bridget

pork chops loco moco

11/02/2009 By bridget

I feel a little guilty when Dave and I spend most of the weekend sleeping in, watching football, reading books, and, in my case, cooking. We are booooring.

But then I figure that someday, if everything goes as planned, we’ll have kids and then we won’t be able to spend all weekend being lazy. I don’t think I’ll be cooking from Cooks Illustrated’s Restaurant Favorites at Home very often when we have kids, which is a shame, because it’s a fun cookbook and I haven’t used it as much as I should. I better take advantage while I can.

Although really, this meal didn’t take nearly as long to prepare as I thought it would based on the length of the recipe. It’s true that there are five parts – rice, pork chops, scrambled eggs, mushroom gravy, and fried onions. Fortunately, the rice, meat and eggs are as simple as they could get, and the sauce is pretty quick as well. That means that only the onions take some time.

Loco moco is a Hawaiian dish that, as its most basic, is rice, a hamburger patty, gravy, and a fried egg. For their cookbook, Cooks Illustrated adapted the recipe from Sam Choy’s, who replace the hamburger with a pork chop, the fried egg with scrambled, and the brown gravy with a mushroom cream sauce, in addition to adding the fried onions.

Hoo boy, I like this kind of meal anyway, where a bunch of different stuff all meshes together, but this in particular was fantastic. So many textures – the meat, the rice, soft eggs, crunchy onions. So many flavors – nutty white rice, sweet fried onions, savory pork, all coated in a rich mushroom sauce. Even if it had taken most of a day to make, which it didn’t, it would have been worth it. Especially since I would have just been lounging around in my pajamas anyway.

One year ago: Pumpkin Pancakes

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Pork Chops with Rice, Eggs, Onions, and Gravy (from Cooks Illustrated’s Restaurant Favorites at Home)

This is the recipe straight from the cookbook. However, next time I plan to use a boneless pork chop. I think it will brown better in the pan, plus it was a little hard to see where the bone was versus the meat once the pork was covered in sauce and other goodies.

Also, I think it makes more sense to cook the pork chop before the eggs. And, in step 3, I don’t see why you’d want to dirty an extra dish by transferring the sauce to a measuring cup; just cover the pan you cooked it in. Finally, the recipe calls for both the eggs and the pork chops to be cooked on high heat, but I’ve had better luck with medium-high heat for both.

Fried Onions:
3 cups vegetable oil
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon ground black pepper
1 small yellow onion, halved and sliced thin

Rice:
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 cup long-grain white rice
½ teaspoon salt

Sauce:
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced thin
1 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
salt and ground black pepper

Eggs:
4 large eggs
¼ cup whole milk
pinch ground black pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Pork chops:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
4 thin bone-in center-cut loin pork chops, about ½ inch thick
salt and ground black pepper

1. For the fried onions: Heat the vegetable oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it reached 350 degrees. (Use an instant-read thermometer that registers high temperatures or clip a candy/deep-fat thermometer onto the side of the pan before turning on the heat.) Meanwhile, mix the flour, salt, and pepper together in a large bowl. Add the onion to the flour mixture and toss thoroughly to coat. Transfer the floured onion to a large strainer (or colander) set over another bowl (or the sink) and shake vigorously to remove the excess flour. Add the onion to the oil and fry until golden brown, 2 to 2½ minutes, adjusting the heat as necessary to maintain the cooking temperature. Remove the onion from the oil using a spider or slotted spoon, tapping the handle several times on the rim of the pot to drain any excess oil, then transfer to a large plate lined with several layers of paper towels. Set aside.

2. For the rice: Heat the vegetable oil in a small saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add the rice and cook, stirring constantly, until transparent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add 1½ cups water and the salt. Bring to a boil, swirling the pan to blend the ingredients. Reduce the heat to low, cover tightly, and cook until the liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and cover the pan with a clean dish towel and then the lid. Let the rice stand, covered, to finish cooking, about 15 minutes longer. Fluff with a fork and set aside.

