It's Aliiiive! (the blog.) and Mushroom Risotto (the food.)

Greetings, food fans! I'm back and I apologize for being rather remiss in terms of updating this... The lack of any October entries in the archive is rather sad, but I'm going to start off November correctly! I think it appropriate that the start of the month signals the beginning of the season for comfort food. The best comfort food should be both comforting to make as well as to eat. I find risotto, a traditional Italian rice, plays both roles quite well.

Making risotto is a bit of a process. It takes about 20 minutes of continuous stirring to release the starch that creates that crucial creamy consistency. The cooking liquid (broth or stock) is gradually added as the rice cooks; simply dumping it in will not result in the right texture. (I unfortunately speak from experience...) Risotto is not something to stress over (it is comfort food, after all) but it requires some patience. The slow stirring of a bubbling pot is really all that is required, and the effort is well rewarded in the end.

Risotto cannot be rushed, but once it is made it needs to be consumed while it retains the perfect slumped-on-the-plate, neither-gluey-nor-soupy texture. (I remember hearing that many Italians refuse to eat leftover risotto as-is, which led to the invention of those delicious fried risotto balls, arancini.) When done right, fresh risotto can be a big bowl of bliss.

Today, I made the classic mushroom variation. Dried porcini mushrooms give the risotto a warm earthiness and "mushroominess", while the fresh wild mushrooms are dressed with a zesty lemon vinaigrette. The contrast of the two preparations is genius, to which I must credit Jamie Oliver. Here, I used portobello and crimini mushrooms, but if you have access to other varieties of mushrooms then I can think of very few better ways to use them.
(On a side note, Whole Foods would be a good place to look; I recall seeing golden chanterelles, speckled lobster and black trumpet mushrooms the last time I checked. It was rather exciting.)

On an unrelated note, a new website has wandered onto my radar: cookstr.com. It boasts an extensive collection of recipes from famous chefs and cookbook authors. The recipes span all skill levels and cuisines, and many are accompanied by the all-important hunger-inducing photos.

Grilled Mushroom Risotto

Ingredients

• 6 1/3 cups chicken stock
• Handful dried porcini mushrooms
• Olive oil
• 1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 sticks celery, trimmed and finely chopped
• 14 ounces risotto rice
• 2/3 cup vermouth or white wine
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 large handfuls wild mushrooms (try chanterelles, shiitake, black trumpet or oyster - definitely no button mushrooms, please!), cleaned and sliced
• Few sprigs fresh chervil, tarragon or parsley, leaves picked and chopped
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 handfuls freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving
• Extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

Heat stock in a saucepan and keep it on a low simmer.

Place the porcini mushrooms in a bowl and pour in just enough hot stock to cover. Leave for a couple of minutes until they've softened. Fish them out of the stock and chop them, reserving the soaking liquid.

In a large pan, heat a glug of olive oil and add the onion and celery. Slowly fry without coloring for at least 10 minutes, then turn the heat up and add the rice. Give it a stir. Stir in the vermouth or wine - it'll smell fantastic! Keep stirring until the liquid has cooked into the rice. Now pour the porcini soaking liquid through a sieve into the pan and add the chopped porcini, a good pinch of salt and your first ladle of hot stock. Turn the heat down to a simmer and keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and massaging the starch out of the rice, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. This will take about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, get a dry griddle pan hot and grill the wild mushrooms until soft. If your pan isn't big enough, do this in batches. Put them into a bowl and add the chopped herbs, a pinch of salt and the lemon juice. Using your hands toss everything together - this is going to be incredible!

Take the risotto off the heat and check the seasoning carefully. Stir in the butter and the Parmesan. You want it to be creamy and oozy in texture, so add a bit more stock if you think it needs it. Put a lid on and leave the risotto to relax for about 3 minutes.

Taste your risotto and add a little more seasoning or Parmesan if you like. Serve a good dollop of risotto topped with some grilled dressed mushrooms, a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

Serves 4-6

Recipe courtesy of jamieoliver.com
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Istanbul, not Constantinople: Saffron Scented Chicken Pilaf

If you haven't noticed by now, I love Nigella Lawson's recipes. When piled up on a giant platter, this delicious rice dish evokes the experience of dining cross-legged on a carpeted floor somewhere in Turkey. (No, this is not authentically Turkish/Middle Eastern. Just authentically yummy.) When I saw this recipe, I knew I had to try it because it combined so many of my favourite ingredients: basmati rice, pine nuts, almonds, and saffron. I added a handful of raisins to the rice because I love how they plump up and sweeten the rice.

