Risotto is not terrifying

Risotto was really trendy when I first started making it somewhere in the five to seven years ago range. It does not seem so trendy anymore. Has it slid into the range of normal foods that people just cook, or is it falling out of perception entirely? I mean, I definitely have a bunch of cookbooks with occasional risotto recipes, but it kind of seems like people have gotten sick of cooking something to which you have to pay such close attention. This seems strange, though, since there are lots of foods that require attention. It's not like cream sauce can just sit there and cook itself. So maybe we should go the other direction and posit that people may be scared of making something that has a reputation for high culinary technique. This makes sense until you notice that the technique is basically advanced stirring.

You can stir a pot. Make risotto. What better way to spend the last day of August than by standing over a hot pan for a half hour?

One of the best things about risotto is that you can put practically anything you want in it. In this case I wanted corn and red pepper. It was delicious, and will continue to be so tomorrow for lunch.

Risotto is delicious.

arborio rice
olive oil
yellow onion
dry vermouth or white wine
broth
corn
red pepper
salt, pepper, parsley
parmesan or asiago

If you don't have broth, it's the first step. Grab a handful of vegetable scraps, stick them in a pot of water, and put them on to boil. Simmer this while you're doing everything else. If you already have broth, you need to bring it up to a simmer too. This will ultimately make the risotto cook much, much faster.

Ok. Get out a big pot, set it over medium heat, and pour in some olive oil. Chop up maybe half a yellow onion and add it to the pan. Let the onion soften a bit while you go read a book, or chop up red pepper and decob or defrost corn. Whatever.

When the onion is soft, add a cup of rice to the pan and start stirring. You don't have to stir absolutely constantly, but pay close attention when you stop. Toast the rice for three or four minutes. It may start making popping noises; that just means it's getting hot, and is about ready for broth action.

Add maybe half a glass of vermouth or white wine to the pan. You can also use red wine, but I like white better. Start stirring; stir for maybe five minutes, or until the rice has absorbed all the vermouth. At this point your rice should be translucent around the edges, with an opaque white core in the middle.

Add a couple ladlefuls of the hot broth to your rice. You want a pan of liquid nearly completely full of rice; when you stir, it will make big solid waves. Stir fairly constantly until the rice has absorbed the liquid.

Repeat this several times, adding water to your broth pot if necessary. You'll notice the rice's appearance changing as it cooks; eventually, the translucence will go away and you'll be left with a solid creamy-looking grain. Keep tasting as you go to make sure the rice cooks to your preferred texture.

When your rice is almost done, and you're about to add your last batch of broth, add the vegetables. You can use pretty much anything you want. If you want a long-cooking vegetable, like winter squash, make sure to precook. Meat should be precooked also. Everything else can be raw and room-temperature; you're just going to warm it in the pan anyway.


Combinations you can add:
- red pepper and corn, duh
- zucchini or summer squash and tomato
- just good diced tomato, or any individual vegetable
- peas, regular or sugar snap
- tiny green bean bits and lemon zest
- asparagus tips and mushrooms
- winter squash and slivered almonds

When things are cooked to your liking, take the pan off the heat. Add lots of grated cheese, black pepper, and chopped parsley. Taste and see if it needs salt, then add that too.

Put it in a bowl and eat it. You probably want dark green salad and wine and maybe a little bread.

Risotto is possibly the most soporific food on the planet. Be prepared to lie around reading books in bed for the rest of the night.

Oven sammich

Sometimes you are tired yet hungry and end up just eating a sandwich for dinner. This is not such a terrible thing. It's not like you're having a bag of doritos for dinner, for example. You are having real food. If you take a couple minutes to actually cook said sandwich, it turns out even better.

This kind of thing works really well with nearly anything you have in the vegetable drawer. I mean, I probably wouldn't use potatoes, but other than that, close to anything goes.

decent bread, in this case half a baguette
olive oil
yellow onion
grape/other tomatoes
mild white cheese
salt, pepper, parsley

Slice some bread or split a baguette precariously down the middle. Anoint it with oil. That's right: indoctrinate your bread.

Sliver some onion and tomato into the thinnest slices possible. You can use whatever kind of onion/shallot/etc and tomato you have lying around, although I wouldn't recommend midwinter tomatoes or anything. Layer the slices onto the bread. Add some salt and pepper and stick the business into the oven. I had a bunch of fries already baking at 350F, so I just stuck my sandwich on the other rack.

After 5 or 10 minutes, check on your progress. If the onions have softened and the tomatoes have begun to crumple, it's time for cheese. You can clearly do this without cheese as well, although the finished product will lack a certain gooey quality. Slice some cheese thinly and layer it over the vegetables. You don't need too overabundant an amount. I used mozzarella, but whatever you have lying around should be fine.

Stick everything back in the oven for another five minutes, or until the cheese starts to turn toasty brown on top. Then whip out the pan, add some parsley/any other fresh greens you might want, smash your sandwich closed, and eat.

The rest of the ricotta

The gnocchi were definitely great, but they didn't go through nearly enough ricotta. What do you do with 3/4 of a tub of ricotta, especially when you've had a gigantic cheesy pasta thing already? I suppose there is always the freezer. It's really easy to freeze a lasagna. There is also, you know, sucking it up and actually eating more delicious pasta things. I mean, gracious me! We can't do that! I will probably do that tomorrow.

