Risotto

Not only am I shamed by the fact that Susan has submitted the last 54 entries to the blog, but on my recent visit to Genevieve in Arezzo she made a perfectly good risotto in what is certainly one of the ten worst-equipped kitchens in the industrialized world.  Non-stick pans?  Nope.  Measuring cups?  Well...she does have some dog food scoops, calibrated in some units unknown to me.  And the amount of fiddling required to have her stove actually operate?  And yet she slapped together a rib-sticking risotto that took care of me straight through to the undistinguished breakfast I had the next morning at the Florence airport.

So the temptation is to just list a bunch of ingredients with no quantities, and say "You work it out; Genevieve did".  But then I am reminded of the legendary version of Paul's Favorite that Paul put together with no quantities, and I think maybe it would be best to at least put some guidance in.

But don't be confused.  Risotto is one of the most flexible dishes you can make.  Since you just keep adding broth or water until it's done, there's none of this "exactly 2 cups...don't lift the lid" stuff that haunts most rice recipes.  The only rigid requirement is: stir it like a mofo, start to finish.  I know, I know, there are 29,000 "no stir risotto" recipes on the Internet.  Ignore those people, they are making rice.

The reason I haven't put this recipe up so far is that while you can make just plain risotto, you generally don't. You make chicken risotto, or asparagus risotto, or skate liver risotto (Just kidding. No clue whether skates have livers.)  But all these turn out to be mostly covered by a recipe for Stuff Risotto that involves one extra instruction: "Dump Stuff in".  I'll indicate a couple below à la Mark Bittman, but they're just there to get you thinking.

Another reason I haven't posted it is the fact that it is not a traditional Durst Pinette family favorite, served to the kids since childhood.  It was still a new recipe to me when I pulled it out of...um, thin air... one recent Christmas.  And I am still contending with the Maman's concepts of when it's done.  (More about that later.)  But given that this blog has been entirely overtaken with Susan's recipes from twenty minutes ago, I probably shouldn't worry about it.

OK, here we go:

1-4 tbsp. butter, olive oil, or whatever (let's say you should probably use some kind of fat)
1/2 - 1 onion
1 cup arborio or carnaroli rice (see warning below)
1/2 cup white wine
3-6 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock (whatever that is), or water
Another tablespoon or two of butter
1/4 cup Parmigiano or other grating cheese

Warning on the rice: you see boxes in grocery stores that say "Risotto", but which turn out to be more than just rice; they're some prefab version of the whole thing, and in general there's way too much salt and a whole pile of freeze-dried miscellany.  If you can throw all that stuff out, the rice might be acceptable.  But honestly, in that case, maybe try it with just regular rice.  Or maybe just throw the towel in and make regular rice.  No shame in that.

Warning on the cheese: if you use honest-to-God Parmigiano-Reggiano, you'll get little stringy filaments of cheese that pull loose from the rest in serving or picking up a forkful, and wow, that is great.  But if you use Asiago or Pecorino or Grana Padano or Parminder Nagra, it'll still taste fine.  There will just be slight differences in texture.

So get your stock or water simmering on a back burner.  I don't understand why, but whatever amount you choose, it won't be enough.  You'll be at the end and running out of it just when you want one more ladleful.  Add some water as it starts getting low.

Plop in the fat.  I've used as little as 1 tablespoon for a cup of rice, and Giulano Bugialli wants you to use 4, plus one of olive oil.  Make it relate to the amount of rice.

Once the fat is hot, saute the onions for a while.  Don't brown them, but they should at least lose much of their crunch.  Then stir in the rice.  1/4 cup makes a nice personal risotto, and when I use the big risotto pan at home, I often use 2 cups.  Much more than that, you're kind of running a restaurant, why are you paying any attention to this blog?  Stir it and cook it at least until everything's mixed well, but for best results, you want the rice kind of translucent and just about to start browning.  Browned is bad, but "toasty" is OK.

Then put the wine in.  This is the only cold liquid you'll put in.  And while it's optional, it contributes a lot to the character of a risotto.  Obviously, adjust the amount depending on how much rice.  Stir until there's very little liquid left.

At this point you put a ladleful (say, 1/2 cup) of simmering broth in at a time, and stir it until the liquid's mostly gone and the increasingly creamy bit in the bottom of the pan leaves tracks when you stir it.  Then another ladleful.  And another.  So the long day wears on.

At some point you'll think you're done.  Taste the rice.  In fact, start tasting it at like ten minutes; there will be a chalkiness to the rice, and you want to keep adding liquid and stirring until that's totally gone.  At that point it's a matter of taste.  Some recipes want you to stop while there's still a very chewy center to the rice kernels, and at the other extreme you've essentially made congee.  The Maman likes it at that extreme; though I'll never really know, since I have yet to make a risotto where she doesn't say "I would have liked it cooked a little more".

