Lisa's spicy barley-vegetable squash

1 Servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
1 Carnival Squash, halved and seeded (looks like a white acorn squash, white flesh, doesn't get quite as soft when cooking, also comes in a marbled green and white variety, as well. [apparently])
½ cup Uncooked medium pearled barley
3 smalls Summer (yellow) squash, thick sliced and quartered (about 2/3 cup)
3 Ripe plum tomatoes, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
½ cup Mushrooms, thick sliced and halved
½ Vidalia onion, chopped
2 teaspoons Crushed garlic (up to 3)
½ teaspoon Fresh ground cumin
¼ teaspoon Fresh ground basil
3 teaspoons Spike (up to 4)
3 teaspoons East Indian Hot Curry (I used Williams-Sonoma, it has a really nice blend of flavors, to include the addition of cardamom and saffron) (up to 4)

Directions

Bake squash at 350 degrees, half side down in about ½ water for 30 min, until slightly tender. Bring 3 cups water to boil, add barley, cook 30-40 minutes until tender. In the meantime, chop/slice veggies, set aside. Brown onion and garlic in pan, with "trace" olive oil until onions are transparent. Add water as needed, if pan gets too dry. Add chopped yellow squash, mushrooms, and spices cook until moisture is released from mushrooms. Add tomatoes and cook for about 2-3 minutes until tomatoes are heated, but still firm.

Add prepared barley and cook till barley is reheated and coated with spices and juices.

Before filling squash cavity, dust with curry, prick with fork and rub in.

Fill with barley-vegetable mixture. Bake additional 30-40 minutes until squash is tender.

Serve with additional filling on the side or this will easily fill two squashes! (I had planed on freezing the rest, but there were *no* leftovers.) I made this up as I went along, and used a pretty heavy hand with the Spike and the curry, as I like my food with *ZIP*. I got rave reviews from the group that I tried it out on tonight.

Posted to Digest eat-lf.v096.n170 From: filmgal@... (Lisa C. Ferguson) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 00:07:52 -0400

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