Ritschert (Carinthian Barley and Smoked Pork Stew)

The first time I ate Ritschert was on one of those childhood trips to Austria with Gretel and my grandmother Eva. We'd driven south from Salzburg into Carinthia, past the Tauern mountains and down into the lake country where the air is different, softer somehow. At a Gasthaus somewhere near Villach, Gretel ordered for the table. She always ordered for the table. A deep bowl arrived, thick and pale brown, smoky from the pork, with grains of barley swollen so fat they were almost translucent. I don't remember the name of the Gasthaus. I remember the stew.

Ritschert is the oldest food I cook. Not the oldest recipe in my notebook, but the oldest kind of cooking: grain, beans, and smoked meat, simmered in one pot until everything becomes more than the sum of its parts. Carinthians have been making this since the Middle Ages, and probably longer than that. It's peasant food in the best sense. Cheap ingredients, slow time, big reward. The pearl barley does most of the work, swelling and releasing starch until the broth thickens into something you can nearly stand a spoon in. The Selchfleisch, that gorgeous Austrian smoked pork, gives the whole pot its backbone.

Gretel always said you can tell the character of a regional kitchen by its simplest dish. Ritschert is Carinthia's answer. No cream sauces, no pastry, no Konditorei flourishes. Just a heavy pot, a few honest ingredients, and enough patience to let them find each other. I put it on the menu at my restaurant every autumn, and it doesn't come off until spring. Some of my regulars would riot if it did.