Main Ingredients:

See below ingredients and instructions of the recipe

Cooking Preparation of the Recipe:

2 oz Pot barley
2 1/2 pt Good quality chicken stock
1 Lemon
1 Fat garlic clove
2 Leeks
1/4 lb Mushrooms
2 Chicken livers, if available
Cold cooked chicken meat *
5 tb Coarsley chopped parsley
1 sm Knob butter

*Note: The recipe calls for 1-2 chicken livers, if available, and
"shreds of cold cooked chicken meat, if available".

Grate the zest of the lemon very finely and reserve it. Put the
barley into a soup pan, add 1 tablespoon lemon juice and cold chicken
stock. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 40 minutes until
the barley is tender with just a hint of bite to the centre of the
grain. Add the chicken meat, if used, to the pan towards the end of
this time to heat it through gently but thoroughly.

When the barley is nearly ready, slice the mushrooms thickly, and
slice the leeks (tender green parts as well as the white) very thinly
indeed so that the leaves fall into ribbony shreds. Cut the chicken
livers, if available, into 2 to 3 pieces and saute them briefly in
the butter until crusty on the outside but still pink within. Fry the
mushrooms in the fat remaining in the pan then reduce the heat and
cook the leeks gently for 2 to 3 minutes, just shaking occasionally.
Then add contents of the frying pan to the soup pan. Add the
mushrooms and check seasoning.

Put the chicken livers into a warmed soup tureen and crush with a
fork to make a coarse paste. Add the finely chopped garlic, the
lemon zest and most of the parsley. Pour on the piping hot soup, stir
to mix well, sprinkle the rest of the parsley on top and serve.

Note: If the soup is not served straight away, but allowed to get
cold, the barley will go on swelling and softening; when reaheated
the dish then seems more like a stew than a soup. I like it this way
but you may prefer to lift out the grain and cool it down separately
from the rest of the soup.

Source: Philippa Davenport in "Country Living" (British), February
1988. Typed for you by Karen Mintzias

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