3. For the sauce: Mix the cornstarch and 1 teaspoon water together in a small bowl and set aside. Heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat until shimmering. Stir in the shiitakes, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Cook until the mushrooms release their moisture and begin to brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in the cream, soy sauce, and oyster sauce, increase the heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil. Whisk in the cornstarch mixture and return to a boil, whisking constantly. Cook, whisking constantly, until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 30 seconds. Remove the sauce from the heat and season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer the sauce to a liquid measuring cup, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and set aside.

4. For the eggs: Crack the eggs into a medium bowl and add the milk, salt and pepper. Beat with a fork until the streaks are gone and the color is pure yellow; stop beating while the bubbles are still large. Melt the butter in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat until foaming, swirling it around and up the sides of the pan. Before the form completely subsides, pour in the beaten eggs. Using a heatproof spatula, push the eggs from one side of the pan to the other, slowly but deliberately lifting and folding the eggs as they form curds, until the eggs are nicely clumped into a single mound but remain shiny and set, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl and cover to keep warm.

5. For the pork chops: Wipe the nonstick skillet clean with a wad of paper towels. Add the vegetable oil and heat over high heat until smoking. Season the pork chops generously with salt and pepper. Lay the pork chops in a single layer in the skillet and cook until golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn and cook on the second side until lightly brown and cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes longer.

6. To serve: Divide the rice among 4 individual plates. Lay a pork chop on top of the rice and top with equal portions of scrambled eggs. Pour about 3 tablespoons of the sauce over the egg and pork on each plate, and sprinkle with the fried onions. Serve immediately.

Filed Under: eggs, pork, rice, vegetables

sandwich rolls

11/01/2009 By bridget

Allright, so. NaBloPoMo. National Blog Posting Month, or in my case, Clean Out the Crazy-Full Pending Folder Month. I remember it being pretty tough last year, and it’s looking like it’s going to be even more challenging this year, because we finally (!!!) got a move date, and it’s the first week of December. That means November will include not just travel for Thanksgiving, but flying across the country to look for houses, and packing packing packing!

Keeping with NaBloPoMo tradition, I’m starting with the oldest recipe in my Pending folder – from six months ago, yeesh. Please don’t take the delay as a sign of its quality! Truthfully, I’m just lazy and it’s a time-consuming entry.

I’ve been battling with finding or developing the perfect sandwich roll recipe for years, and I finally nailed it. My grocery store makes great sandwich rolls – fluffy and with a soft crust so your filling doesn’t squoosh out the other end when you try to bite into your sandwich. The problems with these rolls are twofold: First, they’re completely white bread, and I always like at least a little whole wheat flour in my bread. Second, they’re a bit too big for grilled cheese with tomato soup. And I suppose there’s a third problem: Our grocery store isn’t moving to New Mexico with us. So sad.

My initial attempts to make sandwich rolls tended to be either too dense, with a crust too tough, or misshapen. I had difficulty getting round rolls without deflating the risen dough. Or the dough didn’t have enough structure so the rolls turned into pancakes as they expanded instead of balls.

I believe I’ve solved all of those problems with this recipe. A slow overnight cold rise improves flavor, and then two turns of the rising dough gives it plenty of strength, so that when it rises, it rises up and not out. To shape the rolls into even circles, I pulled the edges around and pinched them together to increase the surface tension of the doughballs. This is a bit risky, because you have to be gentle and just tug at the very edges of the dough without deflating the dough. Then just roll it around a bit to even out the edges.

Perfect! Light and fluffy, tall, with a soft crust, and completely adaptable with regards to size and degree of whole wheatiness. And I figured it out just in time – before moving far, far away from my trusty favorite grocery store and their wonderful sandwich rolls.

One year ago: Mushroom Phyllo Triangles and Crawfish Phyllo Triangles

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Sandwich Rolls

Makes 12

Feel free to substitute whole wheat flour for some of the unbleached flour. If you use 1 cup whole wheat and 3 cups white flour, you’ll hardly notice a difference in flavor, texture, or rising time. At 2 cups whole wheat flour and 2 cups white flour, the difference will be more significant but the rolls will still be excellent. If you want to use even more whole wheat flour, I would adapt 100% whole wheat sandwich bread into rolls.

If it works better for your schedule, go ahead and skip the overnight chill.

