Risotto Three Ways

We've recently had to cut back on our gluten intake. According to the science, overdoing gluten intake, as is the custom in the Western diet, does nothing good for you. Gluten gives foods a great, chewy texture but so far our experiences with the wonderful world of glutenless living hasn't made us miss the stuff much. Anyways, all this to say that since we are steering clear of gluten for the moment we've been experimenting with loads of stuff but also relying on some good old recipes which don't sound like a hippy chemist sat down to write it (just in case some hippy chemist cook is reading this, I have absolutely nothing against tapioca, coconut, rice, chickpea, almond or buckwheat flours...I'll even be sharing some recipes soon...imagine gluten, dairy free pizza!). So to get back on topic - again - the good old recipes I'm referring to are Asian foods which usually rely more on rice and soy than on wheat. In this case however, we're talking risotto. Gooey rice mixtures full of delicious potential.

I started off by making a monster batch of basic risotto from the ever-reliable Cook with Jamie book. The ingredients are:
- 1 and 3/4 pints vegetable or chicken stock
- 2 tbsp olive oil (something Mr. Oliver can't leave out of anything)
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 large, finely chopped onion
- 4-5 sticks of celery, also finely chopped
- 1 pound 6 ounces risotto rice (I used medium grain rice and it was fine)
- 9 fluid ounces of vermouth or dry white wine.

The preparation is long but well worth the effort. Basically, you sweat the vegetables, incorporate the rice and slowly add warm stock, letting the rice fully soak it up before you add more. You repeat this till you have something almost very gooey. I say almost because this is a basic recipe in which you will add more deliciousness and liquid.

For anyone whose ever made their own pasta sauce or mixture, risotto is very similar. Just put stuff that works well together and add to the risotto. The only difference with the risotto is that you have to be careful not to add too little or too much liquid or you risk ruining the whole texture which is the whole point of risotto. Because if you don't care about texture, just microwave a bag of instant rice with a can of mushroom soup and stop reading my blog.

Our first recipe was an adaptation from the same, previously mentioned book. We replaced spinach for kale (it's what we had on hand), chopped and sautéed the kale in some olive oil with garlic. Once cooked down, we popped the vegetables in a food processor till we had a very fine mixture; to this we added a touch of nutmeg. We then finished off half of the basic risotto recipe with 1 and 1/4 pints of vegetable stock, mixed in the kale mixture, added the juice of half a lemon and added cheese: parmesan and goat's cheese for me, daiya for my wife. The great thing about risotto is that it tastes as if you drowned it in cream and butter but is absolutely the healthiest stuff on the planet besides laughing children ;)

Since we still had half the basic risotto recipe left, we decided to make a mushroom risotto. We did the same as above but instead of the kale we put mushrooms, onions, shallots, fresh thyme, garlic, and loads of pepper. I then gave a generous splash of lemon to brighten up what could be something very un-springlike. Topped with a bit of parmesan (or daiya) and olive oil, this dish was quick and easy. Quick because it was made with leftover basic risotto mixture and easy because we'd succeeded once so the odds of failing were much lower.

So if you're counting, that's two variations of risotto which build on one basic recipe. Yet here comes something even more beautiful. With the leftover mushroom risotto - this stuff is like the Energizer bunny - we formed patties, rolled in chickpea flour and fried in coconut oil. This was amazing! The smooth, gooey texture of the risotto was given yet more texture with the crunchy outside. To be fair, it would have been better if we'd done some proper breading (i.e. flour, eggs and then the chickpea flour) but we're also avoiding eggs for the moment. We served the mushroom risotto croquettes - cute name, non? - with some beer butt chicken and a simple salad.

To wrap this whole entry up, I'd like to formally state that I love risotto. We're good friends now. Maybe we'll go on a picnic together this summer by the seaside and I'll see if it's as lovely cool as it is warm.

Kale Risotto with Goat Cheese or Daiya

There are two things, kitchen wise, which are causing a bit of a dilemma lately. One, we stocked up on lots of hard to find stuff (well at least hard to find here up in Kapuskasing) like shaohsing wine, gochujang, short grained rice in bulk, and a slew of gluten free flours. Two, we're moving back to Moncton in July which means that all of this stock either has to be consumed or trudged halfway across Canada. Since I don't like stuff lying around unused anyways, I opt for consumption rather than transportation. So at least as far as the rice is concerned there are quite a few tasty options including, but not limited to, sushi and risotto.

