What is this? Another post? Holy crap, yes, it’s another post. This was another meal we had over the Memorial Day Weekend. It was a very green meal with green herb risotto and some (leftover) pea puree bruschetta. We even had matcha creme brulee for desert. See? very green!

The risotto was good, but I will confess to adding a tad more cheese that the original recipe called for — mainly a few tablespoons of herbed goat cheese and about twice as much Parmesan. That’s just how I roll.

The bruschetta was an afterthought, a little side-snack and a way to show off these awesome garden radishes that jwa pulled up. Grilled, sliced baguette, toasted and rubbed with garlic, then slathered with a bit of the puree, a half cherry tomato and a sliver of robusto cheese. Drizzled with a little balsamic vinegar and sprinkle some chopped chives (also from the garden) to finish. Surround the bruschetta on the platter with the aforementioned radishes.

Pea puree recipe is here.

Green Herb Risotto
Adapted from a recipe in Bon Appétit (July 2007)
1 1/2 cups (loosely packed) fresh baby spinach leaves
1/2 cup (loosely packed) fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup (loosely packed) fresh Italian parsley leaves
2 tbsp (1/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tbsp sliced, toasted almonds
2 garlic cloves
6 cups chicken broth
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium white onion, diced
1 medium orange or yellow bell pepper, diced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
2-3 tbsp goat cheese
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus additional for serving
salt & pepper

Blend first 6 ingredients in processor until thick paste forms. You can do this a few hours ahead of time, just wrap up and stick in the refrigerator.

Bring the broth to simmer in saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat to very low; cover to keep warm. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and bell pepper; sauté until soft, stirring often, about 10 minutes.

Add rice; stir until heated through, about 3 minutes. Add wine; simmer until absorbed, stirring often. Add warm broth mixture 1 cup at a time, allowing each addition to be absorbed before adding next and stirring often, until rice is tender but still firm to bite, about 20 minutes. You’ll use most if not all of the broth.

Stir in herb paste and the cheeses.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately in warm bowls, passing additional Parmesan cheese alongside. I garnished with a few chopped green onions and thyme sprigs. A nice drizzle of ilove oil would be good too on top!

I’ll try to get the matcha creme brulee recipe up this week too!

I cannot believe I’ve only made risotto a handful of times this winter! That is crazy because I luuurve risotto. Maybe the weather is turning all crappy again to inspire me to make more risotto?

Anyway, this is the latest risotto experiment — sort of a Spanish-inspired theme. I’ve just started eating cauliflower and I am trying to throw it into as many dishes as possible. Cauliflower in 2007/2008 is like the spinach of 1995.

I think cauliflower is the last vegetable I have left to develop a liking for…er, okay, wait, still not crazy about beets. And I have tried…but that’s a different story.

So, cauliflower is very good roasted, which is how this recipe starts. Roasting is always a good place to start. After the roasting, there is sauteing, stirring, melting and then eating.

Cauliflower Risotto with Saffron, Pancetta and Manchego
1 head of cauliflower, cut into 2-inch-wide florets
2 tbsp + 1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
1/4 cup pancetta cubes
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large sprig of rosemary, leaves removed and chopped
1 pinch saffron threads
1 cup arborio rice
1/2 cup of white wine
4 cups chicken stock, simmering
1/2 cup manchego cheese, grated (you can also sub different cheeses — Parmesan, feta, gruyere, goat cheese, I think they’d all work just fine)
Garnish: more chopped rosemary, grilled shrimp

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Toss cauliflower with oil, parmesan, some salt and pepper in a large bowl. Spread evenly on a baking pan and roast in upper third of oven, stirring occasionally, until golden, 25 to 30 minutes. Set aside.

Now, heat up a big pot and add the remaining olive oil and the pancetta cubes, onion and garlic. Cook for about 2-3 minutes and add the rosemary and saffron.

Next comes the rice. Add that to the pot and stir to coat in the oil and pancetta-y goodness. Add the wine and stir until it is mostly absorbed. Then, start adding the simmering broth (about 1/3 a cup at a time), stirring, adding more when the liquid in the risotto pot is almost absorbed.

When you’ve gone through about half the broth, add the cauliflower (do not forget the golden Parmesan bits!) and continue to add more broth as it cooks. On your last addition of broth, add the cheese. And stir while it melts. Taste and salt and pepper as needed.

Serve in bowls with more chopped parsley duh, I meant rosemary, as a garnish and grilled shrimp on the side if desired. And really, who doesn’t desire grilled shrimp on the side?

