split pea & barley soup

After making a delicious split pea and barley soup in my food science lab last Wednesday, I decided to recreate it at home, doubling the recipe so we could have some leftovers to reheat for a quick meal. The soup takes about 2 hours total to make, but most of the work is accomplished in the first half hour. Dicing carrots, celery, an onion, part of a red pepper and mincing garlic are time consuming. Here's a paraphrase of the recipe (you can't really go wrong, so experiment and enjoy your own version):

heat veggie oil in a large pot until shiny, add the veggies, onion and garlic at medium heat until the onions become "glassy" (about 10 min). Then add split peas and barley (ratio of 2:1), salt and about six times the amount of water as split peas (so one cup split peas means 1/2 cups barley, 6 cups water, 1.5 tsp salt). Bring this to a boil then cover and simmer for at least one hr. I recommend waiting until the split peas have essentially disintegrated. If you want a thicker soup, remove the lid and continue cooking; the water will evaporate. Add salt, pepper and other herbs to taste (I liked adding rosemary from the plant I then managed to kill--not enough water...oops!) and...Enjoy! It's perefct for the cold weather that has now arrived.

(I apologize for the lousy picture; I forgot to photograph the soup before storing the leftovers)