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.

Dinner & A Movie

Seeing as it was the long weekend and that my girlfriend and I finally had a day off together, we figured we'd go out. Considering that we're new to town, every restaurant is a new discovery. For this reason, we started our mapping of Moncton's food route at Pastalli's Italian Cuccina which I'd seen reviewed by The Two Fat Guys in the newspaper recently. Though I also found the "grill your own garlic bread" station fun, the prices very reasonable and the decor to rival any first class restaurant, my review isn't as raving as theirs.

For an antipasti I chose to go with the Boconcchini & Tomato Salad which was what you would expect if to be. The slices of tomatoes and boconcchini were very lightly drizzled with a balsamic vinaigrette and drenched in tasteless olive oil as were the few greens which accompanied the salad. Though the boconcchini was creamy and fresh, I think it should have been left alone with the tomato, alot less olive oil (or at least better olive oil) and more balsamic vinaigrette. I give this dish a 7.

For a main course, I eventually opted for the Stuffed Chicken Marsala. The menu announced the following: charbroiled chicken breast filled with Italian cheese and sun dried tomatoes, topped with grilled mushroom (1/2 a button mushroom to be precise) and creamy Marsala sauce served with wild mushroom risotto. Also on my plate was a small sweet salad of greens, shredded carrots and tomatoes. The Marsala sauce was very delicious with the chicken but the whole serving couldn’t be eaten by anyone over the age of 8 without finding the chicken way too sweet. The risotto and salad did help to cut a bit of the sweetness but by the end of the plate I was left slightly above the level of moderately impressed. For a dish a bit too sweet for my taste, I also give the stuffed chicken marsala a 7.

Finally, the desert course. We ordered the Irish cheese cake and Nutcraker square. To make the cheese cake Irish, they simply added Bailey's Irish Cream. Though the taste was alright, the cheese cake was more of a butter cake as far as texture goes. The nutcraker on the other hand was a delicious stack of hazlenut crispy crust and chocolate/nut mousse...very good.

Though I've been harsh on Pastalli's, it's only because they're my future competition. It's nice to know that the competition isn't that intimidating. And Pastalli's is everything you would expect an Itialian restaurant to be. It's decor says high end, it's prices say reasonable, it's food says midway. I might return but I was definitely not blown away. Pastalli gets a 6.

After Pastalli's we went to see the ever so popular Ratatouille. What I especially enjoyed about the film were the details. For example you'll see scratch marks on the copper pots...and that's just one of the amazing details.

The story was also fun. Though I'm not sure if the movie was made for adults or children, Ratatouille is definitely worth seeing especially if you enjoy everything food. And just one last thing, I'd love to have Remy's sense of palette and senses. I guess that also means I wish I was a rat...