Tag Archive for 'cheese'

Wild Mushroom Risotto

Published on October 27, 2011 in Grains + Rice, Italian and Side Dishes. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .


Now that I’ve left you in suspense for a couple days, I’m back to tell you what I did with that giant thing. Well, seeing as how it was, you know, GIANT, I did a few things.

The first thing I did was dissect that sucker. It was so pristine, I only needed to wipe a few spots of dirt off with a wet paper towel. Gorgeous. Then I cut off all the stems, chopped them up and made a nice mushroom stock. Very quick — put a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan on medium heat. Chop up an onion, a couple carrots and celery (if you have it, I didn’t). Cook that in the olive oil for a few minutes. Add the mushrooms, some fresh or dried thyme, whatever herbs you feel like (sage is good and I tossed in some fennel seeds for fun) and cook that up for a few minutes. Add about 8 cups of water, a pinch of salt, a few peppercorns and a couple bay leaves, bring to a boil and then simmer for a couple hours. Drain well through a sieve, pushing down on the veggies to make sure you get all the liquid out. Discard the cooked veggies (or give them to your dog; he will be one happy hound).

The next thing I made was a quick sauté with butter and shallots with a sprinkle of basil (I would’ve preferred thyme or sage, but didn’t have any fresh). Served on homemade honey wheat bread toasted and rubbed with olive oil and garlic, it was a perfect appetizer for our lazy breakfast-for-dinner supper. So so good and the simple preparation really enhanced the gorgeous, earthy flavor of the mushroom.

The next night I finally did what I’d been planning since I procured that delicious specimen. Mushroom risotto. First off, mushrooms in anything are fantastic. Second, butter helps — always. Add creamy, velvety risotto to the mix, along with a generous helping of tangy Parmesan stirred in at the end, and I’m pretty much done and dusted. And very very happy. Contrary to what you might think, risotto is not hard to make, but it does take some time and preparation. This is a dish that shouldn’t (can’t, really) be rushed, but rather approached as a happy little journey in the kitchen. Put on some music (this is always a favorite), pour yourself some white wine (you’ll have to open a bottle anyway for the recipe) and ladle and stir, and ladle and stir, and prepare yourself for something really spectacularly good.

NOTES:
Don’t be too concerned about heading out into the woods to forage your mushrooms — Whole Foods or your local farmers market will do very nicely for you with their selection. Or if you’re in NYC, head over to the New Amsterdam Market on Sunday by the South Street Seaport and get someone to do the foraging for you. Shitake, cremini, porcinis, even portabello will all taste delish. Just don’t get those white button ones (or eek! Remember canned mushrooms? Can you even get those anymore? The horror. The horror.). Here’s some info if you do want to try your hand at foraging for these beauties!

I used my fresh mushroom stock (along with some supplemental mushroom stock from the store), but you can also use an ounce of dried morels or porcinis soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes to make about 2 cups of the cooking liquid. It brings a really nice mushroom flavor to the dish, but it’s not absolutely essential. If you do go this route, make sure to strain the liquid very well (through a coffee filter or paper towel), so you don’t get any gritty stuff in your risotto.

Wild Mushroom Risotto

6 cups mushroom stock, preferably homemade
4 tablespoons/1/2 stick butter
2 shallots, minced
3 cups (or about 2/3 pound) fresh Hen-of-the-Woods mushrooms
1 tablespoon fresh thyme or sage, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus extra for serving
Herb garnish (optional; fried sage leaves would also be really nice)

Clean your mushrooms gently and discard any stems (or make your own stock). I chopped my mushroom into approximately 1/2″ sized chunks.

In a small saucepan, heat the mushroom stock and bring to a simmer.

In a heavy-bottomed pot dutch-oven over medium heat, melt the butter and sauté shallots for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and herbs and sauté for another 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat the grains with butter. Add the wine and cook for 2 minutes.

