Risotto Woes
I am always on the lookout for a new risotto recipe. Perfectly done risotto is, well, perfect, and such a warm, cozy, flavorful meal should be a staple on my menu.
Problem is, it isn't. I have a great mushroom risotto recipe that I love, and I have loved various restaurant risottos as well, but the last few risottos I've tried have left me with the blahs. So much work, so much time, so much STIRRING, for a badly textured flavorless mess?
Well, hope springs eternal, so when I saw a recipe for Risotto with Artichoke Hearts, Red Bell Pepper, and Prosciutto, it seemed like a good time to try again. I was afraid to mess with the recipe, so when I saw frozen artichoke hearts instead of canned that's what I used, which was a mistake. I also don't think I julienned the peppers fine enough.
Once everything was added, I just had to add broth. And keep adding broth. And more broth. Stirring all the time.
Very slowly the rice began to plump up. But suddenly, my allotted broth was all gone and the rice was still tooth-breakable. Luckily, I hadn't thought it sounded like enough broth and had bought an extra can. I ended up having to add a full half more broth than the recipe called for. This made me grumpy.
Plated with Parmesan I reviewed it with a resounding meh. Why bother with Prosciutto if you can't even taste it? And why frozen artichokes which add an added cooking component and seem sketchy? Now I have a box of frozen artichokes in my fridge and no idea what to do with them. The red peppers were untastable except in bites in which there was a strand, and then the flavor was overwhelming. Ditto with taste of artichokes. It was definitely not worth the time and hassle and was not a good end to my cooking week which had seemed so promising with Chicken Curry and BBQ Chicken Pizzas. Meh, and I was ready to toss the recipe forever.
And then...I came down with a sore throat that has been plaguing me badly enough to keep me home from work. And for dinner last night I had two big helpings of soft, creamy risotto with gentle flavors and soothing texture. I plan on having it for lunch soon and polishing off the leftovers which had almost ended up in the trash. Now...I reserve some judgment on this dish. It didn't work in terms of an exciting dinner, but for a cozy comfort meal, it did its job well.
The recipe from Epicurious follows:
RISOTTO WITH ARTICHOKE HEARTS, PROSCIUTTO, AND RED BELL PEPPER
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 small red bell pepper, cut into julienne strips
1/2 cup frozen artichoke hearts, cooked according to the package
directions and drained
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, minced
a 1/4-inch-thick slice of prosciutto, cut into 1/4-inch dice (about 1/4 cup)
1 cup Arborio rice (Italian short-grain rice, available at specialty foods
shops and some supermarkets)
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley leaves
white pepper to taste
In a small saucepan dilute the broth with 2 cups water, bring it to a boil, and keep the broth at a bare simmer. In a heavy saucepan cook the bell pepper and the artichoke hearts in 1 tablespoon of the oil over moderate heat, stirring, for 2 minutes and transfer them with a slotted spoon to a bowl. In the heavy pan cook the onion in the remaining 2 tablespoons oil over moderately low heat, stirring, until it is softened, stir in the prosciutto and the rice with a wooden spatula, and cook the mixture over moderate heat, stirring, for 1 minute, or until the rice is coated well with the oil. Add the wine and cook the mixture over moderately high heat, stirring, for 1 to 3 minutes, or until the wine is absorbed, add 1/2 cup of the simmering broth, and cook the mixture at a vigorous simmer, stirring, for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the liquid is absorbed. Continue adding the broth, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and letting each portion be absorbed before adding the next, until only 1/2 cup of the broth remains. Stir in the vegetables and 1/3 cup of the remaining broth and simmer the mixture, stirring, for 1 minute, or until the liquid is absorbed. (The risotto should be creamy, but the rice grains should be al dente.) If necessary add the remaining broth and cook the risotto in the same manner until the rice is al dente. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the Parmesan, the parsley, and the white pepper.
Serves 2.
Gourmet
February 1991
Return of the Indolent Hedonist
It's been so long that I've forgotten how to do this. In fact, I actually forgot my username and password there for a while, but I finally remembered.
