Asparagus Mushroom Risotto

You know that you've made a dish enough times to feel feel comfortable with the basic procedure when you can pick the ingredient variations and just head on in. I think I've finally reached that point with risotto. Not that I don't make mistakes or some aren't better than others, but I basically know what I'm doing.

There was some great looking Mexican asparagus in the grocery stores last week, and we decided that it needed to come home with us. We also had some mushrooms that needed using, and Julie made a strong pitch for using them here. I was dubious, but went along.

I put a pot of stock on to simmer and dropped the woody end of the asparagus in to add to the mix. I browned a diced onion and sliced mushrooms in a mix of butter and olive oil and then added 2/3 cup of arborio rice. Once the rice was glossy I added the first ladle full of stock. The secret to making risotto is adding the stock a little at a time and stirring gently but almost constantly. When rice was just getting toothy, I added the 1/2 inch pieces of asparagus, so that when the rice was finished (you want a starchy sauce, but the rice should still be firm) it would be tender but firm. When it reached this stage, I added a pat of butter and the 1/2 cup parmesan that Julie had shredded for me and stirred them in. It's best right away, so we ate it here with a simple salad.

As for me, I wouldn't combine the strong mushrooms with the subtle asparagus again, but Julie liked it fine. Now we just have to wait for spring and beauty of local asparagus to try it again.

Black Forest Cheesecake for Angie

For Christmas this year, Angie got a homemade cheesecake each month for four months, in the flavor of her choice. This is the third cake, and I used this recipe, but with substitutions (of course! Do I ever make a recipe without tweaking it?). I used a store-bought chocolate wafer crust and used only 2 packages of cream cheese. Also, instead of the nasty canned cherry pie filling, I used tart cherry jam that we made last year. I also topped it with chopped white and dark chocolate. The cake itself was dense and fudgy, but it definately needed the cherry and chocolate topping to break up the overwhelming flavor. Thumbs up. By far the best of the three cheesecakes I've made for her so far.

Cinnamon Rolls? Yes. Blueberry Rolls? Also Yes!

There's something about the hearty decadence of breakfast pastries. Breakfast is the one meal where sweets are a standard part of the menu, and yet (pace Bill Cosby) you wouldn't want just to eat a piece of cake for breakfast. So you need something more substantial. Something like candy, but in bread form. As far as pastries are concerned, I'm very happy to let someone else make them for me and pay them for their efforts. It's extremely unlikely that I've ever attempt anything as involved as these in my own home. Cinnamon rolls are about as ambitious as I get in the morning.
The other week I came across this recipe after a link to the site from Bitch Ph.D. No, my rolls wouldn't look as nice as hers, and even if they did, our camera isn't good enough to capture it, but still I could try.
So, Sunday before last, after having made the dough the night before and letting it rise over night, I got up early in the morning to roll out my rolls. I divided the dough in half, freezing half for later rolls, rolled out what was left, slathered it with butter and then cinnamon sugar (the red bits you see below are cinnamon candies that got mixed in with the cinnamon sugar after a recipe I can no longer remember), rolled it up, cut it into eight parts, covered it and went back to bed to let it rise. When the timer went off in the kitchen, I came back out and put it in the oven then crawled back into bed to await the cinnamon rolly goodness.

And there it is. They were tasty and flaky and sweet but not too sweet (per Nabeela's suggestion, I upped the sugar in the dough to 3/4 C). Fresh baked bread and cinnamon is a truly wonderful combination of smells, but I wondered if there wasn't something else that we could try. Then I noticed that the our blueberry jam was especially thick...

So we used butter, sugar, and jam for the filling, and Julie decided to be more aggressive with the icing. And it worked! The jam was thick enough that it didn't run and the blueberry came across as a distinct flavor, rather than just being swallowed up by the sweet. They're enough advance work that I'd save them for special occasions, but I'd definitely make them again.

Potato Vegetable Gratin

Julie and I were talking about it, and while we both certainly grew up with plenty of potato dishes, au gratin potatoes (not even the Franglaise term, potatoes au gratin) came from one of two places: from a red box that seemed to live indefinitely in the pantry, or, later, in all their orangey congealed glory, in the chafing dish of some slightly exotic buffet. They did not look or taste like this:

Ignore the burnt bits at the side. Those wash right off the pan (it's amazing that way), and the gratin itself was not at all burnt or dry. On the contrary, it was tender and soft and full of rich complex nutty goodness. Sigh...

I've mentioned the gratin thing before. I started making them at the end of last year as a way to use up aging potatoes, and whatever else sounded delicious. Prep for this is actually quite easy, once you get the hang of not bleeding profusely with the mandolin slicer. I use a variation of this recipe. You could use raw portabelo slices, like the recipe say, but you can also substitute whatever you have or is in season. This time I caramelized some onions, sauteed sliced criminis with them and then sprinkled them in between the layers along with some sliced Brussels sprouts.

I know that this is usually thought of as a side dish, but, if you do it up right, a piece of this, a simple salad and maybe a glass of red wine can be an amazingly satisfying meal.

Pudding is the New Ice Cream

Really, I mean that! This isn't just a snowclone or a marketing concept. It's ice cream; the ice cream I made:

Last week Julie, got a craving for cardamom rice pudding. So she looked at a variety of recipes on line and settled on this one, from the man who Julie used to call my "boyfriend." We didn't have any cream in the house at the time, so I increased the amounts of cow and coconut milk instead. The pudding was delicious, with the sharpness of the cardamom cut against the sweetness of the creamy rice and raisins and the great nutty crunch of the pistachios.

