Pea and Shitake Orange Risotto

One of the best consequences of writing this blog for about 11 years is the number of fellow food bloggers I’ve met in real life and online. In my very early days of food blogging, I encountered Jamie Schler’s lovely blog, Life’s a Feast. I always loved to see what she was baking each time I visited, and I was inspired by her adventures with macarons. We visited each other’s sites and got to know one another through blog posts and comments. I’m so proud to now be blogging about her first cookbook, Orange Appeal: Savory and Sweet. Congratulations to Jamie! Because she’s a native of Florida, it’s fitting that she’s brought us a collection of recipes focused on oranges. Of course, she now lives in France and notes in the book that she wanted these recipes to be very usable no matter where the reader resides. The ingredients used are all common enough to be found just about anywhere. And, the variety of recipes includes sweet and savory, starters and mains, and sauces and relishes. I’ve been having fun trying some things from the book while citrus season is upon us. The first recipe I tried was the Orange, Date, and Pecan Muffins. They are deliciously sweetened with chopped dates, honey, and maple syrup and no refined sugar. Chestnut flour is called for, but there is a note that all-purpose can be substituted. As luck would have it, I had some chestnut flour among my stash of various flours and grains and was delighted to use it. I’ll be turning back to this recipe often. There’s an intriguing recipe in the first chapter for Orange Avocado Salad Dressing or Dip. You begin by making a homemade mayonnaise and then add mashed avocado, orange and lime juice, chipotle powder, and cilantro. It sounds perfect for dipping fresh vegetables or using as a sauce for seafood or mixing into salad greens, and I’d like to always have a bowl of it in my refrigerator. The Savory Orange, Onion, and Olive Focaccia also caught my eye. What a great combination of flavors for a savory bread. And, the sweets all sound irresistible. There’s a Glazed Blood Orange Yogurt Loaf Cake, the Orange Panna Cotta with Orange Compote, and Orange Curd Tartlets in a Coconut Pastry Crust that also appear on the book cover. Despite all the cravings of my sweet tooth, the next dish I made was the Pea and Shitake Orange Risotto. 

To start, the shitakes were sauteed in butter and olive oil and then glazed with some orange juice before being removed from the pan and set aside. Next, minced onion was sauteed before the Arborio rice was added and toasted. I used a homemade vegetable stock, and I actually enjoy the process of making risotto. I remember the first time I ever made risotto and how I was re-reading the recipe as I cooked and stirred and watched the clock closely to check the timing. It seems so easy now. You don’t really need to check the clock at all. You can see when the rice has absorbed the stock, and you add more. And, you keep stirring. But, you can stir with one hand and sip wine with the other. For this risotto, after the rice was cooked, more orange juice was added and incorporated. Then, frozen peas were added with the cooked shitakes. I added lots of chopped parsley from my garden. I served it with some roasted shrimp on top. 

The orange flavor with the shitakes and peas was a fantastic combination. I’m so happy to have some of this leftover risotto in my freezer. I’m planning to make arancini stuffed with fresh mozzarella. For even more decadence, those little crispy arancini would be great with the Orange Avocado Dip. Then, I’m going to have to stock up on blood oranges before the season ends. I have more cooking with citrus to do.

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Lemon Croquettes with Cilantro Pistou

I love looking at photos of beautifully presented food and learning a chef's interesting techniques no matter how complicated, but beyond all of that, it was an absolute joy to spend time with Daniel Boulud’s latest book. The book is Daniel: My French Cuisine, and I received a review copy. This is a big, heavy, serious-looking book with serious-looking recipes. But, from the beginning on the How to Use this Book page, the reader is put at ease. You’re invited to prepare components of dishes or whole recipes as you wish. There’s no expectation that you’ll jump in and prepare everything in the book just as it’s shown. The book is made up of three sections. The first is a delightful tour of dishes from Restaurant Daniel. The photos are stunning, and all the instructions are right there for you to experiment with as you please. Sprinkled throughout this section, you’ll find bits of the story of Boulud’s career and upbringing in France. The second section is a group of essays written by Bill Buford about iconic French dishes. He spent time in the kitchens at Daniel to learn about some classic preparations that aren’t often mentioned these days. These are mostly grand, dated dishes like Tete de Veau en Tortue and Carnard a la Presse, but the writing is all entertainment. Buford shares the comical moments of learning these dishes along with their histories and how Boulud came to know them. The last section includes four dinner party menus that Boulud prepares at home inspired by different regions of France. The three sections are very different, but together they give you a clear picture of the kind of chef that Daniel Boulud is, the level of quality of what he produces, and his love of food. 