4 cups (19.2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1½ cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons milk for brushing the rolls

1. Stand mixer: Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the water and oil. Continue mixing on medium-low until the dough is elastic and supple, about 8 minutes. You may need to add a little more flour or water to get the correct consistency – soft but not really sticky. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

By hand: Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the water and oil. Stir the mixture until the dough comes together. Transfer it to a floured board or countertop and knead, incorporating as little flour as possible, for about 10 minutes, until the dough is elastic and supple. You may need to add a little more flour or water to get the correct consistency – soft but not really sticky. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

2. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let it warm and rise at room temperature until it’s double the original volume, 2-4 hours (depending on the temperature of the ingredients you started with and the room temperature).

3. Give the dough one turn, by folding it into thirds like a sheet of paper going into an envelope, than in half the other direction (as shown in the photos above). Allow the dough to rise again, which should take about an hour. Give it another turn, then let it rise again, which will probably take less than an hour.

4. Once the dough has doubled in size for the third time, cut it into 12 pieces. Very gently pull the edges of each dough ball around to one side and pinch them together, as shown in the photos above. Roll the dough between the palm of your hand and a board, lightly floured if necessary. Place the formed rolls, pinched side down, on 2 baking pans lined with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

5. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 400ºC. Let the rolls rise until puffy and about one and a half times their original size, 30-45 minutes. Brush them with milk and bake for 12 minutes, until golden brown and an instant thermometer inserted into the center of one measures 185-200ºC. (I suggest baking just one pan of rolls at a time. An extra 15 minutes of rising won’t ruin your rolls.) Let cool until room temperature before serving, about 45 minutes.

Filed Under: bread, freezer friendly, sandwiches, whole grains, yeast bread

sweet potato hash

10/30/2009 By bridget

While I can be, shall we say, particular about preparation, I think keeping an open mind is so important when it comes to both ingredients and certain dishes.

For example, stuffing. There’s nothing unpleasant about bread, seasonings, aromatics, and broth baked until the flavors are blended and the top is crispy. When people say they don’t like stuffing, I really think they just didn’t like the stuffing they had when they were young. They just need to try a different recipe (add bacon!) to enjoy it more.

As far as ingredients that often inspire pickiness, sweet potatoes have a bad name. For a lot of people, one of the only ways they’ve seen sweet potatoes prepared is in that sugary, marshmallow-topped weirdness at Thanksgiving. Hey! Let’s take something already sweet, cook it in sugar, top it with more sugar, and serve it with dinner! Blech.

Because I don’t like those sweet potatoes and wasn’t exposed to them prepared other ways, I always assumed I didn’t like sweet potatoes at all. But now I know better! I like them quite a bit in more savory preparations.

Take this dish. Salty bacon, flavorful slightly caramelized vegetables, and browned sweet potatoes. What is there not to like, especially when the whole thing is topped with an egg? It goes to prove that I could miss out on some great meals if I don’t remember that just because I don’t like an ingredient prepared one way doesn’t mean I won’t like it in other dishes.

One year ago: Peter Reinhart’s Pizza Dough

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Sweet-Potato Hash with Bacon (adapted from epicurious/Gourmet)

Serves 4

These are the same ingredients in the same proportions as the original recipe, but I’ve tweaked the preparation a bit because a number of reviewers complained that the original was too greasy. Adding eggs on top is also my addition, but Dave and I tried it with and without the eggs, and while it was good without, it was even better with.

½ pound sliced bacon, cut into ¼-inch strips
2 medium onions, chopped
1 large red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
salt and pepper
2 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
4 eggs (optional)

1. Cook the bacon in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until it renders some fat and begins to brown. Drain off all of the fat except for a thin coating on the pan, then add the onions, red pepper, ½ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper. Cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened, 7-8 minutes.

2. Stir in the potatoes and ½ teaspoon salt. Cover the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are tender and starting to brown, 10 to 14 minutes. Stir in the thyme and season to taste.

3. If you’re adding the eggs, create four indentions in the hash and break an egg into each. Season the eggs and cover the pan. Lower the heat to medium-low and cook without removing the lid for at least 6 minutes, when you can start testing for doneness. I like my eggs without any runniness at all in the white but with gooey yolks, and it takes around 8 minutes.