Add 2 full ladles of the mushroom stock to the pan along with the salt and pepper. Stir and simmer over low heat until the stock is almost absorbed (about 5 minutes). Continue to add the stock mixture, 2 ladles at a time, stirring every few minutes. Each time, cook until there’s a bit of liquid left (but not completely absorbed into the rice), then add more of the stock mixture. Keep going until you use up all your stock or until the rice is cooked (I like it al dente). It’s okay if there’s a bit of liquid still not absorbed. Take off the heat and stir in the Parmesan cheese. Serve hot in shallow bowls with extra cheese.

Zucchini Linguine

Published on September 9, 2011 in Italian and pasta. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Don’t you just love it when you randomly start making something, and it turns into something mindblowingly delicious? Something that you could eat every day and never get sick of? Something that you can’t stop raving about to your perplexed but grateful husband while simultaneously shoving it in your mouth?

Well, this is that something.

It all started when I was cruising food blogs and found a bunch of intriguing posts centered around raw zucchini cut into the shape of spaghetti. Now you all know how I love zucchini (don’t you?). And as it’s in season, there’s a lot of it to love. But I wasn’t feeling the raw angle and I felt like it needed a bit more oomph (as my mother would say) or substance, so I decided to combine it with actual spaghetti. Totally meta. And yet not too heavy because it ended up being half zucchini spaghetti and half real spaghetti.

And then the plot (and dish) thickened. I had some lovely roasted heirloom tomatoes lying around and decided to toss those in.

And then (yes there’s more), I was thinking about a recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook (stop rolling your eyes, I didn’t actually purchase it, just saw a recipe on some website; but I have looked at it and there’s some good, if not groundbreaking, stuff in there, so don’t hate, people) where you bread and fry zucchini slices and thought that sounded nice, but too much of a pain to execute. So I came up with the idea of a cooked butter-parmesan-panko gremolata-type topping (translation: fancy breadcrumbs). That turned out to be a very good idea, to the point that I now want crunchy cheesy lemony breadcrumbs on pretty much everything.

The bottom line is that the result of my meandering, puttering day of cooking and fiddling is a damn good dish that I will be making again and again. And you should too.

Zucchini Linguine

2 medium zucchini, julienned lengthwise on a mandoline (or spiral slicer)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves (preferably roasted), chopped
1 cup roasted cherry tomatoes (optional)
1-2 tablespoons half & half
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Black pepper
Salt
3/4 lb. spaghetti
1/4-1/2 cup pasta water, reserved

Topping:
1-2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated, plus more for garnish
Zest of half a lemon
2 handfuls (about 20 good-sized leaves) of basil, chiffonaded and separated

Put a large pot of water on to boil. Cook the spaghetti til al dente and reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water (before draining!).

In a nonstick sauté pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add the breadcrumbs and cheese, stirring to combine. Keep stirring continuously and cook until breadcrumbs start to brown. Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon zest and 1/2 the basil. Check for seasoning.

Heat olive oil over medium-high heat in a large sauté pan. Add garlic and zucchini, cooking until just softened, but still holding its shape, about 3 minutes. Add the half & half and let it thicken a bit. Turn the heat down to medium-low and stir in tomatoes (if using) and lemon juice; season to taste with salt and pepper (chili flakes would also be nice).

Add the pasta to the zucchini pan and cook for a couple minutes, adding a bit of the pasta water to loosen things up a bit. Transfer the zucchini pasta mixture to a serving dish and garnish with the breadcrumb topping. Season with more salt and pepper, the remaining basil and more Parmesan.

Pizza

Published on September 7, 2011 in Breads + Muffins, Italian and Main Courses. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Pizza is the one thing I’ve been willing to turn the oven on for this summer (ok, that’s not entirely true; there was this and this and this). But you have to turn it up really high, like 450-500ºF. So it needs to be worth it. And pizza is one of the few things that is worth it.

It’s the ultimate in flexible cooking. In the instance of the pizza above, I had some leftover pesto, so that went on with the tomato sauce, cheese and arugula (make sure you put the arugula on right at the end and cook just until wilted and really pile it on — it shrinks up a lot). If you don’t have any tomato sauce, you can toss on olive oil or tomatoes (roasted or not). Avocado is so good on pizza; try it, please. My guacamole pizza is so easy: olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and avocado, finished with cilantro and lime zest. Figs, nuts, dried fruit…really, the possibilities are endless. Olives are sort of essential in my opinion. And pretty much any kind of cheese is good on pizza; don’t just stick with the usual suspects.

