More corn

Speaking of corn, how about standing over the hot stove for 45 minutes making corn risotto?

Risotto is actually really easy: it just requires time standing around stirring. That's ok; the best hanging out happens in the kitchen anyway. Now you just have an excuse to be in there. I mean, an excuse besides "that's where the gin lives."

Corn risotto

corn
a yellow onion
arborio rice/other ok short grain rice
dry vermouth
hot broth
butter/olive oil
grating cheese if you want it
salt, pepper, fresh parsley

First: broth. You need at least two or three cups, depending on evaporation and etc. If you have it, put it in a pot and bring it to a low simmer. If you don't have it, make some: throw whatever vegetable scraps you have on hand into a pot of water, bring it to a boil, and simmer it while you're starting the rest of the risotto. For vegetables, use at least the top and skin of your onion, a couple cloves of crushed garlic, and at least one mushroom. Besides those, most things are fair game. Potato peels, a cherry tomato, four green beans, a broken scallion: whatever. Just don't use crucifers: cabbage, broccoli, or brussels sprouts. On long cooking, those make everything REEK.

Ok. So melt some butter or heat some olive oil in a deep pot. Chop up your onion and let it melt down slowly in the oil. If you feel like garlic, you might want to add a minced clove or two as well. It's not really necessary, though. When the onion is translucent, add a cup of raw rice and a big couple glugs of vermouth (or wine if you feel like it) to the pan. This should make the texture in the pot a nice sloshy solid. Turn up the heat to medium and start stirring. I like making risotto with a wooden spoon.

Stir.

When the rice looks translucent around the outside, but has a noticeable white core, add a half cup or so of your simmering broth. Stir some more. The rice will absorb the broth, cooking gradually. When things start to look dry and sticky, add more broth and do it again. Repeat this three or four times, so the rice turns more and more solid. At some point in here, prep your corn: slice fresh kernels off the cob or defrost frozen ones in hot water. On the fourthish broth round, add your corn as well. Then continue with your broth addenda until the rice is fully cooked.

Take your pan off the heat. If you want cheese, grate a bunch of it and add it directly to the pan. Stir to get everything adequately melted and mixed. Also add a little pinch of salt, a whole lot of black pepper, and as much chopped parsley as you like. Since risotto is totally sticky and dense and starchy, I like a lot of parsley.

Now put it in a bowl and eat it!

Leftover risotto wants to be risotto cakes so badly!

Risotto cakes

Heat a decent nonstick pan. Drop spoonfuls of leftover risotto onto the pan. Let them color on the first side for five minutes or so before flipping. Then brown the second side. Then eat them. Risotto cakes generally have an issue sticking together adequately; you can either experiment with adding beaten egg and etc, or just decide not to care. I personally don't care as long as I get a lot of nice chewy crusty bits. Crusty bits!

Even more: raw corn and tomato salad

Oh hey it's summer! It's past memorial day, so that means summer! Summer! It's SUMMER.

In conjunction, since I'm constantly hungry, I've been trying to figure out more food to bring to work. As more and more good vegetables have emerged, this has meant more and more salad. So when the full table of fresh corn finally appeared, I knew exactly what to do with it: eat it immediately, without even cooking it.

Since this salad is raw, it takes approximately three minutes to prepare in full. The only item of even slight annoyance is corn's proclivity to go careening all over the kitchen floor.

Raw corn and tomato salad

two ears fresh corn
a bunch of good grape tomatoes, maybe two handfuls
olive oil, salt, pepper

Shuck your corn and remove as much cornsilk as possible. My corn was white, but get whatever kind looks best. Use a big, heavy knife to carefully cut long swathes of kernels off the cob. If you're concerned about stability and knife slippage, snap the ears in half first. Cut all the kernels off, remove any more cornsilk that may have come to light, and stick the kernels in a bowl.

Cut tomatoes into whatever size pieces you find most appealing. I cut mine in half, then sliced up the halves, so the proportions more or less matched the corn. Add tomatoes to your bowl.

Add a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, mix it up, and you're done. Stick it in your bag and take it to work.

Clearly you could do all kinds of things to this salad:
- Use a disproportionately high amount of either corn or tomato.
- Add a bunch of chopped parsley, basil, or other deserving herb.
- Cut the corn out and use green beans or snow peas instead.
- Instead of dressing with olive oil, make an actual full tangy vinaigrette.
- Add some chopped mozzarella/etc to give it some more substance.

This business could definitely benefit from an entire pitcher of iced tea.

Egg mess #2

Or: why to have leftover caprese in your refrigerator.

Saturday we went to a barbecue at Joann's house. I managed not to get my camera out for the entire time. We had chicken and beeves and potato salad and pasta salad and caprese salad and skewered vegetables and corn on the cob and cherries and shortcake and chocolate cake and cookies and watermelon. Then we were all very full. There was a cubic foot of food left over, so much that we got to take an entire bag home. This meant that for the entire rest of long holiday weekend, all we really needed to do for food was open the refrigerator. It was great.

So one of our packets was Joann's version of insalata caprese, made with actual fresh mozz and whole grape tomatoes and food processor pesto with lots of raw garlic and pine nuts and olive oil. This was particularly advantageous since it meant I could make a second version of my egg and salad concoction from last weekend. Since we also had all kinds of spinach lying around, I decided to add some of that.

