Pearl Barley Vegetable Soup

This barley soup is a composite of three soups described by Marie Thérèse Hermann, all coming from the Maurienne; it is sometimes called soupe de pekett. Notice that I use a salted and cured pork since one seems to prefer it to smoked pork in Maurienne soups, another indication of the different tastes that result from the different ethnic backgrounds of the cook; Provence, which is also Ligurian, uses salt pork rather than smoked bacon.