Having said all that, don’t overload your pizza with too many ingredients because that makes it harder to cook the crust properly (not to mention transferring the uncooked pizza into the oven). Think 3-5 ingredients. That way you can really taste them. Of course, if you make enough dough, everyone can top their pizza however they like.

Nowadays, making pizza doesn’t even require that you make the dough, although it’s super-easy*. You can buy pre-made dough pretty inexpensively (whole wheat, regular, even herbed) at both Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, which can make the pizza-making process much more of a spontaneous event. Just make sure you let the dough sit out for at least an hour before you starting rolling/stretching; cold dough is not terribly cooperative.

Pizza Dough (bread machine version)

Makes 2 12″ pizzas

3/4 cup cold water
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
2-1/2 cups bread flour (you can substitute up to half with whole wheat flour)
1-1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon fresh herbs like basil, thyme or oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried), optional

Put the ingredients in the bread machine mixing bowl in the order they appear above, making a small well in the flour before adding the yeast. Set on the dough cycle and go read a book, run or whatever for 1.5 hours.  There will be pizza dough waiting for you when you get back.

Pizza Dough (by hand)

Replace the cold water with lukewarm. Stir dry ingredients, including yeast, in a large bowl. Add water and olive oil and combine into what will hopefully resemble a ball. Once it’s pretty well together, dump it out on a floured work surface (I just use my *clean* counter) and, with floured hands, knead for a few minutes to get that gluten to start working its magic. Lightly oil the bowl you mixed the ingredients in, drop in the dough and roll it around to coat all surfaces in oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for a couple hours or until double in size.

Once that’s happened, punch down your giant blob of dough to release the air and scoop it back out onto the work surface. Divide into two equal pieces (or four if you want to make “personal” pizzas), shape each into balls and let it sit for another 20-30 minutes under the plastic wrap.

Rolling Out the Dough

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface using a rolling pin. I don’t worry too much about making a perfect circle; I just like to get the surface very even and thin. I actually like the sort of random shapes I end up with sometimes. If you’re feeling daring, oil up your hands and stretch the dough by hand into a disk and then use your fist to gently coax the dough out into a larger, thinner circle.

Cooking your Pizza

Now for *how* to cook it. I love my pizza stone, but I’ve also had good results with a basic sheet pan. To prevent sticking, I use cornmeal on the stone and oil with the pan. If you’re using a stone, preheat the oven with the stone on the floor of the oven (use the bottom rack if you have an electric stove) for 30 minutes or so (don’t heat the sheet pan if that’s what you’re using). I first cook the pizza on the bottom of the oven, then move it up to the top rack and broil for the last couple minutes (you want to make sure the bottom is well-cooked before you do this). I find it much easier to precook the crust for about 6 minutes (make sure to poke the dough all over with a fork or you’ll end up with some very puffy bread) and then add the toppings, but if you have a pizza peel (which would be handy, but makes me nervous), you can compose the pizza on that and then slide it onto the stone/pan.

Oven temperatures vary widely, so while 450ºF works well for me, you may need to crank your oven up to 500ºF. Just experiment. The best way to tell when the pizza is done is to just keep an eye on it, and lift up a corner of the bottom to check how it’s browning.

* This or this is for when you’re planning ahead. Sounds great, but I have yet to try it.

Crustless Quiche

Published on July 14, 2011 in eggs and Main Courses. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

My lazy-cooking-style summer continues…the other day, I felt like quiche (eating it, not actually *like* it, as if I were quiche). Anyway, I felt like having quiche, but those frozen crusts (and all their fat/lard content) were putting me off and the thought of making my own was making my head hurt, so I did the next best thing, which was to just forget about the crust. Genius! Of course, then, technically, it’s not quiche anymore, but I was okay with that. Plus I got to use my spankin’ new ramekins. So they had now become individual-serving crustless non-quiches. Who doesn’t love a little individual serving type deal? No one, that’s who.