Last, mix in the cheese, and maybe a final bit of butter.  Again, quantities to taste.  None is one extreme; Cheese Risotto is the other.

A couple of examples of Stuff Risotto:

Mushroom Risotto:

Saute some mushrooms.  Make them interesting for best results: trumpets, or chanterelles, morels, which are great.  But don't combine forty mushrooms.  Pick one, though maybe add in some dried porcini.  Soaked in very hot water for fifteen or twenty minutes, then chopped fine (that was all we had at Genevieve's).  Strain the water (cheesecloth if you've got it), and use it as some of the risotto liquid.  Dump the mushrooms in just before the final cheese and/or butter.

Shrimp Risotto:

Dump shrimp in at the last minute.  If you're lucky enough to get fresh unshelled shrimp -- it's still fine with Trader Joe Frozen Shrimp -- take off the shells first and make a broth from the shells (boil 'em for fifteen or twenty minutes, onions, celery optional).  Then use that broth as the liquid.

Final note: Risotto à la Milanese is plain risotto with saffron steeped in the broth.  It's yellow!

Bagels!

So for the first year and a half that I lived there, I was thoroughly convinced that New Jersey was the land of a thousand bagel snobs and no good bagels.  It was October of my second year when I finally got someone to take me to a bagel shop where they declared the bagels to be "good."  And I've gotta admit, there's a difference.  I'm told (by bagel snobs) that to make good bagels, you need really hard water.  Here in Tucson you could basically stand a spoon in the water, so it seemed like bagels were worth a shot.  I'd be interested to hear how this recipe comes out elsewhere.  I suspect that the hard water thing is probably a myth, but I haven't put any effort into testing this hypothesis.

Basic Recipe

2 cups water
1 package yeast
1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 tsp salt
6-8 cups flour

Chocolate Chip Bagels

Cut salt to 1/2 tsp
1 package mini semisweet chocolate chips
2 tbsp cocoa powder
5 tbsp sugar

Pumpkin Bagels

Cut salt to 1/2 tsp
Cut water to 1 cup
1 can pumpkin puree
5 tbsp sugar
Some cinnamon, cloves, allspice, ginger, nutmeg.  Maybe a teaspoon ish of each?  Sorry---I don't really measure anymore when I play with pumpkin pie spices.

Blueberry Bagels

Cut salt to 1/2 tsp
Cut water to 1 cup
1 pint blueberries, fresh or frozen
5 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp vanilla

Instructions

First, wake up those yeasty-bugs!  Heat your water up to 105-110 degrees Fahrenheit and sprinkle the yeast over the top.  Stir to break up any clumps, and then let it rest for ten to fifteen minutes, until it starts to bubble up a little bit.  While you wait, bring any additional wet ingredients (pumpkin puree or blueberries or whatever) up to about 100 degrees so they don't cool your dough down too much.  Add three cups of flour, and the other ingredients, and blend until smooth.

Slowly add two to three more cups of flour, until you have a dough that you can handle with your hands without getting it stuck to your fingers.  Turn it out onto the counter (your counter's clean, right?) and knead for a minute or two.  Let it rest for about ten minutes, and then knead for another ten minutes, adding flour as you go whenever the dough starts to feel sticky.  You could end up adding a lot of flour here, especially if you're dealing with blueberries.  The kneading pops the blueberries, adding more moisture to the dough, so you need more flour to absorb it.  Actually, you should probably budget an extra five minutes of kneading to the blueberry dough to account for this, but it's worth it, because blueberries!

Once you're done kneading, spray a large bowl with cooking spray, put your ball of dough in the bowl, and spray the top with cooking spray to keep it from drying out.  Put plastic wrap over the top of the bowl to make it air tight, and put it someplace warm.  (In Tucson, we have such a place.  We call it "outside.")  Let the dough rise for about an hour.  I believe that it is traditional to say "until double in bulk," but I don't think anybody actually knows what that means.

While your dough is rising, get a pot of unfiltered water onto the stove to boil.  You want it boiling by the time your dough is done.  Also, preheat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now that your dough has risen, you get to punch it!  This is far and away the best part of dealing with yeast doughs.  Uncover it and give it a good solid punch right in the middle.  Then turn it out onto the counter and squish it back down to its original size.  Bagels do not need a second rise, so you should start shaping them right away.    Rip off roughly plum-sized lumps of dough, roll them up into a ball, and then use your thumb to punch a hole in the center.  This takes practice---most of my bagels are still kind of ugly, but super tasty!

