Shrimp Barley Risotto with Peas

I am very into healthy grains lately. Brown rice, quinoa — my husband brought home a bag of something called farro the other day. (Farro? I think he liked the bag). Whatever — it tasted great. But probably my all time favorite healthy grain is barley. I make a beef barley soup in the slow cooker that I swear I could eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The rest of the family may disagree. Well, maybe not the dog, but she did eat a piece of the driveway once, so she is not the most discriminating. (This is a true story for another time). Anyway, barley-lover that I am, I was delighted to find this easy risotto recipe that calls for barley in place of the usual arborio rice. The recipe calls for using small peeled shrimp, so I have faithfully listed that below, but in my version I used large shrimp cut up into half inch pieces and it worked just fine. And by the way, the all-time BEST place to buy shrimp? Costco. I have never had better shrimp than theirs. And their chocolate chip cookies are also to die for, and an excellent antidote to all those healthy grains I love. And so without further ado…

One last note: the dishes in the pictures were my grandmother’s, the amazing Aileen Pelletier Winkopp. I only have 4 of them, and they are so precious to me. She would have loved this whole Internet era, and I can only imagine what she would be blogging about. SOMETHING, that’s for sure.