Chive Risotto Cakes
- By Katie Roche
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- 11 Oct, 2019
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I've been eyeing this recipe for a while thinking about how much I love risotto, and how much I love cakes, and how much I love breading things and cooking them in oil. Ina laments in her introduction that she hates waiting to have leftover risotto to make risotto cakes. I guess I can kind of understand this, but I do find it extremely hilarious that that is her relatable tidbit as I can almost guarantee that very few people actually relate to it. I can probably count on one hand the number of friends I have who have ever made risotto at all, let alone made it often enough to think about how you love the leftovers to make risotto cakes out of.
ItemQuest: fontina, which is turns out is hard to find by itself. You have to look with the *fancy cheese*. Trader Joe's has it and while I usually avoid buying cheese there because it molds SO INCREDIBLY FAST, I only needed it for this one thing so I just went for it. I do realize that the fact that it molds quickly is probably good, like it has no preservatives or whatever, but honestly, I volunteer to ingest some preservatives for the sake of having a block of cheese that lasts longer than three days. Nobody can eat a pound of cheese in five days. (Actually, my mom used to buy multiple five pound blocks of Tillamook cheddar on her Costco trips because my brother would eat AN ENTIRE BLOCK EACH WEEK, pretty much by himself unless my mom got to some for her enchiladas or whatever. If you know my family at all, I am 100% sure you can guess which brother.) Anyway, chives - TJ's always has them, whereas you're lucky to get them at the regular grocery. Plain Greek yogurt, which I do not, and will not, keep on hand because it is gross and is NOT an acceptable substitute for sour cream. I already had Panko on hand; Ina helpfully explains as a sidenote to the recipe what Panko breadcrumbs are, as if we haven't all been using them for the last ten years without confusion. And finally, Arborio rice, and SPECIFICALLY Arborio rice because, for whatever reason, it is The Risotto Rice. Trader Joe's had every conceivable type of rice or pasta including "pasta" made out of lentils (I'm disappointed and I AM DISGUSTED), and rice in all sorts of colors but no Arborio rice so we were forced to do the most disappointing thing ever and visit TWO grocery stores on the weekly grocery trip. This, as our grocery trips typically are, was on a Sunday after church and Dan was *not impressed* at the two-store-situation as he was just trying to get home for his pre-hockey game nap on the couch. Alas, BI-LO came through with their ridiculously large selection of rice products.
ItemQuest: fontina, which is turns out is hard to find by itself. You have to look with the *fancy cheese*. Trader Joe's has it and while I usually avoid buying cheese there because it molds SO INCREDIBLY FAST, I only needed it for this one thing so I just went for it. I do realize that the fact that it molds quickly is probably good, like it has no preservatives or whatever, but honestly, I volunteer to ingest some preservatives for the sake of having a block of cheese that lasts longer than three days. Nobody can eat a pound of cheese in five days. (Actually, my mom used to buy multiple five pound blocks of Tillamook cheddar on her Costco trips because my brother would eat AN ENTIRE BLOCK EACH WEEK, pretty much by himself unless my mom got to some for her enchiladas or whatever. If you know my family at all, I am 100% sure you can guess which brother.) Anyway, chives - TJ's always has them, whereas you're lucky to get them at the regular grocery. Plain Greek yogurt, which I do not, and will not, keep on hand because it is gross and is NOT an acceptable substitute for sour cream. I already had Panko on hand; Ina helpfully explains as a sidenote to the recipe what Panko breadcrumbs are, as if we haven't all been using them for the last ten years without confusion. And finally, Arborio rice, and SPECIFICALLY Arborio rice because, for whatever reason, it is The Risotto Rice. Trader Joe's had every conceivable type of rice or pasta including "pasta" made out of lentils (I'm disappointed and I AM DISGUSTED), and rice in all sorts of colors but no Arborio rice so we were forced to do the most disappointing thing ever and visit TWO grocery stores on the weekly grocery trip. This, as our grocery trips typically are, was on a Sunday after church and Dan was *not impressed* at the two-store-situation as he was just trying to get home for his pre-hockey game nap on the couch. Alas, BI-LO came through with their ridiculously large selection of rice products.
Step One: Make rice. I believe I have mentioned before that this is not something I do a whole lot, and I recently learned after doing it incorrectly the first time that rice and grits and that sort of thing actually require a specific water ratio. Ever since I just pasta-ed it and threw some grits in however much water I felt like without thinking, I have paid careful attention to this concept of correct water-to-grain ratio. And then I got to this recipe which just said "bring a large 4-quart pot of water to a boil". I'm pretty sure just about everyone I know would read those instructions as "get a large pot" and not really worry about whether it had exactly 4 quarts of water so I sat there for like five minutes trying to look up the online version of this recipe, read reviews, etc. just to figure out if I really did need a certain amount of water. In the end, all I was left with was my reasoning skills: I really just need the rice not to be crunchy and then I'm draining it, I'm not actually ensuring that it absorbs a certain amount of water so a guesstimate will do. I just feel like that was more stressful than it needed to be, but then, that is basically a good summary of my relationship with rice.