Put your bagels into the boiling water about five at a time (more or fewer depending on the size of your pan---just don't crowd it).  They'll float to the top.  You want to give them about three minutes on one side, then flip and give them three minutes on the other side.  Get them out of the water and onto a cookie sheet.  You can do an egg wash at this point if you want, especially if you want to put seeds on top, but it's not necessary.

Pop them in the oven for 15 minutes, and you'll have bagels!  Yay bagels!  Bagels bagels bagels!

Candied Nuts

Left to my own devices, I usually use walnut halves, but I've also done it with pecans.  Probably wouldn't work so well with almonds or peanuts.

1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
Some vanilla--It's hard to use too much.  Just give it a good splash
2 to 2 1/2 cups nuts

Put the water, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a small saucepan and bring it to a full boil.  Then bring the heat down so that the syrup is boiling but not in danger of boiling over.  You may need to move the pan on and off of the burner quite a bit while you're doing this--the boiling-but-not-boiling-over range is pretty small.  Keep the syrup at that temperature until it reaches the soft-ball stage.  If you've got a candy thermometer, good for you!  Soft-ball is 235-240 degrees Fahrenheit.  If you don't... yeesh, you can do it by sight--the bubbles get more numerous, longer-lasting, and closer together, but if you've never done this before, getting a candy thermometer is probably your best bet.

Once you've reached the soft-ball stage, remove the syrup from the heat, add a splash of vanilla, stir the whole mess a bit, add the nuts, and then stir like crazy until the coating on the nuts lightens in color.  Spread out the nuts to dry on a piece of parchment paper.

Garden Gimlet

This is a reasonable approximation of the Garden Gimlet at Sea Salt.  Of course, any suggestions for improvements would be welcome.  Proportions for a single gimlet are as follows:

1 shot gin
1 shot basil syrup
juice from 1 lime
juice from 1/2 cucumber
some amount of ice

The basil syrup and the cucumber juice could probably use some further instructions, so here they are:

Basil Syrup

If you buy fresh basil at the supermarket, chances are you've had the experience of buying one of those big boxes of basil, using about a quarter of it, and having the rest go bad in your refrigerator.  Instead, I suggest the following: take one cup of sugar, one cup of water, and whatever basil you have left over.  Put them all in a pot and bring the whole mess to a boil until the sugar dissolves.  Remove from heat and let steep for about 30 minutes.  Remove the basil.  Ta-daaaa!  Basil syrup.

Cucumber Juice

This is legitimately a pain unless you have some sort of fancy juicer.  I don't, so I've only done this a couple times.  Peel the cucumber and chop it into pieces.  Put the pieces in your food processor and... process them...  You want to turn the cucumber into mush.  Once you have mush, strain it through a cheesecloth to get juice.  There's got to be a better way, but so far I've been too lazy to figure out what it is.

Vegetarian Black Bean Chili

Largely cribbed from Deborah Madison's Green's Cookbook, but Deborah Madison is way more hard-core than I am, so she does things like make her own chili powder and peel tomatoes.  I mean really.  Peeling tomatoes?  Who has the time?  Also, I often forget the salt.

It seems that chipotle chilis come from a can.  You do not want to use the entire contents of this can.  Usually I'll open a can, take the chilis I need, and save the rest in the freezer in little plastic baggies.  If I'm feeling adventurous, I'll throw the leftover adobo sauce into the chili.  Though you want to be careful. If you use the cayenne, a strong chili powder, spicy paprika, two chipotle chilis, and pour in the leftover adobo sauce, you get something quite hot.  If you want a particularly mild version, use one chipotle chili and no cayenne.

2 cups black beans
1-3 bay leaves, depending on freshness
4 tsp cumin seeds
4 tsp oregano
4 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
3 tbsp chili powder
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 yellow onions, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced or squished through a garlic press--man I need a garlic press
1/2 tsp salt
1 28 oz can tomatoes
1-2 chipotle chiles, chopped

Soak the beans overnight.  Or, if you're me and you've forgotten to soak them overnight, cover them by a couple inches with water, bring them up to a strong boil, then turn the heat off and let them sit for an hour while you chop the vegetables.  Drain them and cover them with fresh water, this time adding the bay leaves, and bring them up to a gentle simmer.  Check on them periodically to make sure they're still covered with water, and give them a stir to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Toast the cumin seeds in a sauce pan over medium heat.  When they're starting to color a little bit, add the oregano.  Shake the pan to keep the oregano from scorching.  You're waiting for a strong smell that is not yet a burning smell.  Note: this smell exists for about fifteen seconds before the oregano actually burns--you do not want the oregano to burn.  Once the oregano is starting to smell, turn off the heat and add the paprika and cayenne, shake it all together in the pan for another few seconds, then dump it into a spice grinder (or coffee grinder) and give it four or five two-second pulses.