And while I used broccoli and cheddar because that’s what I had lying about, you can really mix things up here and try a spinach/feta combo or a zucchini/mozzarella/Parmesan combo or hey, why not a mushroom/roquefort combo to really jazz up your life? (Yes, the fact that the use of a blue cheese is what I consider to be something that could possibly “jazz up” one’s life is quite pathetic. In my defense, it’s summer and it’s hot. And I’m trying to plan a 3-year old’s birthday party, which is and will be a story for another day).

So, go with what you have. Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry that this isn’t really quiche either. Just be glad you don’t have to make a crust.

Crustless Quiche

Adadpted from Martha Stewart

Butter (for ramekins)
1-1/4 cups (10 ounces) fresh or frozen broccoli florets
6 large eggs
1/2 cup whole milk
3/4 cup (3 ounces) sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 teaspoons fresh thyme, minced
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350º/180ºC. Butter four 8-ounce ramekins (or a 9-inch pie dish). Bring a medium-sized pot of water to a boil; add salt and broccoli; blanch for one minute. Drain well, blot dry and give it a coarse chop.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, thyme and nutmeg. Stir in broccoli and cheese.

Ladle the mixture into ramekins and bake on a small rimmed baking sheet. Bake until the tops are a nice golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes.

Macaroni & Cheese

Published on June 10, 2011 in Main Courses and pasta. 0 Comments Tags: , , .


Something is wrong in the world. Or, more accurately, with me. I just realized that I have yet to include a recipe for macaroni and cheese. A classic comfort food. A surefire winner with kids (and everyone else except lactose-intolerant types). Gooey, cheesy happiness. What’s the matter with me?! I must get right on this.

I think there are two camps when it comes to mac ‘n cheese: the keep-it-simples and the jazz-it-uppers. I’m more of a keep it simple kinda gal — like why add a bunch of stuff when you don’t really need it? But for you jazz-it-uppers, I’ve got a few suggestions for you: throw in some dijon mustard, cayenne or herbs when you add the nutmeg…or for a healthy addition, toss in 1/2 cup of  veggies (try steamed broccoli florets, zucchini matchsticks, peas, halved cherry tomatoes). But you don’t want to get too crazy. After all, it’s cheese, butter and pasta. It’s kind of perfect already.

Notes: If it’s 95º outside, like it was yesterday, you may not feel like turning on the oven, so just skip the baking part. It’ll still be good. But the baking really brings it all together and enhances the gooey factor, so keep that in mind. Also, instead of bread crumbs, you can use some threatening-to-go-stale crackers (like I did) or even potato chips (to up the 50s kitsch factor).

Macaroni & Cheese

1 lb. (500g) cooked macaroni (or some other hollow, tubey-like pasta of your choosing)
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup flour
2-1/2 cups whole milk
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, preferably freshly ground
1 teaspoon salt
1/4+ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups grated cheese (I like a combination of sharp cheddar, Gruyère and Parmesan)
5-7 Tabasco (optional)
2 tablespoons breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
1 tablespoon butter, melted
Flat-leaf parsley or basil, finely chopped for garnish

Cook macaroni in a big pot of salted water until very al dente (or a bit longer if not baking). Drain well.

Meanwhile, heat milk over low heat in medium saucepan and keep warm.

In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in flour and keep stirring for about a minute or two. Slowly pour in warmed milk, whisking continuously until sauce thickens.

Remove the pan from the heat. Add salt, nutmeg, black pepper, cheese and Tabasco (if using) and stir until melted. Add macaroni to sauce, stirring gently to combine.

Toss together breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese and butter. Sprinkle over macaroni mixture. Serve.

IF BAKING:
Pour mixture into a 9″ x 13″ or 2a quart baking dish and add topping. Bake at 350°F (180°C) until sauce is bubbling and top is golden brown, about 20-25 minutes. If you can stand it, let it sit for 5 minutes before serving.