I made some delicious food this week. And I think you all will immediately grasp why it caused a return to WRWF. May I have the honor of presenting to you: Chicken Curry.
And in fact, it was even better than it looks, which is pretty awesome if I do say so myself. And easy, too! I am tempted to make this every week, especially since it fed the two of us for nearly three dinners, but I will try to resist.
Here is the recipe from
Epicurious. I would recommend looking it up to see other users' suggestions; some of these always prove helpful:
CHICKEN CURRY WITH CASHEWS
In this recipe adapted from Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook, ground cashews thicken the curry and give it a rich, nutty flavor. Both roasted and raw cashews work well, so use whichever you prefer.
click photo to enlarge
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
2 medium onions, finely chopped (2 cups)
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
3 tablespoons curry powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 (3 1/2- to 4-lb) chicken, cut into 10 serving pieces (or just breast or boneless thighs)
1 (14.5-oz) can diced tomatoes (fire roasted?)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3/4 cup cashews (1/4 lb)
3/4 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
Accompaniment: cooked basmati or jasmine rice
Garnish: chopped fresh cilantro
Heat butter in a 5- to 6-quart wide heavy pot over moderately low heat until foam subsides, then cook onions, garlic, and ginger, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add curry powder, salt, cumin, and cayenne and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Add chicken and cook, stirring to coat, 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, including juice, and cilantro and bring to a simmer, then cover and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, about 40 minutes. (If making ahead, see cooks' note, below.)
Just before serving:
Pulse cashews in a food processor or electric coffee/spice grinder until very finely ground, then add to curry along with yogurt and simmer gently, uncovered, stirring, until sauce is thickened, about 5 minutes.
Cooks' note:
Curry, without yogurt and cashews, can be made 5 days ahead and cooled completely, uncovered, then chilled, covered. Reheat over low heat before stirring in yogurt and ground cashews.
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
Gourmet
January 2005
It may sound slightly involved but it really wasn't. We used three boneless skinless breasts and three "" thighs. Most of the cook-time is spent happily bubbling away smelling delicious, although I did turn the chicken every ten minutes with tongs to be sure that both sides got immersed in goodness. I also recommend buying some Naan to go with it. Stop&Shop carries a version in the bakery section, and we just heated it as per the instructions. I ALSO made my first rice ever (I know that's hard for you to believe) and I oversalted it but besides that it came out well. Eric did better the next night.
So there you have it. Thank you for causing me to fall in love with Indian food--it brings me so much pleasure! Happy eating, loves.
Summer Salad
Behind my house, my little container garden has been providing us with occasional yummy treats like this summer salad.
You see here lettuce of two shades, a bright green and a reddish, as well as a whole bunch of spring onions. Look at how vibrant the colors are. You can tell it's going to be healthy and tasty.
Eric and I decided to make a big summer salad for dinner, so I went out after work to cut the greens.
We cleaned and tossed the lettuce and scallions with some feta cheese and Annie's Goddess Dressing. It was a delicious summer meal, and it made us feel happy about our little garden.
Chicken and Sage Roulades
One day Fella and I were deciding what to make for dinner, and took stock of the situation: chicken, bacon, a tomato, and a sage bush. He decided he could work with that, and got out his roommate's copy of The Silver Spoon. He found a recipe for Chicken and Sage Roulades.
He pounded some chicken and topped each piece with a sage leaf.
I was painstakingly removing every bit of plastic from the cocktail toothpicks we had and soaking them in water so Eric could roll each piece up with bacon and pin it closed.
Then he cooked these in oil, turning pretty often if I remember correctly.
They looked pretty when they were done:
While they were cooking we also cooked up the tomato to make a little sauce in case it was dry. It wasn't dry, but sage doesn't give so much flavor, so I was glad about the sauce.
I was also pleased we'd have leftovers since we'd made SO much chicken. And then: We. Ate. It. All.