Heat the vegetable oil in a pan over medium heat and add the onions and the salt.  Cook the onions until they stop tasting like raw onions. Raw onions are gross. Now add the chili powder, ground spices, and garlic and cook for another five minutes.  Add the tomatoes and chipotle chilis, and if you have just opened a new can of chipotles, go ahead and throw in the adobo sauce.  Simmer this mixture for another fifteen minutes.  Then find some way to transfer this into the pot with the beans.

Continue to simmer the whole thing together until the beans are soft enough to be edible.  The longer the chili simmers, the more the flavors combine and the better it will be.  Deborah Madison suggests another hour or so, but you're probably pretty hungry by now, so let's compromise and call it fifteen minutes.

Bow Ties With Sausage, Beans, and Kale

The pasta, not the popular men's accessory, but feel free to make the substitution, and by all means let me know how it goes.  This is largely Jeanne Kelley's recipe from http://www.cookinglight.com/, but I made a few edits.  Among other things, her recipe called for canned cannellini beans.  I'm sure that would work just fine, if I weren't a huge snob.

1 cup dried cannellini beans
1/2 lb bow tie pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped (I use yellow onions, because they are cheap)
1/2 lb hot Italian sausage (about 3 links), cut into bite-sized pieces
1/3 cup julienned sundried tomatoes
6 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (or half of one of Papa's little red chilis)
1 bunch kale

Soak the beans for at least four hours--I never remember to soak them overnight, but four hours will do it.  Start water for the pasta and for the beans.  Both need to cook for about fifteen minutes.  If you time it just right, everything comes together at the end.

Heat the olive oil in an electric skillet.  Add the onion, and cook until it starts to soften just a little bit.  Add the sausage and sun dried tomatoes, and cook until the sausage is browned on all sides.  Add the garlic and cook for one minute more, then add the chicken broth, basil, oregano, and red pepper flakes.  Add the kale, stir until it wilts in, and then cover and simmer for five more minutes, or until the kale is soft enough to eat.  Add the pasta and beans and you're good to go.

Chicken à la King

Nothing special about this. More solids than most cookbook versions. Check them out if you just want sauce with the occasional chicken morsel. Sort of like Chicken and Mushroom Bisque.

I'm assuming you have leftover chicken. If you do, compare yours to the amount here and adjust the other amounts accordingly. If you're planning to make this starting with raw chicken...um, I don't know, I never have. Cook it first, I guess.

1-2 tbsp. butter
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1/2 red bell pepper or 1/4 cup pimientos, chopped

2 tbsp. butter (see note below)

3 tbsp. flour

1 cup chicken broth

1/3 - 1/2 cup cream

1-2 shakes Tabasco (optional)

~2 cups cooked chicken, cut into small bite-sized pieces

1 egg yolk

2-3 tbsp. dry sherry

If you've never cooked with red pepper before, remove the seeds and the whitish ribs on the inside. And the stem end.

Note: There are two places where you use butter: to sauté the mushrooms and pepper, and to make the roux. I know standard recipe practice would be to just list butter once and then give instructions about which part to use when, but I just can't keep track of that. I always end up dumping all the butter in at the first point and making some kind of mess. So I listed them separately.

Sauté the mushrooms and red pepper in butter. When the mushrooms are done, the pepper will still have a little crunch, which is fine. Or, use pimientos instead of red pepper and say goodbye to crunch. Set aside.

Melt the second bolus of butter and heat to foaming. Add the flour and whisk to get a roux. You only have to eliminate the raw flour taste, but I go further to brown the roux lightly so the dish leans very slightly in the direction of New Orleans. If you keep going the roux will become dark brown and eventually burn. Stop before that.

Add the stock and stir until the sauce is thickened. If you start with cold stock, it can take forever to thicken, so here's what I do: I put the stock in the microwave before I start making the roux. Then I cook the roux until the stock is boiling. Then when I pour the stock in, the sauce thickens in like twenty seconds. Blend in the cream. Season with salt and pepper and (optionally) Tabasco.

Add the mushrooms and pepper back in and add the chicken. Beat the egg yolk in a bowl and mix in a spoonful at a time of the sauce. This is supposed to keep the egg yolk from scrambling if added directly to the sauce, which sounds gross so I've never tried it. Once you've added two or three spoonfuls of sauce, blend it back into the pot. Add the sherry just before serving. If you have some parsley, sprinkle it over each serving, but Genevieve and Elizabeth hate that.

Serve over rice. I won't judge you if you want to impress somebody by using puff pastry. Toast is also OK, particularly for leftovers. Noodles too, but don't push it, huh?