Filed Under: breakfast, eggs, fall, gluten free, one pot meal, pork, potatoes, vegetables

cherry-fudge brownie torte

10/27/2009 By bridget

Most people I know have some Thing that they are, corny and dramatic as it sounds, passionate about. For Dave it’s music. I have a friend who brews beer, another who gardens, one who is all about house renovation, one who could spend hours a day researching his next bottle of wine. I love this aspect of people.

But damn, to have your Thing be baking? When you’re small and only moderately active, it presents a challenge. I think I could more easily give up eating dessert if I wouldn’t also have to give up baking dessert. I love watching butter and sugar and flour turn into dough. I love watching the shapes the beater makes as it spins through batter, the soft peaks of heavy cream, the smooth shine of melted chocolate.

I’m not overweight and I don’t think I’m even continually gaining weight – but my pants are a lot tighter than they were a year ago, and damn it, I like those pants. I like my clothes to be flattering, and I like being comfortable wearing a bathing suit.

But something has to give, other than the buttons on my jeans, that is. I’ve said this before. Nothing has given before.

This cake is definitely not a good place to start. The base is almost flourless, largely chocolate and butter and eggs. Dried cherries are added to the cake batter after they’re plumped in water, then flambéed in kirsch. Remembering how much I liked the partially pureed, evenly dispersed prunes in the chocolate whiskey cake, I mashed up these cherries as well.

The chocolate brownie base is covered in a mixture of cream cheese, mascarpone, and cream. Yeah, Tuesdays with Dorie hasn’t made a dessert this rich is a while. It is a good one though. I love the bright tartness of the cherries in the chocolate cake, and light mousse is a nice contrast to the dense cake.

So what to do in the face of this cake when I also want to feel good about myself? Well, eat healthier during the times when I’m not eating dessert, for one thing. For another, don’t bake anything extra, at least until Thanksgiving, when I’ll re-evaluate.

So, my goal, which I present to you: From now until Thanksgiving, so for a month, I won’t bake anything other than what’s required for my blog, 100% whole wheat bread, and a batch or two of biscotti for Dave to eat at work. I’m passionate about baking and it makes me happy, but having clothes that fit makes me happy too. I have to compromise. (Please don’t be confused if you see a slew of dessert recipes here over the next month. I have a huge backlog of recipes to post.)

If you’d like to try this cake, April has it posted on her blog. I accidentally melted all of the chocolate instead of saving a portion to mix in to the batter at the end.

One year ago: Dorie’s Chocolate Cupcakes

Filed Under: cake, chocolate, dessert, fruit, tuesdays with dorie

sun-dried tomato jam

10/26/2009 By bridget

Crusty bread, cheese, cured sausage, fruit. It’s a seriously underestimated meal. Yes, a meal. Not a particularly healthy one, I admit, but it does cover all of the nutritional bases, as long as you make an extra effort to eat a lot of the fruit. It doesn’t hurt to use 100% whole wheat bread either.

And if you add a bit of tomato jam, you’ve just given yourself one more healthy-ish vegetably option. (“Healthy-ish” and “vegetably” really is how I think about nutrition. It seems to sorta kinda work.) The jam is just sautéed and then stewed vegetables.

The result is a perfect counterpart for creamy or sharp or tangy cheese (or one of each!), salty salami, and fresh berries or grapes. The jam is both sweet and savory, fantastic spread on a slice of baguette by itself or combined with cheese. Definitely a great addition to one of my favorite somewhat indulgent meals. Or maybe you’re a normal person and would serve this as an appetizer? I guess that would work too.

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Sun-dried Tomato Jam (adapted from Everyday Italian via Confections of a Foodie Bride)

The original recipe is for crostini with goat cheese, but I thought the jam was a great addition to a cheese plate on its own.

If you can find pre-sliced dried tomatoes, your life will be much easier. Chopping greasy, slippery tomatoes is the hardest part of this recipe.

Makes about 1½ cups

8oz jar sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, drained and chopped, oil reserved
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ onion, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoon sugar
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 cup water
½ cup chicken broth
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Place a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the chopped sun-dried tomatoes, 1 tablespoon of the reserved sun-dried tomato oil, olive oil, onion, and garlic. Stir and cook until the onions are soft and beginning to brown at the edges, about 5 to 7 minutes.