Corn and Red Pepper Soup
I have had only spotty Internet for the last month and a half, but maybe I'll make it up now. Then again, maybe not...I'm working at the summer program and they have utterly exhausted me. Utterly! Three weeks to go, though, and there's lots of good mixed in with the frustration, irritation, and aforementioned exhaustion. I have cooked though, so now that I have Internet again I should (theoretically) also have no excuse.
One day Eric was sick and I decided to try to be domestic and make Corn and Red Pepper Soup. I took some oil and heated it, cooked an onion until it was soft, added some garlic, and threw in 5 cups of frozen corn and 2 cups of water and brought it to a boil and cooked it for a while. (And yes, Bright, that is a Tobasco bottle in there. The recipe called for 1/4 tsp of it and I bought it specially for this with you in mind!)
Then I poured that into a blender to puree it. (This is the point at which I usually roll my eyes when reading a soup recipe and decide it sounds too difficult. It wasn't so bad though, just a little annoying.)
Then I added chicken proth and peppers and brought it to a boil.
Verdict? Watery. Shouldn't have added that first water, maybe just the chicken broth then and nothing later. It was warm and somewhat flavorful, so it wasn't a total wash, and Eric appreciated the effort. I didn't eat it all though, most of it went to waste, so maybe if I try it again I'll also cut the recipe in half. Oh well!
Moroccan Birthday food
Back from the land of the disappeared...
I have pictures of food from the past that I never posed, b/c I was out of the blogging loop. Some good traditional Jordanian food stories later, for now... my birthday.
I wanted as many people as possible to be able to come to my birthday, even the poor ones, so I decided instead of going out to make Moroccan food at my house. (Of course I got carried away and ended up spending way too much on the ingredients myself). In the beginning I was way ambitious and planned on making 3 appetizers, 3 main courses and dessert. Not very realistic, and not necessary, but I love the food so much I couldn't decide what my favorite was, so I was going to attempt to make it all. In the end due to time constraints I ended up making two appetizers and two main courses. The appetizers are easy to make at the same time b/c they're basically two variations on a theme. The first is a red pepper relish, made with roasted red peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika and chili pepper. The second is an eggplant salad, made with eggplant instead of peppers, jalapeno pepper and I can't remember what the other differences are, but many of the same ingredients. Both relishes (independent from each other) are sauteed then simmered until it becomes of propper relish consistency, and are very good with bread.
For main course I made one tagine and one couscous. For the tagine I wanted to do something typically Moroccan with meat and dried fruit, but couldn't decide b/w prunes and appricots, so i decided to combine. So it was lamb, prunes, apricots, honey, onions, and a bit of cinamon stick as the main things, with roasted sesame seeds on top.
THe couscous is usually lamb and chicken, but I made it just with chicken for those who don't like lamb. It has tons of all sorts of vegetables (pumpkin, zuccini, carrot, onion, etc), and just about every spice you can think of including tumeric, clove, cinamon, ginger.. the list goes on. Then you pour it over cous cous and top it with a mixture of carmelized onions, nuts and raisins.
The photos don't look as good as the food tasted, partly b/c of the flash and partly b/c food is still in pot and all. But trust me, it was very good. Everyone said it was good, and not just in an "I'm saying this to be nice" way, but really I think they liked it.
Tajine:
Cous Cous Mixture:
It wouldn't be me cooking if I didn't leave a mess in the kitchen:
Even though I didn't end up having time to make baklava for dessert, it was ok, b/c my friend Emad brought a cake that he made. Emad is a very good person to have as a friend b/c he is a PASTRY CHEF. Needless to say cake was very good.
Me and some guests at my (old, no longer live there) apartment:
wish y'all could have been there!
greetings, dahlingks
...so it's been awhile since my last post. I am shifting blame to China and CTY, which have been surprisingly time consuming.
Many golden cookie points to Christine however, for beautifully picking up the slack meanwhile. Auxiliary credit to fella.
On the Bright side of things, I have so much to blog about on wrwf that I don't even know where to begin.
