded and chopped
2 small tomatoes (I threw in a 3rd)
2 cups frozen corn, thawed (I only had
1 cup)
2 scallions, trimmed and sliced, white
part only (I added a 3rd)
2 avocados, cubed
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and black pepper
4 ounces shredded pepper Jack cheese (I
just shredded and didn’t measure)
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| Aren't these beautiful avocados? |
To make:
In a medium saucepan, bring water to
boil. Add barley and 1 teaspoon salt. Reduce heat, cover, and about simmer 30
minutes, until barley is tender. Drain well.
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| Rinse your barley before cooking |
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| Rinse and drain black beans |
In a large bowl, combine barley, beans,
bell pepper, tomatoes, corn, scallions, oregano, basil, avocados, lime juice,
and shredded cheese. Stir. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
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| Add corn and seasonings to beans |
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| Add everything else, stir, and serve |
Barley is good for you! Here are a
couple of other salads that include barley from our Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen
archives. Barley,
Red Pepper, and Corn Salad from Krista Davis, and Barley
and Cuban Black Bean Salad from Linda Wiken.
After 93 well-lived years, Violet MacAskill is ready to simplify her life. Her eccentric solution? She’ll throw a decanting and decluttering party at her family home—a Scottish Baronial manor near the seaside town of Inversgail, Scotland. Violet sets aside everything she wants or needs, then she invites her many friends in to sip sherry and help themselves to whatever they want from all that’s left.
Janet Marsh and Christine Robertson,
two of the women who own Yon Bonnie Books in Inversgail, enjoy themselves at
the party. Not everyone who attends has a good time, though. Wendy Erskine,
director of the Inversgail museum, is found dead, and rumors swirl about food
poisoning from a local food truck. Then Violet tells Constable Hobbs that a tin
of rat poison is missing. And when Hobbs’ own grandmother comes under suspicion
for murder, he enlists the women from Yon Bonnie Books, and the race is on to find
the murderer.
But where do they begin? Are there clues in the “Shocking Stockings” exhibit at the museum? Will the antique scrapbook pasted full of trivia about arsenic and bygone poisoners offer a solution? Or does the answer lie closer to home—is one of Violet’s friends truly toxic? Poisonous games are afoot in Inversgail and the women of Yon Bonnie Books are playing to win.
The Boston
Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of
the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the
Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s
Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred
Hitchcock Mystery Magazine since 1990 and she’s a winner of the Sherwood
Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect
with her on Twitter or Instagram.
