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tyggerjaiSo next week, when I go shopping, remind me to buy okra, if I'm planning a gumbo. And celery. You know, the little things - like 2/3 of a gumbo base. Possibly even file powder.
But I wasn't in the mood for seafood anyway, and a gumbo without seafood is like ... something without one of its really important constituent parts. When Similes Fail.
Still, it was a damn good risotto - one of those meals where I wish I had a camera, and some way of sharing the taste with you.
First, a couple of general notes for risotto newbies. A good risotto requires a certain amount of forethought and comittment. You can throw it together from random ingredients, so it's not necessarily forethought before you start cooking, but one of the tricks is the prep. You can't be remembering things halfway through like you can with some dishes. And you want a good strong right arm - you're basically stirring gluggy rice for half an hour.
Notes for beginners:
Arborio rice. You can't make a risotto with anything else.
A good stock. Good doesn't necessarily mean home made, or lavish - you can make it fine with supermarket stock cubes. But the stock is the heart of a risotto. Have a good litre or two in a simmering pot on the back burner when you start, and remember that the stock will determine the final taste of the risotto. For my more effete readers who insist on measurements, you want about three times as much stock as rice, by volume. Running out of stock is fatal, having stock left over isn't.
Stirring. Good risotto technique consists basically of stirring rice for half an hour. Really. You can't leave it, you can't do anything else, you can't even think about doing anything else. Make sure you go to the toilet before you start. I mean it.
Keep your pan hot. My burner is on full from the moment I add the rice right through till I add the final ingredients. Hot hot hot, all the time. Which means a lot of stirring to keep the rice from burning and sticking. A lot of stirring. Did I mention the stirring?
So. Ingredients: You don't want to crowd a good risotto. My classic risotto combination is chicken, chorizo sausage, and capsicum, but you can use pork, veal, seafood, broccoli, peas, wild mushrooms, whatever. 3 or 4 ingredients, beyond the rice, is ample. Stock, butter, oil, an onion, and arborio rice are the core, and traditionally one adds cheese(s) at the end. That's about it.
Prep: This is where the forethought and planning comes in. Ideally, you have two people cooking a risotto. One cooks the risotto base, and while they're doing that, the other cooks the other ingredients. Meat and seafood, particularly, will require cooking before they're added to the risotto, and cooking the base is a full time job. So ideally, your kitchen lackey will have the other ingredients ready just as you have the base ready, and you can combine them then. IF you're all alone, though, here's how I did this evenings:
Marinade the chicken in garlic, ginger, chili & coriander( which was this weeks theme, apparently, and an incredibly common combination in my kitchen, I must admit). I used four different oils for the marinade - a chili & mustard oil from Milawa, sesame oil, extra virgin olive (there are other kinds, apparently, but not in *my* kitchen), and my own blended garlic, chilli & coriander(oddly enough) olive oil.
Grate the cheese, cut the veggies, make the stock, have the stock simmering on the stove. Get everything you need ready now.
Once the chicken has marinaded for a few hours, fry it up with the chorizo sausage. When they're done, take the pan off the heat and put it aside, with the ingredients still in it. Cover it so the ingredients stay warm. I just stuck it on a spare burner, so it wasn't cooking, but wasn't far from the heat of the stove. Drain the excess oil into a big big pan. And I mean big. You can add butter to the oil if you like - it does seem to make the risotto creamier. Chop up your onion, and fry it up in the oil till it's soft and transparent. If you want other herbs or spices, add them here. Add your arborio rice. You need enough oil/butter to coat every grain of rice generously. Stir the rice (and get used to stirring the rice) until it also goes transparent - you can have a kernel of opalescence still in the middle, but you want the edges to be clear. You'll see what I mean. Keep the pan very hot through this, and move the ingredients fast. There's a point where the rice will just start to release a sort of cream, a few minutes into the frying. That's when you add your first ladle of stock. Or, y'know, when all the edges are transparent. That's probably a better guide. A couple of minutes, anyway.