Red wine and bread on the side is also quite nice! Oh, hell, get a plate of green olives too…

This was one of those, “hmmmm, I wonder what I could throw into a risotto?” kind of meals. Really, once you have arborio rice, broth, wine and Parmesan cheese, anything else goes. So, I had a bag of interesting green garbanzo beans from Trader Joe’s in the freezer. I also had about a half pound of medium (say 36/40 count or somewhere around there — not too important, though) shrimp. Add some cherry tomatoes and it’s the first risotto of the 2006/2007 season!

Shrimp, Garbanzo Bean & Cherry Tomato Risotto
1/2 pound medium shrimp (size doesn’t really matter so much here, as you are going to slice the shrimp into bite-sized pieces — just don’t use small bay shrimp)
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
3/4 cup halved cherry tomatoes
1 cup frozen green garbanzo beans, (you could easily substitute edamame, canned garbanzo beans or frozen peas)
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 cups chicken broth (if your chicken broth is super chickeny, use a combination of chicken broth and water for the liquid)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
salt & pepper

Start with the shrimp. Rinse and devein as needed. Remove the tails, then slice in half length-wise. Cut those pieces in half if you are using super large shrimp. You want nice, bite-sized pieces. Salt and pepper the shrimp. Meanwhile, set a soup pot on the stove top and heat up the water and broth. Keep it at a simmer.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Saute the shrimp for about 1-2 minutes, until pink. Remove from the pan and cover with foil. In the same pan, add the rest of the olive oil, the onion and the garlic. Let cook 2-3 minutes until they start to soften. Add the rice and dried oregano. Stir to coat in the oil and let toast about a minute.

Now add the wine and stir while it is absorbed. Here’s the fun part — add the water/broth about a 1/2 cup at a time until it is absorbed by the rice. When you have about a cup left, add the garbanzo beans and tomatoes. The nice part about doing this when it’s cold out is that it keeps you warm.

On your last addition of liquid, add the shrimp. Stir until a bit more of the liquid is absorbed and the texture is nice and creamy. Add the cheese and combine. Squeeze in the lemon juice and salt & pepper to taste. Serve with more Parmesan as a garnish.

Next week: Some special baking, a retro thing, and a pot roast!

This last week here in Portland has been cold and rainy. A few nights ago, jwa and I even contemplated using the last of the firewood. We considered it briefly, but decided it was cozy enough lazing on the couch watching the Daily Show and the Lost finale with the cats (they make surprisingly good lap and leg warmers).

Feeling the need for more warmth and a little comfort while the rain pounded the roof and the basement collected a little bit of water, I decided to whip up a pot of asparagus risotto. It’s a very good dish but it can be tricky to time it right. Ideally, you want to make it in the Spring, when asparagus is in season, but when it’s too hot, the last thing a person wants is a big bowl of hot, heavy rice. Thankfully, we live in western Oregon, where except for one typically weird week towards the end of Spring/early Summer, it can be counted on to be cold and rainy until July. Excellent.

My other reason for posting this recipe is to participate in Kevin’s Asparagus Aspirations event over at Seriously Good. It seems that there are a lot of asparagus fans with food blogs out there. Check out his site for some serious asparagus inspiration!

Asparagus Risotto
Loosely based on a recipe in The Rice Bible by Christian Teubner.
12-16 asparagus stalks, depending on size (large, thick stalks use less, medium-sized use the whole 15)
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup diced shallots (I did not have shallots, I used 2 green onions, chopped instead)
1 cup arborio rice
3/4 cup dry white wine or amber beer
3 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
1 green onion, diced (both white and green parts)
1 tbsp butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut asparagus into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Cook asparagus in 2 cups of boiling water for 5 minutes, or until the asparagus is bright green and a little tender. Drain and reserve cooking liquid.

Add the asparagus liquid to the chicken stock and heat in a pot, bringing to a simmer. Meanwhile, heat oil in a heavy-bottomed pot and sauté the shallot (or your onion of choice) until soft, 3-4 minutes. Add the rice and coat with the oil. Next, add the wine or beer and stir until absorbed.

When the alcohol is absorbed, start adding the stock/asparagus liquid in 1/2 cup increments. Stir frequently, adding more liquid just when the previous bath is absorbed.

When the risotto is almost done, add the asparagus with the last bath of liquid. Stir until it is creamy and the rice is tender, but still with a little bite.

Add the Parmesan cheese and stir to incorporate. The risotto should be even creamier now. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed. Sometimes, I also add a pinch of cayenne pepper here. Finish with the tablespoon of butter and mix until it is all melted.

Garnish with a little diced green onion, more black pepper and extra Parmesan cheese.

