PICKLE SOUP

This started as a hearty vegetable and barley soup, the kind that makes a one-dish meal.

It evolved in a new direction when I added mushrooms and lots of fresh dill. At the end, I decided to add finely diced dill pickles. It was just the thing - the alchemy worked, and I had a new winter soup, more tangy and interesting than its predecessor.

3/4 cup pearl barley
1 tsp. salt, more to taste
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 1/2 cups diced leeks (white and light green only)
1 lb. mushrooms - shiitake, cremini, or others
2 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of thyme
8 oz. Yukon gold or yellow Finn potatoes
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced celery
1 medium turnip, peeled and diced
1/2 lb. Swiss chard
1/2 small head Savoy cabbage
1 medium bell pepper, cored and diced
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 cup finely diced dill pickles
4 cups vegetable broth, more as needed

Rinse the barley, put it in a pot with two quarts of water and a teaspoon of salt, and simmer it for about 45 minutes; it should be tender but chewy.

Meanwhile, heat a tablespoon of the olive oil in a non-stick pan and add the chopped onion. Lower the heat to medium and cook the onions, stirring occasionally, for ten minutes. Add the chopped leeks and continue cooking the same way for about another ten minutes, or until the onions and leeks are soft and beginning to color.

While the onions are browning, wash and dice or chop the mushrooms. In another non-stick pan, heat the remaining oil, and stir the garlic in it over high heat for about a minute. Add the mushrooms, a dash of salt and the thyme, and sauté the mushrooms until their excess liquid cooks away and they are sizzling.

In your largest soup pot (you will need a 6 quart capacity for this), combine a quart of water with the potatoes, carrots, celery and turnip. Add a dash of salt, and simmer the vegetables for about fifteen minutes.

While the root vegetables are cooking, wash the chard, remove the tough stems, and chop the leaves coarsely. Shred the savoy cabbage into 1/2" strips.

Now it's time to put it all together. Add the cooked barley and its liquid to the root vegetables. Add the sautéed onions and leeks, and the sautéed mushrooms, deglazing the pans with a bit of water. Stir in the chard, the cabbage, the bell pepper, the dill and the parsley. Pour in the vegetable broth. Simmer everything together for ten minutes, then add the finely diced pickles, and simmer for at least ten minutes more.

Taste the soup, and adjust the seasoning with more salt, and some fresh ground pepper. The pickles become milder over time, releasing their acidity into the soup as they cook, so if you want a more subtle flavor, simmer the soup a little longer.

This is a big pot of soup. You will have about ten meal-sized servings, or more if the soup is part of a larger menu. I like to make this when I'm going to have a lot of people around, or else I freeze part of it for another time.