From then on, the pattern is simple. Add a (small) ladle of stock, stir, stir. Add a small ladle of stock, stir, stir. You want to be adding the stock in very small amounts (1/4 cup), and you want all the stock to be absorbed before you add the next lot. And you want the pan to stay hot - the stock should certainly hit the pan and stay boiling, if half of it doesn't actually vaporise. On the gripping hand, don't let the rice stick to the base of the pan. Stirring vigorously helps here. As the rice softens, you can add less stock each time, to avoid the rice getting too gluggy. This pattern goes on for about 18 minutes. You want the rice to be al dente - not quite soft, but not crunchy. Once it gets to that point (or just before - start tasting at about 15 minutes, and allow time for your other ingredients to warm through), add a slightly larger ladle of stock, and your other ingredients. Stir until the ingredients are warmed through, and "bonded" with the risotto, but not more than a minute or two. If you cook it too long, you get a very glutinous risotto. That's not a crime from a taste point of view, and there are schools of thought that say it's ok from a technique point of view, too, but it's slightly lacking in finesse :)
Take the risotto off the heat, add some more butter and your cheeses, and stir vigorously. There's a fancy italian name for this step, but basically, this is the last step in making the risotto creamy. When you've stirred it all in, leave it for a minute or two to rest, then serve.
Note, in the context of that final step (especially for vegetarians), that there are risottos that consist of nothing but risotto base & cheeses. A good parmesan is almost mandatory, a good blue cheese, mascarpone, fetta, gruyere, anything with a certain amount of authoritah.
So there you go. And it's a perfect dish for Melbourne winters. Try that out, let me know if any of it is unclear, and next week, I'll do Gumbo. Promise :)
(For chicken salad, just do the first "fry your chicken" step, and then drain the chicken and add to a salad. We had a leafy salad mix with extra carrot, radish and mushroom)
sol.
.
But I wasn't in the mood for seafood anyway, and a gumbo without seafood is like ... something without one of its really important constituent parts. When Similes Fail.
Still, it was a damn good risotto - one of those meals where I wish I had a camera, and some way of sharing the taste with you.
First, a couple of general notes for risotto newbies. A good risotto requires a certain amount of forethought and comittment. You can throw it together from random ingredients, so it's not necessarily forethought before you start cooking, but one of the tricks is the prep. You can't be remembering things halfway through like you can with some dishes. And you want a good strong right arm - you're basically stirring gluggy rice for half an hour.
Notes for beginners:
Arborio rice. You can't make a risotto with anything else.
A good stock. Good doesn't necessarily mean home made, or lavish - you can make it fine with supermarket stock cubes. But the stock is the heart of a risotto. Have a good litre or two in a simmering pot on the back burner when you start, and remember that the stock will determine the final taste of the risotto. For my more effete readers who insist on measurements, you want about three times as much stock as rice, by volume. Running out of stock is fatal, having stock left over isn't.
Stirring. Good risotto technique consists basically of stirring rice for half an hour. Really. You can't leave it, you can't do anything else, you can't even think about doing anything else. Make sure you go to the toilet before you start. I mean it.
Keep your pan hot. My burner is on full from the moment I add the rice right through till I add the final ingredients. Hot hot hot, all the time. Which means a lot of stirring to keep the rice from burning and sticking. A lot of stirring. Did I mention the stirring?
So. Ingredients: You don't want to crowd a good risotto. My classic risotto combination is chicken, chorizo sausage, and capsicum, but you can use pork, veal, seafood, broccoli, peas, wild mushrooms, whatever. 3 or 4 ingredients, beyond the rice, is ample. Stock, butter, oil, an onion, and arborio rice are the core, and traditionally one adds cheese(s) at the end. That's about it.
Prep: This is where the forethought and planning comes in. Ideally, you have two people cooking a risotto. One cooks the risotto base, and while they're doing that, the other cooks the other ingredients. Meat and seafood, particularly, will require cooking before they're added to the risotto, and cooking the base is a full time job. So ideally, your kitchen lackey will have the other ingredients ready just as you have the base ready, and you can combine them then. IF you're all alone, though, here's how I did this evenings:
Marinade the chicken in garlic, ginger, chili & coriander( which was this weeks theme, apparently, and an incredibly common combination in my kitchen, I must admit). I used four different oils for the marinade - a chili & mustard oil from Milawa, sesame oil, extra virgin olive (there are other kinds, apparently, but not in *my* kitchen), and my own blended garlic, chilli & coriander(oddly enough) olive oil.
