Rachel Roddy’s recipe for roast summer vegetable, herb and pearl barley salad | A kitchen in Rome

Not many salads come with a byproduct that can be transformed into a delicious cooling drink

It is the time of year when the fruit syrups get moved to a more accessible shelf at our local supermarket. They have a range of eight to 10 flavours, but the two that dominate are mint and orzata, luminous green and cloudy white syrups respectively, that need diluting with fizzy water and maybe topping up with ice. I have mentioned orzata here before, how popular it is in Italy and how the name means a drink made from orzo (barley), and also how at some point the barley was replaced by almonds; then, at another point, the almonds were replaced by deacidified benzoin, which is a balsamic resin obtained from trees of the genus Styrax from south-east Asia. Deacidified benzoin is actually delicious and I become dependent on orzata at this time of year, and the sound of the ice clanking against the side of the glass as I walk my cold, cloudy drink back to my hot desk is the sound of summer.

However, I have always wondered what orzata made with orzo is like. And finally an opportunity presented itself when, having lifted cooked barley out of the pan with a slotted spoon, I was left with a pan of cloudy water at the back of the stove. I would have thrown it away, if I hadn’t had a glass of orzata on the go. Straight from the pan, the barley water tasted like milk diluted with water, thin porridge and a mouthful of soapy bath water. Undeterred, I consulted Mrs Beeton, who has it in her cooking for invalids section and suggests adding just lemon zest. Then I looked at the ancient Roman guide Apicius, who suggests boiling it with prosciutto and adding pepper. I found my answer on an Italian website called Agrodolce and drained the water, strained it, sweetened it with caster sugar, added a strip of lemon zest, then, for an aesthetic transformation, poured the whole, cloudy lot into an Ikea glass bottle with a stopper. A few hours later, I mixed 50% barley water with 50% fizzy water and added ice and, I have to say, it was fantastic. Yes, ever so slightly soapy still and reminiscent of porridge, but above all like barley, barley sugar and lemon drops, soft, cold and clinking.