Then I thought, I haven't made ice cream in a little while, and most ice cream uses a custard base, so maybe this stuff would work. Armed with something closer to the correct ingredients (I basically doubled the liquid part, using one cup of rice with two cups milk, one cup coconut milk, one cup cream. 1/2 cup sugar, one full teaspoon ground cardamom, and about 1/2 cup each golden raisins and pistachios) I tried to make my vision a reality. And, what do you know, it worked! Julie still finds the rice in the ice cream confusing and it tends to freeze harder than I'd like it to, necessitating long warm up times for serving. I tried soaking the golden raisins in a little rum, but I think that I should have done that longer and use more. Hmm, future pudding based ice cream strategies to ponder.

The cardamom rice pudding ice cream is served here with a decent but forgettable chocolate hazelnut cake. I think I overburdened the cake by adding twice the amount of hazelnuts (I had some booze soaked one left over from liqueur making) and it ended up too dense and dry. I think I need to work on my bundt cake mojo.

Blood Orange and Hazelnut Salad and Dolmas

This is another one of those meals that was midway between an everyday fridge cleaner and a what-the-hell-are-we-doing-cooking-like-this-when-we-don't-have-company-coming meal.

Tis the season of bountiful citrus, and the co-op lately has been running specials on these gorgeous looking blood oranges. We first started buying blood oranges at the Dekalb Farmer's Market, and I only realized recently, after reading everyone's favorite food book from last year that their flesh has a flavor in between oranges and raspberries. Our standard salad recipe lately has been: lettuce (usually green or red leaf), possibly sliced carrots, some form of nut (thanks to Trader Joe's our freezer is generally stocked with an an assortment), and, at least for Julie, some form of citrus. These blood oranges seemed to call out quietly, but insistently, for hazelnuts, so we toasted some, rubbed the skins off and sprinkled them over the top. After sectioning the blood oranges, I made a quick vinaigrette with some zest and the juice of the remaining fruit. Such a nice combination textures and of bitter, sweet and sour flavors.

I don't remember the first time I made dolmas. My parents' time living in Chicago meant that they were well acquainted with the deliciousness of Greek food long before we could afford to go to the few Greek restaurants in the Twin Cities, and I know that they made dolmades once or twice in my childhood. It was probably sometime after becoming a vegetarian in high school that my mom and I first made their vegetarian, middle eastern cousins, dolmas, for some holiday gathering.
Julie and I made dolmas for a pot luck dinner that we hosted recently with folks from the History Center, and they were a big hit (or as much as anything can be when you're trying a little bit of everything from seven or eight tasty dishes). However, the big jar of grape leaves from Bill's costs about the same as the small jar of grape leaves, and so it seems wasteful not to buy the big jar and then wasteful not to make more within a couple of weeks so that the remaining grape leave don't get forgotten in the fridge and eventually turn moldy, like they did the last time. Anyway, once you get the hang of rolling them, it's really not that much work, and we put them in the oven to cook while we went to the gym for an hour. We used this recipe, without the green onions, and we baked them in the oven uncovered at 375 for an hour (This gives a chance for the dolmas to cook to tenderness and most of the water to steam away, so they're not soggy). Serve with some form of tzatziki or yogurt sauce. Wonderful lemony, pine nutty, oniony, ricey goodness.

Pea, Onion and Broccoli Soup, with Chard

Split pea soup was one of my Dad's favorite dishes, but something I never learned to like. It always just tasted of dust and salt and, I don't know, sadness?, to me. Every so often, Julie will ask me if split pea soup sounds good, and I say, no, it will never sound good. If you want to make it, I will eat it, but I will never be excited about it.

And so it came about the other week that we had an abundance of broccoli and notions of making it into a soup. Julie was in charge of finding the recipe, and, after disqualifying the countless milky and bland cream of broccoli soups she found, she looked inside the modestly titled The Best Ever Vegetarian Cookbook, which she had purchased on clearance a couple months back after falling for its many lovely and helpful pictures (Julie being a visually oriented cookbook shopper). There, she found a recipe for Pea, Leek and Broccoli soup, which sounded tasty enough, since the peas would be (frozen) fresh, rather than dried and split. Leeks, however, are expensive at the moment, and we didn't have any in the house, so I decided to substitute onions and to up the flavor component by caramelizing them. I made it for our friend Monique along with a quick saute of chard, and Julie enjoyed the leftovers the next day.

It was amazing. The sweetness of the peas really complemented the deeper green flavors of the broccoli and the sweet richness of the onions brought it all together. You could grate a sharp cheese over the top of this, or just enjoy it with some toasted bread. I may make it again in a couple of days. Here's the adapted recipe.

Dice one large onion and saute in a dutch oven or sturdy soup pot with two tablespoons olive oil and one tablespoon butter over medium-low heat until soft and brown, about fifteen minutes (part way through, you may want to deglaze with some wine and add three or four cloves of garlic, sliced). Add one quart vegetable stock and two medium potatoes, diced. Bring up to a boil, stirring to work in any caramelized bits. Cover and simmer about ten minutes. Add half a pound of fresh broccoli, cut into one to two inch pieces, and one and a half cups frozen peas. Cover and simmer ten minutes more, stirring occasionally. Blend the soup to your desired consistency. (I used a hand blender, so it still had some texture to it, which we enjoy. For smoother puree, work in batches with a blender.) Season with salt and pepper and garnish to your heart's content.