I can't say I've been a huge fan of risotto. It's not the first thing I'd cook if given a choice but lately we've discovered that my wife has serious intolerances to alot of food. She's had to cut out gluten, dairy, eggs, most fruit, and all protein except seafood and chicken. This makes cooking difficult but also kind of fun. It's much more fun finding and cooking a good, gluten-free recipe for pancakes which is not only edible but just as delicious as the gluten variety. By the way, gluten does absolutely nothing for us nutritionally. So in case there are others reading this who are in the same boat as us, one good blog and book is Spunky Monkey (Google it).

Anyways, for the recipe, it comes from my now aging Cook with Jamie book. In this book there is a basic risotto recipe which is used as the base for whatever risotto you want to make and also keeps in the fridge for up to a week which means that making risotto takes only a few minutes on a busy weekday.

The recipe I made was a spinach and goat cheese risotto which I modified to use kale instead. I love kale for it's intense green, almost nutty taste. Just wilt along with some garlic, blitz in a food processor, fold into the hot risotto and mix with parmesan and goat cheese. For my wife, I put daiya instead of cheese; if you're intolerant to dairy, daiya is awesome. We used it on pizza the other day and it was, incredibly, just as good as the brick cheese I had. I mean, most cheese is so processed now that something which contains no dairy at all can easily stand up to it. So kudos to Daiya and shame, again, on the industrialization of food.

Ranting aside, we now have enough leftover risotto to make all sorts of stuff. I want to have a crack at risotto croquettes which are balls of leftover risotto rolled in breadcrumbs and fried.

All of this means 4 cups of rice used. Now we just have to find something to do with the approximately 50 cups which are left.

Zucchini and Goat Cream Cheese Soup

I got the general outlay of this very simple recipe from Laura Calder's French Food at Home on Food TV here in Canada. She used French "vache qui rit" cheese which is a sort of cream cheese whose name means "the cow who laughs". I didn't want to make a special trip to the supermarket for this cheese (I'm a farmer's market convert) so I bought some goat cream cheese from my local goat cheese purveyors.

Though I used the best products, all organic and/or local, zucchini tends to be bland. And Campbell's organic chicken stock doesn't have much body either. So I guess you can say that it's subtlety was what I should have appreciated. But I like my food to whack me around a bit. None of this soffisticated pallet crap.

Oh and if you do want to try this soup out, it couldn't be easier. Onions, zucchini, chicken stock, goat cheese, salt and pepper. That's it. Purée and top with some paprika. Nothing complicated but nothing really special either.

Goat Cheese, Cucumber and Turkey Sandwich

I had a bunch of mild ingredients in my fridge that needed to be got rid of. Leftover from the previous Saturday's market was half a small wheel of mild goat cheese. This particular local craft cheese has an almost bocconcini-like mildness but the softened texture and muted tang of goat cheese. It's very light tasting and was a natural match for peeled and thinly sliced cucumber along with sliced deli turkey. I added just a few little dollops of pesto on top of the turkey and sandwiched the whole in plain crusty white bread. Lightly toasted, this sandwich is very light and almost feminine in quality. Maybe I should slice the bread thinner and remove the crusts to make is even more gentle. Next time I guess.

Sausage Burgers, Omelets & Beer-Butt Chicken Sandwich

I know what you’re thinking, “Oh what beautiful cross-hatching!” The idea for these sausage burgers came from the fact that I only had hamburger buns and didn’t feel like eating sausages in their usual form. So, I simply squeezed out the meat and formed patties, topped them with slices of jalapeno pepper havarti and then served them with Dijon mustard and pickles. What I wasn’t expecting was that sausage meat, as compared to hamburg meat, takes longer to cook. The result? Raw centers. For those parts that were cooked, the burger was good and a not-so-bad idea.

Seeing as I’m still off (with pay) because of the fire at the building I work, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying myself. I got up this morning to cook an omelet for my loved one before she headed off to work – it sucks that she has to work to get paid… I’ve determined that when making omelets, it’s better to leave milk, cream, or water out of the beaten eggs. They hold together better and don’t have that weird texture which tickles the soft pallet.