This is a very aromatic dish. The warmth of the spices in the chicken and the rice mingle with the buttery nuttiness of toasted nuts and the fresh resinousness of cilantro. It made me hungry just smelling it.

I have not tried marinating chicken in yogurt before making this, and I must say that it really works. The yogurt tenderizes the chicken and keeps it moist while cooking, and its natural sugars caramelize in the pan without the use of excessive oil.

If you'd like to take an express mid-week vacation, here's the recipe for:

Saffron Scented Chicken Pilaf:

500 g boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into chunks
200g Greek yogurt
Juice of half a lemon
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
1 L chicken broth
15 g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
500 g basmati rice
(A handful of raisins, optional)
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
50 g flaked almonds, toasted
25 g pine nuts, toasted
Large handful of cilantro, chopped

1.	Marinate the chicken pieces in the yoghurt, lemon and cinnamon for about an hour. Soak the saffron threads in the chicken stock.
2.	Over medium heat, in a large pan with a lid, melt the butter along with 1 tablespoon oil and add the rice, stirring it to coat until glossy. Pour in the saffron and chicken stock, add the cardamom pods, lemon juice and zest and raisins and bring the pan to the boil, then clamp on a lid and turn the heat down to very low; a heat diffuser, if you’ve got one, would be good here. Cook like this for about 10–15 minutes, by which time the rice should have absorbed the liquid and be cooked through.
3.	While the rice is cooking, shake the excess yoghurt marinade off the chicken using a sieve. Then fry the meat in a hot pan with the remaining spoonful or so of oil, and do this in batches so that the chicken colours rather than just pallidly stews to cookedness.
4.	Use a fork to fluff up the rice. Add toasted nuts to pilaf and a strew chicken and cilantro over the top.

Serves 6.

Adapted from Nigella Lawson-Forever Summer

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Breakfast for Dinner...and Lunch: Asian-Spiced Kedgeree

Nigella Lawson is an absolute domestic goddess and my hero. She exudes a calm confidence in the kitchen and her recipes are always as comforting to eat as they are to make. However, as a true believer in "full fat=full flavour," she often creates recipes that are more indulgent than I would make (eg. Doughnut French Toast and Caramel Crossiant Pudding). So when I came across this recipe that looked absolutely delicious and healthy, I couldn't wait to try it.

Kedgeree is traditionally a British breakfast dish, made with fish (smoked haddock), hard boiled eggs, and rice. Apparently, it was popular during Victorian times to make use of the fresh fish caught early in the morning.

Frankly, I can't really imagine eating rice in the morning, but whenever you choose to eat it, this recipe is amazing. It took a little faith to just throw the rice and the broth in a pot and let it sit for 20 minutes without stirring it but it really worked. The golden curry scented basmati rice is perfectly balanced with the salt of the fish sauce, the tang of lime juice, and freshness of cilantro. This breakfast dish (which I made for dinner) is also great cold for lunch the next day.

Asian-Spiced Kedgeree

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups cold water, for poaching the fish
  
• 2 lime leaves, torn into pieces
• 4 salmon fillets (approximately 1-inch thick), preferably organic, skinned (about 1 1/2 pounds in total)
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon oil
  
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 cup basmati rice
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, quartered
• 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro leaves, plus more, for garnish
• 1 lime, zested and juiced plus lime segments, for garnish
• Fish sauce, to taste (recommended: nam pla)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

This is because the easiest way to poach salmon for this dish is to do it in the oven. So: pour the water into a roasting pan, add the lime leaves and then the salmon. Cover the pan with foil, put in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes, by which time the salmon should be tender. Remove the pan from the oven and drain the liquid off into a pitcher. Keep the fish warm simply by replacing the foil on the pan.

Melt the butter in a wide, heavy saucepan that has a tight-fitting lid, and add the oil to stop the butter burning. Soften the onion in the pan and add the spices, then keep cooking till the onion is slightly translucent and suffused with soft perfume of the spices. Add the rice and stir with a wooden spoon so that it's all well coated. There's not enough onion to give a heavy coating: just make sure the rice is fragrantly slicked.

Pour in the reserved liquid from the pitcher, about 2 1/4 cups, and stir before covering with the lid and cooking gently for 15 minutes. If your stove is vociferous you may need a flame tamer.