This business can run the gamut from "eggs with vegetables" to "vegetables with a little egg for body". I used roughly equal proportions, with four eggs to 2/3 bunch of spinach and maybe a cup and a half of mixed tomatoes and mozz, for the first option. This turned out astonishingly rich: really good, but rich. So that made it difficult to eat more than about one egg's worth of business. I would either halve the eggs for two people, or double the vegetables for four. That makes this greens and eggs: a big mess of vegetables with just enough egg clinging on to make them substantial.

Greens and eggs

butter/etc
two eggs
fresh spinach
leftover caprese salad, separated
salt, pepper

Start by melting some butter in a good nonstick egg-oriented pan. While it's softening, separate a good handful or so of tomatoes from your caprese. Cut them in half (if you have cherry or grape tomatoes) or little dice (if you have big chunks). Or you can just use a plain unsaladated tomato.

Stick the tomatoes and some salad pesto into the butter and cook slowly to reduce. This will take a while, maybe ten minutes or so. While they're cooking, wash, destem, and chop most of a bunch of spinach. Crack and beat eggs in a small pitcher or cup. Also chop up some of the pieces of mozzarella out of the salad. You don't need an overabundance of cheese here: use maybe a third of a cup.

When tomatoes have mostly reduced, pour in the eggs, add the spinach, and start stirring. Cook slowly as the eggs gradually firm up. At about the five minute mark, add your cheese. Keep cooking and stirring until the cheese is melted and the visible egg is done to your satisfaction. Depending on pan heat and etc., this could take up to ten more minutes. Be patient. That should really just be the theme for eggs in general.

One pot salad

I am lazy. I also like eating food. Quandary! I guess I can just throw food in a pot until delicious. Hey look, it's delicious!

This particular salade niçoise variation came of having an extra half bunch of dill hanging around. If you don't have dill, parsley will work fine, or you can experiment with other herbs and spices. Something like toasted cumin would probably be pretty good in the dressing.

Salad in a pot

three or four boiling potatoes
a lot of green beans
2 eggs
fresh dill
vinaigrette: olive oil, wine vinegar, salt, pepper

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Chop the potatoes into pleasing chunks, then add them to the pot. Simmer until cooked through. The timing will depend on how big your chunks are; a half hour should probably do it.

At some point during the simmer, chop up several stalks' worth of dill and make a vinaigrette. (I really need to write an entry only on salad dressing sometime.) Also top and tail green beans, then cut them into short chunks. This would be really fast if only green beans weren't curly. I had two big fistfuls of beans.

When the potatoes are getting close to done, add a couple eggs to the pot. Let them cook for ten minutes, then fish them out and put them in cold water. Dump all the green beans into the pot. Let things keep simmering for three or four more minutes before you take the pan off the heat and drain it.

Stick the cooked vegetables into a big bowl, pour the vinaigrette over, and mix. Make sure to do this while things are still hot, so they'll better absorb the dressing.

Whack the eggs all over with the back of a spoon, peel them, and chop them up. Add them to the bowl. Add the dill to the bowl too. Then mix everything well and thoroughly up. If it's become apparent that things are too dry, add some more olive oil. I poured some over the leftovers, so my lunch the next day was nice and olivey.

Eat it! This business is perfect for big stuffed pitas with slightly crunchy bread and some water-filled lettuce. I had a bowl plain and Then a sandwich for good measure. Dinner!

Not lemon ice

We were going to make sorbet at the end of night of salad explosion, but got both distracted and full. Also Kim had brought chocolate cream puffs, which kind of obviated any need for dessert. Cream puffs! I vaguely remember making popovers as a kid, but that's about it for my sweet pastry experience.

This meant we could have the sorbet for lunch the next day. Ok then.

I originally wanted to make plain lemon sorbet, since we had seven lemons lying around. Then we noticed that we had lots of strawberries left even after night of copious eating. Somehow the proportions got switched, so instead of lemon ice with a little strawberry, we made strawberry ice with a little lemon.

Lemon strawberry sorbet

juice of four lemons (a cup)
pint and a half of strawberries
half a cup or so of weak sugar syrup

Sugar syrup needs to be done in advance. Heat up about a cup of water; add several tablespoons of sugar. Cook slowly until sugar is dissolved and liquid is a little reduced. Then put it in the refrigerator to cool for a couple hours.

Juice lemons. Don't use bottled lemon juice here, since it tastes awful. Fresh lemon juice is the only way to go. To get more juice out of your lemons, leave them lying around in the sun for a while first. Strain out the seeds and pulp, then put juice into a blender. You may want to zest some of your lemon halves and add that too. I was feeling lazy and didn't.

Cut the tops off all your strawberries, then add them to the blender. Add the cool syrup too. Blend until everything is totally pureed. Then pour the business into your ice cream machine and freeze it.

Now you can eat it plain, with some crushed mint, or in a glass of white wine.


Variations:
- Use any combination of citrus and berry that sounds good to you: lemon raspberry, lemon blueberry, cherry lime.
- Double the amount of juice and make all-citrus sorbet. Use a much sweeter sugar syrup if you're using lemon yet still want a sweet result.
- Mix berries with a cup of water to make all-berry sorbet.
- Leave half the berries roughly chopped for chunky sorbet.
- Add a few shredded mint leaves to make it ultra-refreshing.
- Add a few shredded basil leaves to make it ultra-confusing. Actually, strawberry and basil is supposed to be good. I just haven't done it. You might want to use water instead of juice as well.
- Instead of the sugar syrup, add a cup of plain yogurt with a couple spoonfuls of sugar stirred into it: tangy creamy sorbet. I also need to try this and see what might or might not happen with lemon juice and curdling. That's the thing, though: the nature of cooking is in experimentation. Do it!