Step by step

Cut the vegetables into cubes. Stir-fry the courgettes with a little oil and salt. Fry the aubergines after salting them and leaving them to drain some of their liquid for 20min. Keep the tomatoes, peppers and onions raw. Sauté the prawns in a pan with a little olive oil just to colour them. Cook the barley and spelt for 25 or 30 minutes in salted water, then drain and leave to cool.

Tips
Both barley and spelt are commercially available in two variants, one de-husked and one pearled. The de-husked barley or spelt should be soaked for 12 hours in cold water, then boiled in water for about an hour and then used according to instructions in the recipe that you wish to make. The pearled version does not require soaking, it’s sufficient simply to rinse and then boil it in water for a shorter time. Twenty minutes for the spelt and about twice that for barley will be enough. If you have a pressure cooker, you can further halve these times.
Trivia
With barley and spelt as the main ingredients, you can make alternative but equally delicious "cousins" of the famous risotto, known as ‘orzotto’ and ‘farrotto’. When making these alternatives we advise using pearled version of the grains, and not the de-husked types.