At the end of the cooking time, when the rice is tender and has lost all chalkiness, turn off the heat, remove the lid, cover the pan with a dish towel and then replace the lid. This will help absorb any extra moisture form the rice. It is also the best way to let the rice stand without getting sticky or cold, which is useful when you've got a few friends and a few dishes to keep your eye on.

Just before you want to eat, drain off any extra liquid that's collected in the dish with the salmon, then flake the fish with a fork. Add to it the rice, egg, cilantro, lime juice and a drop or 2 of fish sauce. Stir gently to mix - I use a couple of wooden paddles or spatulas - and taste to see if you want any more lime juice or fish sauce. Sprinkle over the zest from the 2 juiced halves of the lime and serve. I love it served just as it is in the roasting dish, but if you want to, and I often do (consistency is a requirement of a recipe but not of a cook), decant into large plate before you add the lime zest, then surround with lime segments and add the zest and a small handful of freshly chopped cilantro.

Credit to Nigella Lawson

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Paella: Holiday in a bowl

Paella is on the menu for tonight's dinner. It's a dish from Spain's Valencia region consisting of saffron scented rice, meat, seafood, and vegetables. It is typically made in a paellera pan (a round, flat-bottomed, two-handeled pan), but I don't make this nearly often enough to warrant investing in one, so a frying pan will do. I will be using chicken, prawns, and spicy, smoky Spanish chorizo for some kick.

Saffron is what gives the rice a slight golden colour. Saffron threads are the dried stigmas of the saffron crocus (flower). They need to be harvested by hand in the two week window that the flower blooms. It takes 150 flowers to produce 1 g of dried saffron, granting it the title as the world's most expensive spice. It is often sold in matchbox-sized containers, rather than in large jars like cinnamon. Luckily, a few threads are all that's needed to infuse the dish with a distinct flavour that can be described, if possible, as warm and sunny. Actually, I'm not too sure if that's due to the saffron's flavour or simply the dish's association with the Spanish Mediterranean.

The trickiest part of making paella is toasting the rice in contact with the pan to get a crispy caramelized base (called socarrat) without burning it. I tend to chicken out and pull the pan off the heat earlier than is necessary, but even without it, this paella is a sunny (and delicious) holiday in a bowl.

Paella:

4 cups chicken stock

1 tsp. coarse sea salt

1 tsp. saffron threads

3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

6 chicken thighs, boned

1/2 lb. pork sausages

1 cup olive oil

1 yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch
pieces

1 lb. ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and finely
chopped

1 tsp. sweet red paprika

2 1/2 cups risotto-type short-grain rice, such as
Bomba

1 cup shelled English peas, fresh or frozen

12 medium shrimp, peeled

Fresh flat-leaf parsley for garnish

Directions:

In a saucepan over medium heat, bring the stock to a gentle simmer and maintain over low heat.

Using a mortar and pestle, grind the salt with the saffron until a powder forms. Add the garlic and grind with the salt and saffron. Set aside.

Cut the chicken thighs and sausages into 1-inch pieces.

Place a 16-inch paella pan or a large, wide, heavy-bottomed fry pan over high heat (or over a metal ring set on a rack over coals) and pour in the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the chicken, and sausages and sauté until golden, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the meat and squid to a plate and set aside. Reserve the pan with the remaining oil.

Add the onion and bell pepper and sauté over medium heat until the onion is translucent and beginning to brown, about 3 minutes. Return the meat to the pan and add the tomatoes, stirring to evenly distribute the tomatoes. Add paprika and 2 ladlefuls of the hot stock and simmer for 1 to 2 minutes.

Stir a little stock into the mortar with the saffron mixture and mix well. Pour the contents of the mortar into the saucepan of stock.

Add the rice to the paella pan, followed by the peas and all but 1⁄2 cup of the remaining stock. Stir everything together thoroughly.

Arrange shrimp on the top of the rice. Return the paella to a simmer and cook until the meat and fish are cooked through and the rice is tender but not too soft, about 20 minutes. If the paella is not yet done and all the liquid is absorbed, add a little of the reserved stock as needed.

Turn the heat on high and allow rice to toast for 5 minutes (do not stir). Turn off the heat and cover the pan with a clean, dry kitchen towel. Let stand for about 10 minutes to allow the flavors to mingle thoroughly and the rice to absorb any remaining juices. Serve warm, not hot, garnished with the parsley. Serves 8.

Adapted from Williams Sonoma-Barcelona.

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