For her omelet, I put a few leaves of fresh thyme in with the eggs. Once the omelet was flipped over, I added thin slices of red onion and some goat cheese, folding the omelet in half. For myself, I used leftovers of the gravlaxsas in the beaten eggs. I then put some gravlax, goat cheese, and onion sprouts between the soft fold of the omelet. Served with a tall glass of fresh apple cider, yet another day “off” had started beautifully.

After spending my morning listening to French chansons and reading the May edition of Gourmet Magazine (highly recommended by the way), I made lunch with some leftover barbecued chicken I had. Next time I’m making the now common beer-butt chicken I’ll post it. (For those of you not familiar with the process, a half-full can of beer is stuck into the cavity of the chicken which is then placed upright onto the grill with the lid closed for about 50 minutes. Some stores now sell special rigs that make the balancing act of the chicken on the grill much easier. The result is a very tender chicken which tastes so beautifully of barbecue smoke.)

The leftovers of this chicken make for a great sandwich. I sometimes mix some mayonnaise and green onions in with the shredded chicken but I opted for a less heavy pairing of grainy mustard and the ever versatile onion sprouts on a whole wheat Kaiser bun. With a strong cup of home-brewed coffee, the week just keeps getting better.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the beach again. Getting paid while sitting on the beach….ah, that’s life…

P.S. I'm sorry for the crappy quality of my pictures. My digital camera needs a good thrashing.

Gravlax with Gravlaxsas & Goat Cheese on Rye

I'm finally on a role! I've been curing some salmon Scandanavian style since Friday and I've finally tasted it. Oh and what a taste! I read that gravlax (cured salmon) is usually served in an open sandwich and so I did my take on that.

I toasted some dark rye bread and cut it into bitesized chunks. I then crumbled a bit of goat cheese onto every piece. Be careful not to put too much goat cheese as it will make the hors d'oeuvre too heavy. The goal of the goat cheese is cheese to smooth out the sharp taste of the gravlax (which is cured in salt) and the gravlaxsas. After the goat cheese, lay some thinly sliced gravlax and pour over about one and a half teaspoon of gravlaxsas. Finally, I topped it with onion sprouts but any type of sprouts would do.

The result of this combo is a party in your mouth. You get the smooth taste of goat cheese coupled with the rye bread, followed by the taste of the salty gravlax and the sharp gravlaxsas which finishes off with the subtle and crunchy sprouts. If you let the gravlax shine through - that is to say that the other ingredients haven't taken over - the whole should finish off with the perfect taste of the cured salmon.

Play with quantities and vary the layers to see what works best for your palet. You could also replace the goat cheese with cream cheese or any other soft and mild flavoured cheese.

Gravlax

Fresh salmon fillet, skin on

Large bunch of dill

3 tbsp sea salt

1 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp pepper

1 tbsp spirits (I used spiced rum)

1. Curring salmon extracts the liquids from the fish. The dish you place the salmon fillet must therefore be large enough so the salmon fillet is not swimming in the liquids you're trying to extract from it.

2. Mix all ingredients and rub into the salmon, making sure that ingredients are well dispersed.

3. Place something heavy over the rubbed salmon fillet. If you have a dish the same size as the first, lay that one on top. I just used a small dish with a can on top.

4. Wrap the whole with clingwrap and place in fridge. It should take between 36 and 72 hours to cure the salmon depending on what your preference is. Every 12 hours or so, turn the filet over and baste it with the juices at the bottom of the dish it is curing in.

5. Once done, you have a few options of what to do with your cured salmon. A) If you have a smoker, you could smoke the salmon; B) You can serve the salmon in a sandwich or in a wrap, there are many recipes online for these. Just look for recipes which ask for smoked salmon; C) You can incorporate the salmon in a frittata; D) Let your imagination run free...gravlax ice cream anyone?

Gravlaxsas

4 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp mustard powder

1 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

6 tbsp olive oil

4 tbsp fresh dill, chopped

1. Mix Dijon, mustard powder, sugar and vinegar together.

2. Gradually incorporate olive oil. The end consistency should resemble a liquid mayonnaise.

3. Fold in chopped dill.

4. The gravlaxsas should keep for a while if it's covered and placed in the fridge.