Now, would y'all out there prefer photo blogging or text blogging about Chinese food? Because I don't have me photos here at Stanford so in the case of photo blogging I'll have to wait till I return in August. What say you?
Baking Powder Biscuits
You've probably noticed that Fella feeds me extremely well. These biscuits are a classic from his Gram, which he made while I snoozed in the early hours of morning. (By early hours, I clearly mean that it was before ten a.m., which is really the first hour I want to open my eyes or talk to anyone on the weekend. Or ever, for that matter, but I don't usually get a choice.) I've had these before and they're great to make little lunch sandwiches, as dinner rolls, or in this instance, as breakfast. He was also nice enough to type up the recipe.
In a bowl, sift together 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, 3 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. Cut in 1/3 cup shortening till like coarse crumbs. Make a well; add 3/4 cup of milk, all at once. Stir quickly with a fork just until the dough follows the fork around the bowl. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface (dough should be soft). Knead the dough gently 10-12 strokes. Roll or pat dough 1/2 inch thick. Dip 2-1/2 inch biscuit cutter (or whatever size you have!) into flour; cut dough straight down. Bake on an ungreased baking sheet at 450 degrees for about 12 minutes.
Of course, I wasn't there for the cooking part, but it doesn't sound too difficult, right? I want to try making these on my own sometime.
There are lots of things you can do to these biscuits since they're wonderful, but I think we picked the absolute best: slathering them with butter and honey. If this doesn't look divine to you, you're out of your mind. Flaky biscuits, sweet butter and honey...dessert for breakfast!
Summer Salad
Hopefully highlighted often this summer will be food made with the assistance of the garden I'm growing outside. It's nothing too fancy, but it is exciting, since we started everything from seed. It's pouring rain right now and some of my plants have floated away, but I'll share pictures when I have them. We broke in the garden by having a pre-dinner fresh salad over Memorial Day.
The lettuce is from Eric's garden, the scallions from mine, and the tomatoes purchased because we don't have any tomatoes yet. Hey, can't have it all, right? We put a little Annie's Natural Goddess dressing on it and loved every bite. Yay for summer and gardens!
Mother's Day
Poor little abandoned bloggy. It's the end of the year, school is very busy, and most of the people who read and comment are prancing about China! Nevertheless, time to get back to it.
On Mother's Day we went to the Frick Museum in the city and had a lot of fun. The paintings were amazing and we saw an interesting Moya exhibit. There was a Monet I really liked, and a Vermeer that showed the wife's pearl earrings (if you read "Girl With a Pearl Earring" you understand why that's so cool), the Gilbert Stuart of George Washington, two Whistler's of women that I adored, a Hogarth of Miss Mary Edwards that had a very interesting backstory (her husband was a gambling jerk so she had her child declared a bastard to save her fortune from him), a Romney of Lady Hamilton also most interesting for its backstory (along the lines of she was beautiful and one guy's mistress, but he tired of her and gave her away as a surprise present to his uncle, and he adored her and married her but she fell in love with some other guy, very soap opera-ey), and some stunning Turner's, of seas and ships and harbors. I'd never heard of Corot but I liked his paintings very much, and a Holbein painting of Sir Thomas More was pretty stunning. Yes, I'm aware this is a food blog, but enjoy a little cult-chah, o te? ;-)
Anywho...we also got Mom a fondue pot, which we decided to break in after brunch the next day. (Everyone was stuffed, but we persevered.) While she was at church I chopped up some fine quality bittersweet chocolate bars:
Then heated cream in a pot until very hot, added the chocolate, a tbsp of cognac, and whisked. End product was very rich and very yummy. Served with brownies, pretzels, bananas, and various other fruits.
We actually had a hit and Mom had a happy weekend. Good for everybody!
Pasta Yumminess
We miss Bright, who's off playing in China, and are already missing Annie, who's soon to follow. Take lots of pictures, ladies, I expect a feature on real Asian cuisine!
This is what I do for dinner any night I have a few ingredients around and am too lazy to try something new. It's also the first meal Fella ever made me, before we were dating, and it sold me.
