Brown Rice and Sausage Risotto

I picked up some short grain brown rice the other day, and realized (after I'd bought it) that I could probably make risotto with it. Ed was into this idea, because he doesn't like super goopy risotto, for whatever reason, and we figured the brown rice would give out less starch. We sort of forgot about the whole takes-forever-to-cook bit of this though. That was a late dinner... expect about an hour of cooking time. It was good, but it wasn't worth doing that again on a weeknight.

Brown rice risotto
Made 3 servings

1C short-grained brown rice
~6C liquid (chicken stock and water)
1 bay leaf
~4C mushrooms
1 chorizo link
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Sage (optional)
~1/2C white wine
~1/4C grated parmegian cheese

Heat the chicken stock and the wine, separately.

Chop the onion, and toast it in a wok until its softened. Add the garlic and toast until its golden brown and delicious. Add more oil to the wok (a tablespoon or two), and pour in the rice. Toss it around until all the grains are coated in oil, and continue to toss it around in the pan for 4-5 minutes.

Add the wine. Stir the rice around until it has absorbed the wine. It'll take longer than white rice would. Add a large slop of chicken stock - you can walk away for 10 minutes or so at this point. Let that simmer away until the rice has absorbed the liquid. Then add more. This will continue for about an hour - remember to stir occasionally so nothing sticks to the bottom of the wok. After ~30min, add the mushrooms, and a fair bit of salt.

Dice up the chorizo, and then in a separate pan, cook it until it is cooked and a little brown around the edges. Add to the risotto with some sage and salt and pepper.

Eventually, your risotto will be done. Just keep tasting it until it tastes done. Stir in the cheese at this point. It will be delicious, but you will decide that it took way too long, and you don't want to do it again for a long while.

If you're into creaminess, add a dash of cream, or a pat of butter, or a lot more parmesan cheese.

We served it up with some roasted Brussels sprouts. My favorite way to eat those mini cabbages.

Tuna casserole pasta

We were facing a pretty empty fridge the other day, and as we usually do with an empty fridge, we turned to the freezer and the pantry to clear some things out. In this case, we found some frozen peas, frozen corn, and canned tuna. It was a little like an inside-out tuna casserole, and it was actually quite delicious, although Ed was upset that I'd put something so simple and boring on the food blog... we can't always eat like kings, ya know, Ed!

Anyway, this was a tasty little pile o' glop. We had found a green pepper and some celery dying in the crisper, so that went into a frying pan first, hopefully to kill anything trying to invade our green things... Then we threw in the tuna. The corn and peas got thawed out, and then we added those to the mix. A little olive oil, a dash of lemon juice, and some salt and pepper, and the meal was complete. We put it over some whole wheat pasta, which Ed claims to not like as much, but I like the slightly tougher texture to it. Probably the same reason I prefer rigatoni to angel hair, or something like that.

Springtime pasta dish

We were in Russos, picking up some veggies for the week, and got some ramps and fiddleheads. It is spring, after all, and its the only time you'll find these things, since they don't get cultivated anywhere regularly. I'm sure you could grow fiddleheads in CA, but they just don't bother, or something like that. Anyway, Ed got excited to make a pasta dish with a cream sauce and some asparagus, and the fiddleheads and ramps slid right into that idea, quite nicely. He also put in some Andouille sausage, from the sausage shop up in Saugus, that he was super excited about. It was certainly delicious sausage, and went really well with this meal.

The cream sauce was pretty bland, as I suppose cream sauces should be, so as to not overwhelm the deliciousness of everything on top of the pasta, although I would have preferred something lighter. The sauce thickened a little more than we had reckoned, which made it tough to get even coverage on the pasta. I think Ed got the recipe for it online somewhere, but I don't know where. As far as I know, it was fairly standard.

Cream Sauce
1-1/3C heavy cream
2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
nutmeg
salt
pepper
white wine

Melt the butter in a saucepan, and add the flour to make a roue. Add the cream, and the flavorings. I recommend going heavy on the wine, because we only added a bit, and the sauce was a bit too thick. Taste occasionally, and once it is the consistency you like, remove it from the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste as well. And nutmeg.