Meanwhile, I mixed the eggs, yogurt, chives, and Fontina. I did for sure gag at the Greek yogurt, as usual. I'm just really confused why she ever calls for it...like I think she must actually enjoy the flavor and texture because she certainly does not care about making her recipes healthy. Oh, except for the Potato Recipe with the Greek yogurt "sauce" that she still...wait for it...mixed with sour cream. LOL.
If I could ask Ina a question about this recipe, I'm not sure this would be, like, THEE ONE, but it's up there: I'd want to know why Fontina? If I were to describe it, I'd say it's nothing to write home about. It's fine. It's a bit soft, like mozzy, sort of tastes like Jack cheese to me. It frustrates me that I'm not food-smart enough to know this, but I'd like to know if a firmer cheese would be acceptable because I think this would be VASTLY improved by using something like Asiago instead.
After the rice mixture has chilled for at least a couple of hours, you can form the patties. She gives dimensions, but I've made progress in being less obsessively precise so I did not actually get my knitting tape measure out to check to see if I had them the right size. Cam was here, though, and he did that thing where you use your knuckle to estimate an inch. He declared them close enough. This, by the way, was not my favorite mixture of things to pick up in my hands.
Then I had to coat them in Panko. It was nearly impossible, since any time I set one down and tried to pick it back up, it fell apart.
Cam is such a good houseguest, really more like fam - he was flippin' my risotto cakes because I was screaming and breaking them every time I tried, and because I had to keep making more of them. He was over for an impromptu Sunday family dinner on the rare night of each season when Dan and I don't have hockey games.
Here are some done ones and they DO NOT look as goldenly crunchy and delicious as Ina's do. Whyyyy.
This is unrelated to the recipe, just some bonus footage: Dan had my apple peeler attachment working on peeling apples for a crisp I was going to make after dinner and it made one continuous peel out of an entire apple! Here are Dan and Cam, preparing to Lady and the Tramp this thing. The video is on my Facebook page and my Instagram if you want to see it, but I'll spoil it for you: Dan can't handle the tension, and chomps off his piece before Cam gets too close. It is hilarious.
I struggled to get a good pic of this plate. I mean I always struggle with photography and I still do, even after reading Food Network Magazine's feature this month on how to make your food more 'grammable. I think in order to do that you have to possess a small amount of photography skills, which I do not. So this is kind of the best I did - I took it of Cam's plate since he arranged his much better than I did mine. The salad is from Trader Joe's - not that exciting - and then the steak is spice-rubbed grilled flank steak with some chimichurri on top. Chimichurri is one of the most delicious condiments out there. Learning about it was life-changing. Do risotto cakes go with these things? I do not know. What I do know is that I spent a solid 15 minutes agonizing over what to make for this impromptu dinner since I knew that I had to do the risotto cakes, but also know that Cam's favorite food is pasta, and didn't feel like I could make pasta with a side of...rice. Honestly, I'm sure a lot of people would be totally happy with that but, dang it, I'm still trying to get more protein in my diet so I had to go with steak.
Thoughts on the risotto cakes: they were fine, but entirely too laborious for a dinner side dish. To be honest, the mixture looked a lot like something that high schoolers in a Disney Channel Original Movie would throw at each other in the cafeteria during a food fight or whatever. (As if high schools really have those. The only things I ever saw people throw at each other in high school were, like, Frisbees and trash and stuff.) I think the reason for this white pasty food-fight-food texture was that the rice wasn't dry enough when I added it to the other ingredients. Serious question though, how do you effectively dry RICE? Ok? I mean if you want it dry, it is that way when you start with it you know? After that, all bets are off on how dry you can get it to be. So anyway...these were less thrilling than anticipated. They tasted fine, and were pretty good, but this is all the mediocre praise I can give them. I may try them again with a different cheese. However, before I do that, I'll need to get in touch with Ina and find out exactly how many employees she has in her barn specifically tasked with drying individual grains of rice.
Thoughts on the risotto cakes: they were fine, but entirely too laborious for a dinner side dish. To be honest, the mixture looked a lot like something that high schoolers in a Disney Channel Original Movie would throw at each other in the cafeteria during a food fight or whatever. (As if high schools really have those. The only things I ever saw people throw at each other in high school were, like, Frisbees and trash and stuff.) I think the reason for this white pasty food-fight-food texture was that the rice wasn't dry enough when I added it to the other ingredients. Serious question though, how do you effectively dry RICE? Ok? I mean if you want it dry, it is that way when you start with it you know? After that, all bets are off on how dry you can get it to be. So anyway...these were less thrilling than anticipated. They tasted fine, and were pretty good, but this is all the mediocre praise I can give them. I may try them again with a different cheese. However, before I do that, I'll need to get in touch with Ina and find out exactly how many employees she has in her barn specifically tasked with drying individual grains of rice.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!