Grate the cheese, cut the veggies, make the stock, have the stock simmering on the stove. Get everything you need ready now.
Once the chicken has marinaded for a few hours, fry it up with the chorizo sausage. When they're done, take the pan off the heat and put it aside, with the ingredients still in it. Cover it so the ingredients stay warm. I just stuck it on a spare burner, so it wasn't cooking, but wasn't far from the heat of the stove. Drain the excess oil into a big big pan. And I mean big. You can add butter to the oil if you like - it does seem to make the risotto creamier. Chop up your onion, and fry it up in the oil till it's soft and transparent. If you want other herbs or spices, add them here. Add your arborio rice. You need enough oil/butter to coat every grain of rice generously. Stir the rice (and get used to stirring the rice) until it also goes transparent - you can have a kernel of opalescence still in the middle, but you want the edges to be clear. You'll see what I mean. Keep the pan very hot through this, and move the ingredients fast. There's a point where the rice will just start to release a sort of cream, a few minutes into the frying. That's when you add your first ladle of stock. Or, y'know, when all the edges are transparent. That's probably a better guide. A couple of minutes, anyway.
From then on, the pattern is simple. Add a (small) ladle of stock, stir, stir. Add a small ladle of stock, stir, stir. You want to be adding the stock in very small amounts (1/4 cup), and you want all the stock to be absorbed before you add the next lot. And you want the pan to stay hot - the stock should certainly hit the pan and stay boiling, if half of it doesn't actually vaporise. On the gripping hand, don't let the rice stick to the base of the pan. Stirring vigorously helps here. As the rice softens, you can add less stock each time, to avoid the rice getting too gluggy. This pattern goes on for about 18 minutes. You want the rice to be al dente - not quite soft, but not crunchy. Once it gets to that point (or just before - start tasting at about 15 minutes, and allow time for your other ingredients to warm through), add a slightly larger ladle of stock, and your other ingredients. Stir until the ingredients are warmed through, and "bonded" with the risotto, but not more than a minute or two. If you cook it too long, you get a very glutinous risotto. That's not a crime from a taste point of view, and there are schools of thought that say it's ok from a technique point of view, too, but it's slightly lacking in finesse :)
Take the risotto off the heat, add some more butter and your cheeses, and stir vigorously. There's a fancy italian name for this step, but basically, this is the last step in making the risotto creamy. When you've stirred it all in, leave it for a minute or two to rest, then serve.
Note, in the context of that final step (especially for vegetarians), that there are risottos that consist of nothing but risotto base & cheeses. A good parmesan is almost mandatory, a good blue cheese, mascarpone, fetta, gruyere, anything with a certain amount of authoritah.
So there you go. And it's a perfect dish for Melbourne winters. Try that out, let me know if any of it is unclear, and next week, I'll do Gumbo. Promise :)
(For chicken salad, just do the first "fry your chicken" step, and then drain the chicken and add to a salad. We had a leafy salad mix with extra carrot, radish and mushroom)
sol.
.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-29 09:07 pm (UTC)They say that "a slut is someone who sleeps
with everyone while a bitch sleeps with
everyone but you!" This recipe will turn any
bitch into a slut… (http://eatdangerously.com/risotto_ai_funghi.html)
p.s. I only found this site this morning so I can't be responsible for anything that happens to you
Divinity
(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-29 09:43 pm (UTC)And that's a terrible thing to do to good scotch, anyway. Do you know what JW Blue *costs*?? You don't go throwing it around on rice.
Other than that, it's pretty much the same as mine, but with Scotch. I must admit, though, since I had been reading _Liquour_, I was trying to work in some way of adding booze to it. Generally one uses white wine instead of the scotch/first ladle of stock, but next time, I shall try scotch. Just not expensive scotch. :)
sol.
.