Ricotta is mild enough that you can use it for other things, though. You can, for instance, use it in place of mascarpone. I don't think I've ever had mascarpone anyway; certainly I've never cooked with it. I have had cheesecake and other cheese-oriented dessert wonders, though. You can clearly use ricotta in a sweeter setting.

With this in mind, I went to the store and bought a pint of black figs and a stick of sourdough.

This is barely even a recipe; it's just cutting things up and spreading them around. Then it looks like the fanciest thing on the planet. You win.

Ricotta with figs

good bread
ricotta cheese
honey
figs
black pepper

Cut your bread into appropriate slices. Spread some ricotta onto each. Well, now we only have half the tub left.

Get a spoon and drizzle a bunch of honey over each bit of bread. Try to stay in the middle or you'll end up covered in goo when you start eating. Or maybe you want to get covered in goo, in which case get honey everywhere. Whatever.

Cut up some figs and lay the slices over each piece of bread. The honey will stick them securely on. Figs are pretty sticky anyway, but still.

Grind black pepper over the plate and eat.

Seriously, use the pepper. It makes everything else pop; it has the same effect as salt used well.

This is definitely the kind of thing you want to lie around eating on a saturday afternoon with a bottle of decent dry white wine. Figs and honey are mild enough that the whole business is barely sweet; it's just sticky and decadent.

Gnocchi party

The other night I went to a goodbye dinner. Dinner was a massive, totally delicious lasagna. Eight people were eating and still we had something like a third of it left over. It was supremely satisfying, and provided needed ballast for the continuing evening.

So I kind of wanted more lasagna. In fact I had been wanting some sort of giant pasta combination for about a week, and continue to do so. I am so going to Osteria in the near future. I must have a gigantic plate of pappardelle with bolognese sauce from some source. In the meantime, I still wanted more! Immediate more! Lasagna is a large and awkward pasta, however, and I was already buying a pretty full backpack's worth of stuff. Fortunately, our pantry contained an alternative: gnocchi.

This stuff will get all the pans in the house dirty, but it's worth it. It's also really versatile, and can take practically any vegetable you want to throw at it. In this case I wanted spinach and tomato. In the future I will probably add zucchini and eggplant at least. Fresh basil would also be a good plan.

Baked gnocchi

potato gnocchi, premade or homemade
olive oil
garlic
a hot red pepper
half a red bell pepper
three good tomatoes
dry vermouth
spinach
ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan
salt, pepper, basil, sage, cayenne

Chop up your garlic, hot pepper, and bell pepper; sauté them in some olive oil with basil, cayenne, and a little sage. Oregano is always a good idea, but all we had left was a tiny smudge of powder, so that was out. Soften everything up while you chop up some good tomatoes. Because it was indulgent day, I was actually cooking with real tomatoes as opposed to just eating them outright. This was a good idea.

Add the tomatoes and some vermouth to the pan. Salt and pepper. While everything is reducing, wash, stem, and chop most of a bunch of spinach. Boil and drain the gnocchi; they're done when they come to the surface of the water.

When your tomatoes have reduced, the sauce in the pan will be really liquid. You can either reduce it more or just use it as-is; the gnocchi will suck up lots of tomato juice in the oven. Add your spinach to the sauce and stir until it's wilted. Then add the gnocchi and mix everything up well.

Take the pan off the heat. If there are any non-dairy people at your house, now is the time to separate out portions for different pans or whatever. You can also clearly just eat things at this point instead of baking them. I wanted cheese, however.

Once your pan has cooled slightly, so as not to break the dairy, add several spoonfuls of ricotta. You can add shredded mozzarella here, too, if you want the interior to be especially goopy. Stir it all up and turn it into a baking dish. Then spread lots of shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheese over the top.

Bake it. I used a fairly slow oven, since I wanted the gnocchi to have time to absorb as much juice as possible. Start at about 325 or 350F and reduce heat if the top crisps too soon. It took maybe a half hour for ours to be done.

Now eat it. Have red wine. Have the rest of the spinach in a salad. Have a loaf of bread to mop the bits of tomato juice and oil off your plate.

Don't you like how the most delicious food looks the least pretty? I love it. I can't possibly make these pictures pretty, and I don't care! Eat it! It is delicious!

Dinner rescue

The other day I was hungry, but there was no food in the house. This is normal but annoying. So I looked around to find something that would actually provide sustenance. We pretty much always have beans and rice; this time I found beans and barley. So I made a batch of refried beans and put a cup of barley in the rice cooker, and when everything was done, I proceeded to look at it and notice that I didn't really want a burrito at all. In fact, I appeared to want, say, some lettuce, which we did not have.

We did have quarts and quarts of broth in blocks in the freezer, however, and it would be silly not to eat any of the gigantic amount of food already made. So I defrosted a cake of broth, dumped in some beans and barley, and toasted half a loaf of bread. That was much better.

Refried beans are pretty thoroughly covered already. Barley is cooked just like rice, and broth is made from a chicken or many vegetables. We eat the same things all the time; can you tell?