In the restaurant recipes section, there’s a Warm White Asparagus Salad with Poached Egg Dressing dish that looks like spring itself. I might try it with just one of the three accompanying sauces. Then, there’s the Hazelnut-Crusted Maine Sea Scallops with Nettles and Swiss Chard that’s gorgeous with the nettle foam and sauteed morels. And, there are parts of every dessert that I really want to attempt like Sauternes-Rhubarb Ice Cream, Apricot and Lavendar Clafoutis, and Coffee Cremeux and Espresso Ganache. So far, I’ve made two parts of the Striped Bass in a Cilantro-Tapioca Pistou with Artichokes and Lemon Croquettes. In the book, a shallow bowl is shown with the tapioca sauce in the bottom with a pretty mix of chopped artichokes and fava beans centered in the sauce, a piece of striped bass perfectly coated with cilantro pistou sits on the vegetables, and lemon risotto croquettes are perched on top with a tangle of micro cilantro and shaved artichoke slices. The risotto croquettes are perfect, and I do mean perfect, little, crispy cubes. They looked like fun to make. To start, a pretty standard risotto was made with onion cooked in melted butter. Arborio rice was added, and warmed chicken stock was ladled in a little at a time in the usual fashion. When the rice was fully cooked, shredded parmesan, a tablespoon of mascarpone, lemon zest, and lemon juice were added. It was tasted for seasoning and adjusted before the risotto was poured into a parchment-lined 8 1/2-inch by 4 1/2-inch loaf pan and left to chill in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, the risotto was unmolded and cut into one-inch cubes. The cubes were dusted with cornstarch and fried until crispy. The cilantro pistou was easy to make by pureeing lots of cilantro which is filling my herb garden right now with a couple of tablespoons of toasted pine nuts, some olive oil, and salt. 

I served the crispy, lemony croquettes with a dish of cilantro pistou for dunking. The bright, herby sauce was a light and lively contrast to the savory risotto pieces. There’s so much I’ll be turning to this book for in the future. There are plating arrangements to try and copy, flavor combinations to taste, sauces to attempt, and parts and pieces of recipes to use. Right now, I’m looking at one of the desserts from the last section of the book, the Fig Pine Nut and Mascarpone Custard Tart, and I can’t wait for fig season to get here. I’ll be glad to have this book on the shelf when it does. 

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Risotto Bianco

I can’t believe Canal House Cooking is already on Volume No. 7, and I can’t believe I don’t have them all. I definitely need to fill those holes in my collection. This latest volume was inspired by Hirsheimer and Hamilton’s month-long visit to Tuscany, and I received a review copy. They spent a month in a stone farmhouse at the end of a gravel road and cooked with all the ingredients of fall they found nearby. When they returned to their studio, they developed the dishes found in this volume based on simple, Italian, autumn cooking. There are tramezzini and panini with truffle butter and buttered toasts with bottarga, hearty soups with chicken and escarole or little stuffed pasta, and there is pasta. With recipes for fresh spinach pasta and ricotta, you can make lasagne, ravioli, and tagliatelle dishes entirely from scratch. There are dishes for seafood, poultry, and meat. In the vegetables section, the peppers in agrodolce are stuffed with anchovies and covered with a reduced sauce made from currants and vinegar, and the photo alone convinced me I need to try it. For dolci, there’s an apple cake, a beautiful jam tart, and gelato di gianduia among others. I’ll be turning back to the pasta pages soon enough, but first, I tried the risotto bianco. It’s as simple as risotto gets since it’s built with water rather than broth and only involves a few other ingredients. The ingredient that caught my attention, though, was preserved lemon rind. I have some lemons that I preserved a few months ago, and I was delighted to use them here.

You might wonder if this risotto is going to be bland since you start by simply bringing plain water to a simmer. Fear not. The beauty of the dish is the simplicity. As the water comes to a simmer in a saucepan, butter is melted in a large saute pan, and finely chopped onion is cooked just until translucent. The chopped preserved lemon rind is added next followed by the rice. After toasting the rice just a bit in the butter, you proceed as usual with risotto-making. A little water at a time is added as you stir and stir. When the rice is tender with a firm center, a little more butter and some grated parmiggiano-reggiano are added.

The lemon flavor is actually very subtle in the finished dish, but then everything about this is meant to be subtle. Fight the urge to make it more complicated. Don’t use broth in place of the water, and don’t caramelize the onion. You’ll get a risotto with fresh flavors of onion and lemon, richness from the butter and parmiggiano, and a new appreciation for simplicity on the plate.

Risotto Bianco
recipe re-printed with publisher's permission
serves 4

Risotto is traditionally made with the short-grain rice of the Po Valley. There are three main rice varieties: arborio, with its large plump grains that produce a starchy risotto; carnaroli, smaller grains that produce a looser (wavy) risotto; and vialone nano, with firm grains that cook up soft with a kernel of chewiness in the center, just the way Italians like it.

