basic risotto

Weather's gettin' cold, so let's bust out the carbs, baby! Saucy rice is easy:

• Sweat some finely chopped onion or French shallots in butter.
• Add about two cups of short grain rice (Arborio or sushi rice are likely candidates) and stir to coat with butter
• Add a cup of weak chicken stock (2:1 water:concentrate) and a cup of white wine and simmer while stirring gently
• When liquid is absorbed, add more stock about a half cup at a time and continue stirring
• Repeat until rice is tender but still firm (al dente)
• Add more stock to adjust consistency, as the rice should spread easily on the plate (a gluey mound is bad). A total of about 6 cups of stock will go into the pot
• Season with good, finely grated parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, perhaps some fresh thyme and a splash of wine

Some favoured variations on this are wild mushroom risotto and roasted squash risotto. For the former, some of the stock is replaced with the soaking liquor (filtered to remove grit?) of a package of dried porcinis or morels, which are also added towards the end. A garnish of fresh wild mushrooms sauteed in butter is nice, if you can get them. The latter... add chunks of squash at the end. Duh. Sage is a nice seasoning to add to this one, with brown butter drizzled on top.

I recently tried parcooking my risotto for a dinner party, i.e. taking to 3/4 completion (after about 4-5 cups of liquid) earlier that day and then cooling it on a cookie sheet. That evening I dropped the cooled mixture into a few cups of simmering stock, brought everything back to a simmer, added the seasoning and was ready to serve on warmed plates in five minutes. Nice trick with a great result.

leftover risotto soup

I had some leftover risotto kicking around in the freezer from this summer and an old bag of red lentils that never seemed to get used and were "bothering me". So I

• sweat a large onion in some olive oil, added a bit of diced carrot and celery, the washed lentils (about 1.5 cups), some thyme, a pinch of dried ginger and around 6 cups very light chicken stock (1 can + 5 cans of water)
• brought this to a boil and simmered until the lentils were tender
• stirred in the risotto to make a nicely thicked soup
• adjusted seasoning with salt and pepper

Lentils and rice is, of course, a classic combination, but using the leftover risotto gave me all sorts of bonus complexity at no added cost in time. "But PMC," you say, "isn't risotto making a branch of rocket science? Doesn't make this dish unfit for this forum?" Not so, as I think you'll see here.

"ahead of time"

For ML's birthday supper on the weekend, I made the following for a party of six:

• creamy pumpkin soup with fresh apple garnish, accompanied with apple cider "ice wine"
• pan roasted duck breast (magret) with blueberry compote and green salad
• wild mushroom risotto
• fallen chocolate cake with raspberry coulis

This meal was, I have to say, fargin' awesome, not least of all because I didn't have the impression that I spent the entire dinner party in front of the stove. None of these menu items, taken individually, involves rocket science. Banging them out one after another for a group of six with minimal time away from the table, on the other hand, is facilitated by knowledge of at least model rocket science. The solution is, naturally, to do as much as you possibly can well before people start to arrive. Mise (rhymes with "knees") en place, they call it. In this post, I'd like to record elements of my "mise" for the birthday menu. Everything was done the morning of and took a few hours. It was very chill and enjoyable.

• make the soup, which then just needs to be reheated just prior to serving
• prep the apple garnish---firm apples like Granny Smith with hold peeled and cubed in "acidulated water", i.e. water with a lot of lemon juice, for many hours in the fridge
• sear the duck magret, which can then be held in the 'fridge until you pop it into a hot oven to finished cooking (I think parcooking is one of many fine restaurant's dirty little secrets. They want us to believe that everything is prepared "à la minute".)
• make the blueberry compote, which can be reheated while the duck is roasting
• clean and dry the greens for the salad
• make the vinaigrette for the salad
• sauté the wild mushroom topping for the risotto
• cook the risotto until it is about two thirds done then pour out onto a jelly roll pan and allow to cool---reheat with stock and another splash of wine to finish cooking the rice and get it creamy and top with the mushroom garnish. This idea is blasphemy for some, but the risotto was damn good and most restaurants work this way.
• make the coulis and hold in the fridge
• make the batter for the cake (which needs to be refridgerated anyway) and prep the muffin tin

With a good "mise", the rest is just timing, i.e. getting all these precooked or parcooked dishes on or in the heat in time to be ready when you are for the next course. Mise en place is also a key part of our yearly Thanksgiving dinner, but let's leave that for another post.

green tomato pickle

What to do with the several pounds of green beefsteak tomatoes lingering in the garden? They weren't about to ripen (we had our first frost last night), so I thought I'd give pickling a whirl. If food preservation is not an issue, pickling is certainly not rocket science. All I want is something that tastes good now.

In the proverbial nonreactive saucepan (I like enamel, personally), I put about a cup and a half of vinegar and a cup of sugar (half white, half brown), a heaping teaspoon of salt, some whole cloves and peppercorns and a whole clove of garlic. After bringing this to a boil, I added a few pounds of green tomatoes, an onion and a red pepper, all thinly sliced. Everything was simmered for around an hour until the tomatoes were translucent. In the 'fridge, this pickle would keep (I suspect) for many weeks, if not months.

Great with (what else) baked beans!