What I'm cooking and eating

07 February 2020

Mushroom, bean and barley slow cooker casserole

I wanted a casserole I could leave in the slow cooker until I got home after grandmother duty yesterday, and this was it!  You could, of course, substitute a tin of cannellini beans for the dried ones I used, but I prefer the texture when made from scratch.

1/2 cup dried cannelini beans
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 tbs cooking oil
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 carrots
1/2 large sweet pepper
2/3 large punnet mushrooms
1 tin tomatoes
About 200 ml red wine
Seasoning to taste
1 large tbs mascarpone (optional - thicken with cornflour if preferred/vegan).

Soak the beans in boiling water to which you have added a little bicarbonate of soda for at least an hour.  Then drain and rinse, and transfer to a saucepan.  Cover with fresh water, bring to the boil, and allow to cook hard for 10 minutes.  Drain again, and transfer to the slow cooker, together with the barley.

Now in the saucepan in which you cooked the beans (to save washing up), add a sloosh of vegetable oil, then sweat the chopped carrots, onion, garlic and pepper for a few minutes.  Add this to the slow cooker, then put the chopped (not too small - I break them into quarters, and then chop the stalks separately) mushrooms into the saucepan and sweat until the juices run.  Put these in the slow cooker, along with the rest of the ingredients except the mascarpone, and cook on auto until supper time - at least 5 hours, I reckon; mine had about 8.  Then stir in the mascarpone, if using, and serve, ideally with a green vegetable.

It is lush, but not very photogenic.....


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