4 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons finely chopped preserved lemon rind, optional
1 cup arborio, carnaroli, or vialone nano rice
½ cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
Salt and pepper

Fill a medium pot with about 5 cups water and bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat to low and keep the water hot.

Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter in a heavy deep sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until soft and translucent, about 3 minutes. Stir the preserved lemon rind, if using, into the onions then add the rice, stirring until everything is coated with butter.

Add 1/2 cup of the simmering water, stirring constantly, to keep the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Push any rice that crawls up the sides back down into the liquid. When the rice has absorbed all the water, add another ½ cup of water. Continue this process until you have added most of the water, about 20 minutes.

Taste the rice, it is done when it is tender with a firm center. The fully cooked risotto should be moist but not soupy. Add the parmigiano and the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and stir until it has melted into the rice. Taste, and season with salt and pepper, if needed.

—From Canal House Cooking Volume No. 7, La Dolce Vita by Melissa Hamilton and
Christopher Hirsheimer/distributed by Andrews McMeel Publishing

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Risotto Balls with Hatch Chiles, Fresh Corn, and Queso Oaxaca

For our Austin food blogger hatch chile potluck, I made a sourdough bread with roasted hatch chiles and roasted garlic in it. Luckily, the bread turned out fine, but since it was an experiment and I wouldn’t know if it seemed ok or not until the last minute, I also had a back-up plan. The back-up plan unraveled something like this: remember that asparagus lasagna I made back in March with the cream and parmigiano sauce? Yes, what if I made that with roasted hatch chiles and fresh corn instead of asparagus and then used Mexican cheeses instead of Italian ones? It sounded like an interesting flavor combination, but do you also remember what that lasagna looked like and can you imagine how it would look after being transported to a potluck and sitting out for a while? Right, so I started thinking of ways to combine those ingredients in another format, and that’s when I found the risotto balls recipe in Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook. Fried arancini would travel much better than a lasagna with cream sauce.

I made the risotto as suggested in the book, but at the end I added about seven hatch chiles that had been roasted, peeled of the charred outer layer, seeded, and chopped. I also added fresh corn kernels cut from two small ears of corn, and a couple tablespoons of chopped cilantro. Then, instead of using grated parmigiano, I grated a dry jack cheese and stirred it into the risotto. The finished risotto was left to cool and was then refrigerated overnight. There are a few steps to completing this hors d’oeuvre, but each of them can be spaced out and tackled when you’re ready. Once the risotto had completely chilled in the refrigerator, it was ready for forming into balls. For each, one tablespoon of risotto was formed into a cup shape into which a small cube of queso oaxaca was placed. Then, the risotto was gathered around the cheese cube and rolled into a ball. Once all the balls were formed and placed on a parchment-lined baking sheet, they were refrigerated overnight. Next, the risotto balls were breaded with flour, then egg, then cornmeal. At that point, they could have been refrigerated again until ready for frying. They were briefly fried for two minutes or so in a saucepan with a few inches of hot oil.

The cornmeal made a nice crunchy surface which contrasted well with the oozing center. Sweet, fresh corn and smoky, roasted hatch chiles sidled up comfortably to the queso oaxaca. The flavor combination here was a good one, and I think the lasagna version will be just as good when I can serve it at home straight from the oven.

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Risotto ai Finocchi con Ricotta e Peperoncino

I approach a Christmas Eve menu with the intention of keeping it simpler than Christmas day and keeping it mostly meatless. It also tends to be Italian, and this year I decided on a main course of risotto. When I make risotto at home, it’s always with either mushrooms or seafood, but this time I wanted to try something different. So, I asked Kurt to pick a risotto from Jamie's Italy, and he chose this fennel and dried chili variation.

The preparation begins the same as any other risotto except that Jamie includes chopped celery with the onion and garlic. Once those are sautéed together, the rice is added and stirred until translucent. Then begins the dance of adding wine and stirring and then chicken broth and stirring and then stirring more and more and so forth. I don’t mind the stirring so much when I have a nice glass of Sangiovese and some sharp provolone and asiago for refreshment, and I did have those things nearby and all was well. For this dish, there were two pans of sautéing vegetables working at once. Thinly sliced fennel and some mashed-up fennel seeds cooked while the risotto got its start. The fragrance of the fennel and fennel seed cooking together was enough to tell me this was going to be a fine meal.

When the risotto reached the half-way point, the sautéed fennel was added. At the end of the cooking time, butter and parmigiana were stirred in with lemon zest, lemon juice, and some ricotta. To serve, each plate was topped with torn, dried red chilis, fennel tops, a drizzle of olive oil, and a bit more parmigiana. The sweet fennel flavor with the hot red chilis worked nicely, and the lemon did a lovely job of perking up everything else. Kurt did well with his risotto selection, and we’ll definitely be making this one again.

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