Green stuff on top
~1/2lb ramps, chopped roughly
~1/2lb fiddleheads
1 bunch of asparagus, chopped into 1/2" pieces
~1C mushrooms, we used oyster mushrooms
2 andouille sausage links

In a frying pan, heat some oil, and once its shimmery, add everything. Cook until the sausage is cooked through and the asparagus and fiddleheads taste perfect (crisp, yet cooked). Add to your creamy pasta.

The green stuff for the top.


Mix it all together and enjoy!

Grilled cheese

After one of the CSU orienteering training sessions, I invited everyone over for dinner - it made sense, since we were starting and finishing the run at my house. I decided to put the George Foreman grill to work, and Ed made the tomato soup, which was pretty fantastic. I don't remember what went into it at this point, but I think it had all of the following ingredients (make up amounts as you please...):
-diced tomatoes
-tomato paste
-white wine
-onions
-garlic
-yogurt
-carrot
-smoked maple syrup
-salt
-pepper
Ed cooked the veggies first, then added the tomato stuff. Then he blended it all. Then he cooked it some more, and only then did he add the yogurt and smoked maple syrup. It was pretty delicious.



The grilled cheeses were all in my realm, however. The night before, I'd cooked a bunch of bacon in the oven - you put it on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet and bake at 350F for 20 minutes or so, it seems the best way to do big batches of bacon. Naturally, I cooked more than was strictly necessary, because I knew we'd be nibbling on it...

We had some good quality cheddar, apple slices, and good mustard. Everyone buttered their own bread, loaded up the fillings, and plopped the sandwiches onto the grill. It worked really well, and I have to say that the dinner was definitely more enjoyable than the run...

Steak Caesar Salad

Ed discovered how to make caesar salad dressing, and this pretty much revolutionized our salads - usually, we just go with some sort of generic balsamic vinaigrette. Anyway, this is basically a big salad with lots of stuff on it, because we're not very good at sticking to the traditional croutons-and-lettuce only salads, those are boring.

Caesar dressing:
-lots of garlic, toasted in oil in a pan
-one can full of anchovies, with their oil
-lots of grated parmesan cheese
-lemon juice
-white wine
-olive oil
-two eggs
-worcestershire sauce
-salt and pepper

Get a pot of water boiling. In a pan, chop the garlic (3-6 heads, depending on how much you like garlic) and toast it until it is golden brown. Put that in a food processor. Put the anchovies in the food processor. Put in ~2 tbs of lemon juice and ~2 tbs of white wine. Add ~1tbs worcestershire sauce, ~1/2tsp salt, and a couple good grinds of pepper. Grate in a bunch of cheese (~1/2C?). Food process that together.

Once the water is boiling, put the eggs in the water and boil them for one minute. Once your minute is up, crack them into the food processor, and process that together with the rest of the stuff. Add some olive oil, about two tablespoons at a time, processing between every addition. Basically, you're making homemade mayonnaise. Taste it occasionally, and keep adding oil (and salt and pepper and worcestershire sauce and lemon juice) as needed, until you've added ~1C of oil. It should be relatively thick, not quite as thick as mayo, but definitely thicker than a regular liquid. If you refrigerate it before using, it'll get even thicker as the oil sets up a bit.

How was that for detailed? Sheesh.

The rest of the stuff

Croutons
Romaine lettuce
Spinach
Steak
Oyster mushrooms
Tomatoes

To make the croutons, take some stale bread (or not-stale bread), chop it up, toss with some olive oil and a little salt, and cook in a 400 degree oven for ~10min - check them frequently and toss them around, you don't want your croutons burning.

Chop up the steak into bite-size pieces. Toss with salt and pepper and cook until its medium rare. Or however done you like your steak, medium rare is my favorite.

Cook the mushrooms in butter and salt until they're almost crispy. This will take a little bit. You can use any sort of mushroom, we went with oyster mushrooms and hedgehog mushrooms, and they were delicious.

Make sure everything is more or less bite-sized, and toss in a big bowl together. Dress the salad, generously because thats a darn good dressing, grate more parmesan cheese on top, and serve.