I saute up some onions...
and when they're soft, toss in some tomatoes.
(Cherry, grape, campari, full size--all good, sliced or whole, cooked until mushy and the skins are sliding off.)
That's really it!
But the beauty here is how it can be dressed up or dressed down. Chop some fresh basil and sprinkle on top, and it's a light, flavorful meal. Out of tomatoes? Just put some extra butter in there. Have wine in the fridge? Deglaze with it and let everything simmer down, getting the tomatoes all soft. Have chicken? Toss it in. I had some blue cheese crumbles the other day, so they went in when it was all being tossed together, and got melted and gooey and oh so flavorful. Ditto for feta. One day when I was craving spice but felt too poor for Indian food, I shook in a bunch of red pepper flakes, which definitely added some heat! Of course, when I have cream, I add a few tablespoons to turn it delightfully sinful. (Although sometimes it curdles a little, maybe because I haven't let the wine boil off all the way? It's still edible, just not as good.) Endless variations, always yummy, I could make this every day.
Mitsuwa Market
Thought I'd post just one more before the big heave-ho to Cathay. About a month ago, Madame S of the library and I visited Mitsuwa market, a nifty little Japanese indoor shopping mall/strip market of sorts in Costa Mesa. We browsed the supermarket, bought some ice cream mochi (cappuchino!), and had lunch from one of the little restaurants in the food court. It was fun and educational to study the plastic displays of food, accurate down to the little kernels o'corn. Mysteriously, I think one of the restaurants served Italian food, but every other place served ramen and other fast food type Asian tasties.
Preparing for the feast.
I ordered some sort of plain no-meat curry, soba, and salad with ginger dressing. It was quite tasy; I didn't know that, also, the Japanese are big on potato salad. Huh.
S had the potato salad and pork katsu and is seen here chomping on some sort of unidentified yellow object. God bless all things breaded!
I have no idea what I was doing here. I look ridiculous. In reality, I am not really that stumpy. I hope.We left: ecstatic!
Veggie curry stirfry explosion.
I was inspired by all the delicious food posts going on here lately, so I thought for my inaugural post I would share with y'all a curry dish I made last week. It was inspired by the "Tofu in Curry-Coconut Sauce" recipe in Deborah Madison's
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, but with some twists. It also featured the maiden voyage of the new wok my mom got me for my birthday!
First, the lovely ingredients:
The ingredients pictured above are, clockwise from left: grapeseed oil, minced fresh cilantro, rice, vegetable broth, coconut milk, chopped fresh basil, and one chopped onion. Other ingredients not pictured: chopped Chinese-style extra-firm tofu, sliced and salted eggplant, two minced serrano peppers, two chopped bell peppers, and some rough-chopped bok choy.
After my sous-chef prepared all the ingredients, the first step was to make what Ms. Madison refers to as "golden tofu". This just means frying well drained, chopped-up tofu in some oil so that it becomes a nice golden color on either side. She says to use peanut oil but we didn't have any on hand so I used grapeseed oil instead. Voila:
Next, we stirfried all the veggies (except the bok choy) in grapeseed oil for a minute or two:
It turned out that we didn't have any Thai curry paste or powder about, so, being too lazy to run down the street to the local Thai market, we made do with the Trader Joe's Indian curry powder. Because I believe in fusion cuisine. After the veggies were looking tender, we added the curry powder, coconut milk, veggie stock, and tofu. This was mixed about for a while, and then the bok choy and herbs were added and cooked until the bok choy was good and burstingly green. We certainly didn't plate it in any fancy fashion (particularly as we don't own any serving dishes) so I will show it to you in the glorious context of my new wok:
It was devoured with rice and was delicious! And that is the story of my debut post on WRWF. Next, a long-overdue post on Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go!
Annie and Banoffee Weekend
Guess who came to visit??