2. Add the sugar, vinegar, water, chicken broth, thyme, salt, and pepper. Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove the cover and continue simmering until most of the liquid is reduced and the mixture is the consistency of jam, about 5 to 10 more minutes. Remove from the heat, let cool slightly, and serve.

Filed Under: appetizers, dips, favorites, gluten free, vegetables

brown rice with black beans

10/22/2009 By bridget

Of all the whole grains, brown rice has been the hardest for me to accept. I realize now that I’d been cooking it wrong for years. I just couldn’t seem to cook it through all the way, and I tried a bunch of different recipes, but it was always crunchy.

Then sometime last year, Cooks Illustrated sent me a recipe to test for them for brown rice with andouille, and not only does it have andouille, which, come on, andouille, delicious, but at the time I was religiously making every recipe they sent for me to test. (It got to the point where I’d get the magazines and I’d already have made half the recipes. I’ve since slacked off.) So I only made the recipe because I felt like I had to, plus of course the andouille. But it was fantastic, just so, so good. It was a revelation for me, because it was the first brown rice I’d made that was not just edible, but delicious.

But that isn’t the recipe I’m telling you about today. Ha! When the magazine issue came out, it had a few other variations, and one is just perfect for me. Brown rice, black beans and a bunch of aromatics, how healthy and tasty does that sound?

The first time I made it, I followed the directions fairly closely, just adding the scraped-off kernels of one cob of corn at the end of cooking. That was a great addition, especially visually. Corn isn’t in season anymore, so I skipped it this next time. I doubled the black beans the second time, because you can never go wrong with more black beans. I also added an avocado and wow! I mean, it goes without saying that avocado improves almost anything, but it was particularly complimentary with this.

If you’ve ever had doubts about brown rice, this recipe will make a believer out of you. And if you’re already a convert, this dish will be a great addition to your repertoire.

One year ago: Sushi Bowls

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Brown Rice with Black Beans and Cilantro (from Cooks Illustrated)

I like to double the black beans. Corn, either cut off of the cob or 1 cup frozen and defrosted, is a good addition stirred in with the black beans. One diced avocado is delicious added with the cilantro. I used red pepper, because I like them better than green.

Serves 4 to 6

4 teaspoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped fine (about 1 cup)
1 green bell pepper, chopped fine
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2¼ cups water
1½ cups brown rice, long-grain
1 teaspoon salt
1 (15.5-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 lime, cut into wedges

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees. Heat oil in large Dutch oven over medium heat until shimmering. Add onion and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until well browned, 12 to 14 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, 30 seconds.

2. Add broth and water; cover and bring to boil. Remove pot from heat; stir in rice and salt. Cover and bake rice until tender, 65 to 70 minutes.

3. Remove pot from oven, uncover, fluff rice with fork, stir in beans, and replace lid; let stand 5 minutes. Stir in cilantro and black pepper. Serve, passing lime wedges separately.

Filed Under: beans, favorites, gluten free, healthy, one pot meal, vegetables, vegetarian, whole grains

sweet potato biscuits

10/20/2009 By bridget

I love that not just one, but two of this month’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipes are non-desserts. I haven’t baked a TWD dessert in weeks! I’ve gone almost a month with choosing all of my own desserts!

I don’t mean to complain; obviously I like being part of the group, or, well, I wouldn’t be. It’s just that I’m only baking for me and Dave, so if a dessert recipe makes 12 servings, that’s all we get for the week. That’s why I have a calculator in the kitchen and many many small oddly shaped pans. Fractions are my friend if I want to bake more than once per week.

Getting to serve a TWD recipe with dinner is a rare treat. These sweet potato biscuits were a nice complement to the roasted butternut squash salad I made a few weeks ago.

These biscuits are made the standard biscuit way – cut cold butter into flour+flavoring+leavening, then moisten the mixture, in this case with mashed sweet potatoes. It quickly became apparent that my sweet potatoes (bought fresh, then cooked and mashed) weren’t going to be able to turn the dry ingredients into biscuit dough, so I added some buttermilk, which helped.

Except that something seems to have gone wrong, because my biscuits didn’t rise hardly at all. I liked the flavor quite a bit, but the texture was oh-so-dense. Still, this is the first sweet potato biscuit I’ve tried, and I quite like the idea. I’ll need to play with some more recipes.

