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!

pasta in a mushroom cream sauce

The 'fuzz brought back 1 oz of dried porcini mushrooms from her last trip to Italy (that jet-setter). Today we turned them into a mushroom cream sauce that was easy, fast, and exceeded all our expectations. Our only regret is that we did not have some crusty Italian bread to soak up the remaining sauce; I was drinking it from my bowl at the end. This recipe only serves two hungry people.

• 1 oz dried porcini mushrooms
• garlic, olive oil, wine
• 1/2 cup cream or half-and-half
• few tbsp grated parmesan or equivalent
• pasta for two (not much!)
• fresh flat parsley, chopped a bit

Soak 1 oz dried porcinis in 1 cup boiling-hot water for 20 min. Sauté a clove or two of garlic, minced or pressed, in a few tbsp of olive oil. Add the porcinis (reserving the water they were in) and 1/2 cup of white wine. Keep at a low boil until the wine is fully evaporated. Add in the mushroom liquor—after straining it through a coffee filter to remove grit—and boil it down a bit too. Add cream and cheese and bring back to the boil. Salt (generously) to taste.

If you are clever, your pasta will be on the stove boiling, and just become done at this point; drain it and mix it in. Serve in shallow bowls with a mound of parsley on top, and crusty bread on the side.

country vichyssoise

I call this vichyssoise country because when you make it in the blender (even multiple passes), you still get a few tiny lumps. Also I use black pepper, not white, so it is not perfect in appearance. This recipe is based on an old edition of my bible, The Joy of Cooking.

Sauté a few sliced leeks (white part) and a sliced onion in a few tbsp of butter. When soft, add four peeled, sliced potatoes and four cups of dilute chicken broth. Simmer until tender. Blend until smooth; I usually pass the whole thing through the blender multiple times; the traditional thing is to force it through a sieve. You want it to be as smooth as possible. Salt and pepper the blended soup until it tastes good.

Chill. Add a cup of cream and wisk till perfectly blended. Serve cold (even ice cold) with chopped chives or green onions.

Vichyssoise is easy to make, but I can't quite figure out how to make it well. Maybe PMC can weigh in on this. The best I have ever had is in Le Café de Paris by the Casino in Monte Carlo. It was rich in taste but also very light in consistency. Perhaps the traditional method of forcing the soup through a fine sieve is better than blending it. That sounds dangerously like rocket science.

cold celery soup

This is a variation of PMC's soup algorithm, chilled for summer.

Sauté a thinly sliced medium onion in a few tbsp butter until the onion is soft and translucent. Add one whole bunch of celery, chopped and soaked (to remove sand and dirt), and enough diluted chicken broth (home-made or canned) to cover. Simmer for about 30 min. Blend until smooth in a blender, in a food processor, or in the pot with an immersion blender. Taste and adjust salt if necessary. Chill.

When cold, if you wish, mix in a small amount of cream or half-and-half for color and "body"; it's not necessary.

coq au vin

For all our southern-hemisphere readers, or the northern-hemisphere readers for whom it is a cold summer:

Sauté two sliced carrots, one chopped large onion, and one chopped clove of garlic in a few tbsp of butter and a few strips of bacon, chopped into pieces, in an oven-proof pot. Add chicken (in my case, tonight, four large thighs with skins; they are super-cheap and super-tasty). Sauté the chicken a bit too. Add a tbsp or two of flour (I am not sure this is necessary), a bay leaf, and maybe some marjoram and thyme, about 1 tsp salt, pepper, and (nearly) cover with cheap red wine (about 1.5 or 2 cups).

Let it cook in the oven at 250 F (120 C) for 1 hour, covered. Add 1/2 lb sliced mushrooms and cook for 15 more minutes, maybe on the stove-top. Skim some of the fat if you wish (I usually don't); add salt if necessary (it usually is). Serve in shallow bowls with bread, and maybe also roast or boiled potatoes, and maybe a salad to follow (if you have guests).

Coq au vin: who knew? It's not rocket science.

summer borscht

This recipe was reconstructed from the 'fuzz's memory, and various unreliable WWW recipes. We wanted a borscht that involved no meat, and that was light and refreshing for summer. Apparently it's not rocket science.

Cut tops from 6 or so beets, scrub clean, and simmer in 1.5 qts water until beets are starting to become fork-tender (maybe 1.25 hr). Remove beets from liquid and let them cool a bit.

Add to the beet water 1 bay leaf, 1 med onion cut up a bit, a quarter of the (washed, coarsely chopped) beet tops, 1 tbsp vinegar, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp peppercorns, (and maybe 1 tsp sugar or honey) and simmer till you have soup (maybe 1 hr). Strain the soup through a cloth to remove all solids. Add peeled, finely chopped beets back in. (Note how easily cooked beets peel themselves.) You won't necessarily want to add back in all the beets you cooked originally. Simmer a bit more. Near the end, adjust seasoning, and maybe add a bit of honey or sugar if necessary. Remove from heat and chill.

Serve the soup cold with sour cream, and chopped dill, cilantro, and parsley. For added fun, let your guests add their own shredded raw carrots, sliced, hard-boiled eggs, chopped radishes and cucumbers.

agua fresca

Blend 4 or 5 cups of watermelon chunks (no rind, but seeds are fine) along with a a cup (or less) of water until pulverized. Strain. Add 1/2 tsp (or less) of salt, maybe a tbsp or two of lime juice. Chill. Drink!