240 Minute Meals

I’ve always been puzzled by cookbooks promising “Thirty-Minute Meals!”

Aren’t most meals thirty minutes? Thirty minutes at 350. Any casserole is thirty minutes. Chicken anything is thirty minutes. A whole turkey or a roast is more, but the prep time for both is two minutes to rinse and drop in the oven. (In my mind, if it’s cooking for hours I’m not bothering to pre-heat the oven. It can just pre-heat with a turkey in it.)

Beef Wellington and the like are the exception. I don’t think Beef Wellington even took me FOUR FREAKING HOURS like the Damn Soup I made tonight.

The Aramark restaraunt at work has a roasted portobello barley soup I love so much that I got the recipe from the cafe manager. Here is the timeline.

Saturday: Acquire …

1 stick butter
1 cup diced white onion
2 cups Portobello mushrooms (gilled and diced) (and not roasted at all, strangely)
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup pearled barley
1 quart of skim milk
1 quart of 2% milk
1 cup heavy cream
2 and ¼ tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 Bay leaf
2 and 1/2 cups vegetable base

Sunday. Seven o’ clock. I rinsed the barley, drained it, and followed the instructions to …

“…Place barley on a sheet pan and cook in 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside. Place butter, onions, and portobellos in a stock pot and sauté until onions are translucent. Add flour and stir to make a roux. Continue to cook on a low heat for about 10-15 minutes.”

At seven thirty I added the cream, and it thickened nicely of course. I slowly added the 2% milk and skim milk (why not just a half gallon of 1%, I wondered) and waited for it to simmer. It didn’t simmer. It didn’t thicken. I stirred it constantly, of course, since milk often scalds in that stockpot.

At eight I blew off a call from my brother since I was stirring and staring. I stirred a long time. Glaciers melted, I aged gracelessly, Zsa Zsa Gabor neared death. At eight thirty it appeared to simmer. I let it simmer and I stirred until nine-fifteen, when it appeared to thicken a bit.

Next step was “Add seasoning and bay leaves. Add vegetable base and barley. Bring to a medium low heat while still stirring frequently. Cook until barley is soft.” I checked the barley box. BARLEY TAKES FORTY-FIVE FUCKING MINUTES to cook.

I decided I would relax with a book in another room and stir it every fifteen minutes.

Ten minutes later, Gary screamed “ARE YOU TENDING TO THIS SOUP? SOMETHING IS BURNING!”

“Nothing is burning.” I came out and sighed. “I was just going to stir it.”

” I CAN SMELL IT BURNING.”

“It .Isn’t. Burning. You know, you can stir too.”

“You should appreciate my help,” he said. Then he pouted and went back to watching “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie.”

It actually had scalded just a bit, so I stood there and stirred it until ten o’clock.

You know how people get highway hypnosis from watching the dashed lines? I had stirring hypnosis. I stopped stirring, so I could admire my soup, and I saw it was completely separated. Broken. Nasty. I tasted it, and I had to search hard for a mushroom, and it tasted good, but I was really dismayed.

Then again, I had an entire pound of gouda cheese, right there, that I had shredded to sprinkle on top. Boom! In the pot! Did no good. Now it’s ten thirty.

Off to the internet for the broken sauce fix I dimly remembered, Ah, whisk in lemon juice. I have fresh squeezed lemon juice! What’s the ratio of juice to soup! Don’t care! Whisk whisk whisk! Fixes it! Amazing. Add a leftover cooked chicken breast, what could it hurt? I let it cool and packaged it up.

Taste the soup at eleven o’clock at night. It doesn’t really taste that much like mushroom soup. It’s a nice tart cheese soup, with barley. I tried to get Gary to like it, but I think he had his mouth set for mushrooms, and I think the mushrooms had worn down to mud from the relentless stirring.

Soups are always better the next day. I could add bacon. Bacon fixes everything.