Erin chose this recipe for TWD, and she has it posted.

One year ago: Pumpkin Muffins

Filed Under: bread, breakfast, fall, freezer friendly, potatoes, quick bread, tuesdays with dorie

pumpkin risotto

10/17/2009 By bridget

Everyone’s goal for their food blog is different. Are you keeping a log of recipes you make for your own sake – to store them somewhere, or to track your progress as a cook? Do you only publish recipes that you recommend others make? Do you have a blog just to cook along with various groups? All are perfectly fine reasons to maintain a food blog.

Periodically I have to ask myself what my stance is. The question only comes up when I make something that I’d like to share, even though it wasn’t necessarily my favorite dish ever. And I think I’ve decided that, for me, my food blog is somewhere I get to talk about cooking to people who are also interested in food. Basically it’s to offload my food thoughts to people who actually care, saving my friends and family from hearing about cooking nonstop. Not that the topic doesn’t still come up…let’s just say, periodically.

So, let us discuss, then, this risotto. I’ve made risotto plenty of times before, but usually following the same basic recipe and just adding in whatever extra ingredient I wanted (peppers, peas, greens, etc). This time I decided to follow a different recipe.

You probably know the basic risotto process – sauté onions and garlic, add the rice, then the wine, then the chicken broth, gradually, and ending with parmesan cheese. This recipe is a bit different. It starts with substantially more butter than I would normally use, in which the onion (supposed to be leeks, but I always forget to buy them) and pumpkin are sautéed. Then the rice is stirred in, like normal, but next is the chicken broth instead of the wine. The broth and wine are added alternately as the rice cooks. Mascarpone is stirred in at the end along with the parmesan.

It was quite a bit winier than I’m used to risotto tasting, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was also quite a bit cheesier, which I suppose should have been a no-brainer with all the mascarpone, but somehow I was expecting it to add richness without the cheesy flavor.

Overall, it was…fine. Good? Not necessarily great. I just like my regular risotto better. Some foods are already rich enough that you don’t really need to add twice the butter and a dollop of the creamiest cheese ever. So maybe I don’t strongly recommend this recipe, but I thought it was interesting, and when it comes to choosing recipes to blog about, I guess interesting (to me, and if I’m lucky, to you) is what I’m most concerned with.

One year ago: Mulled Cider

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Pumpkin Risotto (copied with no changes from Cucina Italiana April 2001)

3.5 cups chicken broth
1 small pumpkin (about ½ pound)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large leek, white part only, halved lengthwise, rinsed, and diced
1 cup Arborio rice
1 cup dry white wine
¼ cup Mascarpone
⅓ cup (.67 ounce) grated Parmigiano Reggiano

1. Heat broth in a small pan and keep it hot. Cut off the pumpkin stem. With a vegetable peeler, remove the skin. Cut the pumpkin in half, and remove and discard the seeds and stringy flesh. Dice enough of the pumpkin to make 1 cup. (Save any remaining pumpkin for another use; soup is a particularly good possibility.)

2. In a large saucepan, melt the butter. Add the pumpkin and leek, and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until softened, about 10 minutes. Add the rice and stir well to coat it with the butter. Cook, stirring, until the rice begins to crackle, about 5 minutes; do not let the rice brown.

3. Slowly add ½ cup of the broth and stir constantly until the rice absorbs all the liquid; add 2 tablespoons of the wine and continue stirring until it is absorbed by the rice. Continue adding broth and wine alternately to the rice, stirring all the while, until the rice is al dente and has a creamy consistency, about 15 minutes.

4. Stir in the Mascarpone and Parmigiano, blending well and stirring until the Mascarpone melts. Serve immediately.

Filed Under: cheese, fall, gluten free, rice, side dish, vegetables

white bean avocado sandwich

10/15/2009 By bridget

I believe that people are what they think they are, which is just a less fancy way of saying that you can do just about anything you think you can do. I remember in high school, I consistently got an 89% in my classes, and I always wondered why I hadn’t worked just a bit harder to get an A. But I knew myself as a B+ student, so I worked just hard enough to get a B+.

Early on in college, more by luck than design, I got straight A’s one semester. And then I knew I could do it – from then on, I was a pretty solid A student.