These recipes for shrimp skewers and glaze, I found on Epicurious the other day and thought they looked really good. It was one of those, “Oh, I think we’re having that for dinner tomorrow” moments. It just looked all fresh and healthy and kind of light. Okay, this was in the pre-risotto phase but bear with me here.

The original recipe was for outdoor grill cooking but I used my grill pan. If you make these outside, it’s pretty much the same thing — 3 minutes per side. Oh and if you make these outside on the grill, you’ll want to soak your skewers in water for 30 minutes before assembling or use metal skewers.

Shrimp, Mango & Red Pepper Skewers
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp minced peeled fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried crushed red pepper
36 jumbo shrimp (about 2 pounds), peeled, tails left intact, deveined
2 red bell peppers, each cut into 12 pieces
2 firm but ripe mangoes, peeled, pitted, cut into cubes
twelve 12-inch bamboo skewers
Garnishes: Lime wedges and fresh, chopped cilantro

Mix olive oil, ginger, pepper flakes and garlic in large bowl. Add shrimp, bell peppers and mangoes; toss to coat. Alternate bell pepper, mango and 3 jumbo shrimp on each of the skewers. I ran out of bell pepper before shrimp and mango, so one of my skewers was just mango and shrimp. That was okay.

Heat a grill pan and cook shrimp until done, brushing with glaze during last 2 minutes. This will be about three minutes per side. I brushed with glaze before turning over on second side.

I found that my shrimp were not laying completely flat due to the mangoes and peppers. Therefore, they weren’t really cooking completely. An easy way to fix this was to cover the pan. That way, if they didn’t cook with direct heat from the pan surface, they cooked from the heat present inside the covered pan. They still got a few nice lines on them from the grill pan and turned pink so it worked out fine.

Cook the skewers in batches and keep finished skewers warm on a plate, covered with foil until ready to eat.

Guava-Lime Glaze
1 can guava nectar
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup red wine vinegar (I only had port wine vinegar so I used that — that’s why my glaze is a little dark)
1/3 cup fresh lime juice

Combine nectar, orange juice and vinegar in heavy medium saucepan. Boil until reduced to 2/3 cup, about 30-40 minutes. Keep a close eye on this as I almost had a boil over of epic proportions. Imagine cleaning some of that off your stove top. Yikes! Cool completely. Mix in lime juice. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.)

You can also, completely guilt-free, just buy a jarred marinade or glaze instead and use that on the shrimp.

Coconut Risotto
1 can light coconut milk
3 cups chicken stock
1/4 - 1/2 tsp Thai chili paste or red pepper flakes (to your taste really, if you like things spicy, go crazy, if not, be timid)
1 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 leek, trimmed, washed, and sliced
1 tsp lemon grass paste (if you don’t have this, don’t worry about it. You could also just simmer a piece of lemon grass in the coconut stock too)
1 cup arborio rice
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic
salt & pepper to taste

This I decided to make at the last minute instead of plain coconut rice. Well, it wasn’t really at the last minute, as risotto isn’t really a last minute type of undertaking, but it was when I was getting everything together to start dinner. I realized I had everything to make risotto and just sort of winged it as I do love the creamy. As I mentioned before, this is one of the things I love most about risotto (besides the creamy) — once you get used to making it, you can pretty much just make recipes up.

So, for this version, begin by combining the coconut milk, chicken stock, lemon grass paste, chili paste (or pepper flakes) and the piece of ginger in a pot. Bring it up to a simmer. Next, in a heavy bottomed soup pot, add the olive oil and sauté the leeks and garlic until soft, about 3 minutes (medium heat). Add the rice and stir to coat with the oil. Begin to add the simmering liquid in 1/2 cup portions, stirring until all the liquid is absorbed before adding more. When you get close to the end of the liquid, fish the ginger out and discard.

Edited to add – Oh, if you have some white wine open, go ahead and start with a 1/2 cup of that into the rice (before adding and coconut-stock). I just didn’t have any white wine open and red wine didn’t seem like a good idea for this risotto.

You can cheat a little here and not stir constantly but try to stir every couple of minutes at least. This will allow you to get the shrimp going while still making the risotto.

You will probably go through most of the liquid. When you’re getting close to using it all, give the risotto a taste and see if it’s done. It should be creamy and soft. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve on a plate and place 2-3 skewers alongside. Garnish with lime pieces and cilantro. Serve more chili paste on the side, if someone you know is like jwa, who is slightly insane and likes things crazy-spicy-hot. Laugh a little when he burns his mouth and begs for more wine.