Yes, ladies and gents, Annie came to CT, and it was good. Of course, I fed her, and you get to hear all about it. The first thing we ate was pasta. I didn't know at the time that Annie's segued into eating some meat, so I prepped for a veggie dinner. Annie and I peeled 16 garlic cloves while Fella cut cherry tomatoes, and we put them in a pan and drizzled with olive oil and red pepper flakes. I should have taken more pictures of this, but I only managed to get one after it was done.
This was SPICY. And delicious! I ate three bowlfuls and then had it as leftovers for the next three nights. Pre-Ireland it would have been too spicy for me, but now I just had lots of water and bread and dealt with it. And it was good.
For dessert...oh for dessert...I decided to hark back to Ireland and celebrate my first Irish roomie visit with a pie.
Banoffee Pie, to be exact.
First, I slaved over a hot stove for hours to make the graham cracker crust.
Then I poured 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk into a glass pan which I placed into a waterbath and put in the oven. (Fuzzy pic.)
And then I waited. And waited. And finally made enough distressed noises about the fact that the milk wasn't turning into toffee that Fella came over to look, checked the recipe, and gently informed me that I was supposed to tent foil over the milk before putting it in the bath. Oops. I was sad, he fixed it, and then we waited. And waited. And it STILL didn't look even a little like toffee, so he did an Internet search to find out if other people had had the same problem. They had, because the temperature needed to be almost 100 degrees higher in order to work, but the recipe had gotten it wrong.
So we cranked up the heat, and waited, and then Annie arrived. I had hoped to present her with a freshly baked banoffee, but instead she got to help assemble the pie.
We spread the toffee, and as you can see from the background, it actually looks like toffee.
(I can't see what Annie wrote on her hand, can you?)
Annie expertly chopped bananas to layer over the toffee.
Annie and I both sliced bananas, and in this picture, were both making funny faces too.
Oh yeah, and there was some wine consumption as well. A nice white and a nice Chianti, both yummy!
So as you know, we have the graham cracker layer, then a toffee layer, bananas, toffee, bananas.
Toffee:
Banana:
Here's Fella whipping cream and making a funny (and somewhat scary) face:
And the finished pie looked so wonderful. It brought back lovely memories of sitting huddled in my D sweatshirt, freezing, hearing the Simpsons and Wildboyz in the background, and lamenting about Roland, my package frozen in Irish bureaucracy, and the bus system as well. And it made me remember digging into those delicious pies with a spoon (which Annie and I did for breakfast the next morning as well.
The cream was light and fluffy, the toffee substantial and textured, and the bananas fresh. I was VERY pleased with myself. If, like Fella, you don't like bananas, then the effort is wasted, but if you DO enjoy the wonderful goodness, this is well worth the effort.
The slice view.
We ate, drank, and were merry, and it was SO great to have Annie come for a visit! Love!
Spending
A novel by Mary Gordon.
I picked out
Spending from a guidebook for book clubs; it was marked as "erotic fiction." Ooooo. But it's not porn; it's not (I bet) even as graphic as Clan of the Cave Bear.
What I enjoyed about it was how the language was so lovingly rendered:
Limp, there's something of the abashed little animal about it, peering out of the brush, blinking in the light. Then, suddenly, something much more like a divining rod, or a branch in the wind, or a long-legged bird. There's no way of painting the transformation. No middle ground that represents a change, in the way that the head of Vermeer's girl in a turban gives at once the impression of turning toward the viewer and turning away. No way to express the delight a lover feels when it's in her hand or mouth: proof positive. Delight, like the expression on the face of the Vermeer girl looking at her strand of pearls. And disappointment when it goes down. The pearls purloined. More and more I began to think of what an unusual thing it is for a woman to be looking at a man's body.
Spending comes from the pov of Monica Szabo, a modestly successful painter, who encounters a man willing to play as her muse--to do what female muses have historically done--provide money, time, space, sex, and inspiration. But what happens when her lover becomes financially dependent on her? What does this mean for their sex life? Gender, power, money, sex, art--Gordon knits these things together with surprising deftness and skill.
Enjoyed it! Recommend it.