Lately I’ve been thinking of myself as an indulgent eater. I see so many people on strict diets – raw food, clean food, low carb, vegan. I don’t, and never plan to, follow any of these eating philosophies. I eat refined flours and sugars, red meat and full-fat cheeses, butter and alcohol. When I compared myself to these people, I felt lax in my eating habits. And once I started believing I ate poorly, my eating habits did, indeed, decline.

But the truth is, more of the time, I eat very healthfully. All of those treats above? You’ve heard it before – moderation. Most of my snacks are fresh fruit and vegetables. My tiny daily bagel is 100% whole grain. We rarely eat meat on weekdays, and I don’t drink alcohol on weekdays. I do eat dessert every single day, but we’re talking one, maybe two, small cookies.

I need to remember that I do follow a good diet regularly, so that making healthy choices is easier. This sandwich, introduced to me by the same friend whose recipes for pumpkin muffins and peanut dip I love, is a perfect example of how I like to eat. Whole grains, beans, and lots of vegetables. It’s easy, filling, portable, and most importantly – delicious.

One year ago: Green Chile Rellenos

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White Bean Avocado Sandwich

Serves 4

I’ve tried mushing the beans up with a potato masher, but I really do prefer the creamy smooth texture a food processor provides. Also, one thing I’ve learned after making this a few times is to overseason the beans. The seasonings in the beans are flavoring the entire sandwich, so add the lemon juice, salt, and pepper until just past how you’d normally prefer them. Because I’m apparently salt-crazy, I also give the avocado slices a light sprinkling of salt, as well as squeeze some more lemon juice over them.

1 (15-ounce) can white beans, drained and rinsed
1 lemon
salt and pepper
8 slices hearty whole-grain sandwich bread
1 avocado, quartered, peeled, and sliced thin
a few leaves of leaf lettuce, torn into sandwich-sized pieces
some alfalfa sprouts
a bit of red onion, sliced thin

1. In a food processor, puree the beans until they’re completely smooth. Season with lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste (see note). I took notes on about how much of everything to add and then lost them, but I think a reasonable place to start is 2 tablespoons lemon juice, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ⅛ teaspoon pepper.

2. Thickly spread one side of each piece of bread with the bean mixture. Top four of the bread slices with slices of avocado, a bit of onion, and plenty of lettuce. Press some sprouts into the bean mixture on the other four slices of bread. Place the sprout-bread, spout side down (duh) on the other-stuff-bread, slice the sandwich in half if you want, and enjoy.

Filed Under: beans, favorites, healthy, sandwiches, vegetables, vegetarian, weeknight meal, whole grains

allspice crumb muffins

10/13/2009 By bridget

Dave wants just one thing to make his workday more enjoyable, just one simple thing, and that’s biscotti. Although what he really wants is almond biscotti, and not any almond biscotti, it has to be this recipe.

Sadly for Dave, biscotti aren’t one of my favorite things to bake, and I certainly have no interest in making the same recipe over and over again. No no, I have much more fun making muffins, so usually he brings muffins to work instead of biscotti. Poor, poor Dave.

Muffins are just so easy. Mix up some dry ingredients, mix up some wet ingredients, stir them together. Lately I’ve been adding the sugar and salt with the wet ingredients instead of the dry. They both dissolve easily, and if it’s brown sugar, I don’t have to worry about it clumping.

I wish I had taken the time to grind my own allspice – I have whole berries, plus a spice-dedicated coffee grinder, but I got lazy and stuck to the powder and my allspice flavor didn’t seem very distinct. But that’s okay, because these still make an excellent muffin – light, tender, tasty. I would certainly rather eat one of these with my morning tea instead of biscotti, biscotti, and more biscotti.

Kayte chose these muffins for Tuesdays with Dorie and she has posted the recipe. Next time, I’ll reduce the butter in the crumb topping by a tablespoon or two. Not only did I have more topping than I needed, but it didn’t seem quite solid enough and flowed off the muffin a bit.

One year ago: I swear this is a coincidence, but one year ago was the Lenox Almond Biscotti. Which are good, but do not pass Dave’s Biscotti Approval Test.

Filed Under: bread, breakfast, fall, quick bread, tuesdays with dorie