Spring Green Risotto
- By Katie Roche
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- 04 Jul, 2019
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More risotto in one of the hottest months of the year! Hooray! If you've never eaten risotto, I described it to Dan as "fancy mac and cheese, but with rice instead of noodles" but it would also make sense to describe it as eating a warm brick. It kind of sits with you, like the kind of food you WANT to make when it's 40 degrees and you're about to stay in and have a Harry Potter marathon while rain gently falls outside. Not what you want to make if you're, say, just coming in from a day at the water park. I did allow myself the illusion of correct weather for this for about an hour - the hour I spent working on my ice-skating in the pretty-cold-for-SC ice rink - but promptly ruined that cozy feeling by going to my gym and sweating profusely and then walking out into a 100-degree super-humid sauna. If you've never been to SC, it's lovely this time of year. Not.
ItemQuest was strategically carried out at Trader Joe's because they have the best mascarpone prices of all the grocery stores. I have noticed that Trader Joe's dairy products seem to mold more quickly than any others, however, I was using this mascarpone on the same day I bought it so I figured it was fine. But if you go there to buy a block of cheese that you're counting on having for a week or two, I'd reconsider. Costco sells large blocks of Tillamook - the best cheese on the planet. You're welcome. The rest of the ItemQuest was mostly for the spring vegetables - asparagus, chives, peas, leeks, fennel - and lemons, which at this point, I buy so often just for zesting purposes that I would consider planting a lemon tree if my thumb weren't so completely BROWN. I end up zesting lemons at least three times a week and not needing the juice and then just having piles of bald lemons all over my counter. They don't look appetizing, and I know it's wasteful, I'm just not sure what else to do.
ItemQuest was strategically carried out at Trader Joe's because they have the best mascarpone prices of all the grocery stores. I have noticed that Trader Joe's dairy products seem to mold more quickly than any others, however, I was using this mascarpone on the same day I bought it so I figured it was fine. But if you go there to buy a block of cheese that you're counting on having for a week or two, I'd reconsider. Costco sells large blocks of Tillamook - the best cheese on the planet. You're welcome. The rest of the ItemQuest was mostly for the spring vegetables - asparagus, chives, peas, leeks, fennel - and lemons, which at this point, I buy so often just for zesting purposes that I would consider planting a lemon tree if my thumb weren't so completely BROWN. I end up zesting lemons at least three times a week and not needing the juice and then just having piles of bald lemons all over my counter. They don't look appetizing, and I know it's wasteful, I'm just not sure what else to do.
So you're probably familiar with leeks, but the Trader Joe's cashier was very interested in them and said he's never known how to use them so he hasn't tried. He wanted to know what I was making, and although I know plenty of my friends are of the opinion that they should be left alone and not interacted with in the grocery store, I personally really enjoy when the cashier asks what I'm cooking! We had a nice chat about when to use leeks; pretty much, in my opinion anyway, you can use them almost any time you WOULD be using onions. I put them in my pot pie filling, in soups, etc and they're delicious. Trader Joe's sells them trimmed, which is nice, because every time I try to bag them at the regular grocery store, they're GIANT and impossible to stuff in those tiny produce bags. (Unrelated kinda but have you guys touched the new Trader Joe's produce bags? Makes me GAG, I HATE how they feel.) Anyway, risotto part 1: chop up these leeks (usually you should give 'em a rinse 'cause they get sandy inside) and start sweating them like you would onions.
Fennel joined the leeks next. I'm guessing it's less likely that we are all familiar with fennel - I think most people have eaten it in some form or another and probably think they don't like it. Raw fennel does have an *aggressive* flavor, and I've only ever seen it served raw when fancy restaurants are trying to make salad interesting. Otherwise, once you cook it, it's really nice. It's not that licorice flavor of your nightmares like you might think. I also just really enjoy how it looks, with all the fronds on top and such. I've only ever seen the fronds used for stock-making, and this was no exception - we bid them goodbye (after portrait-moding this photo because look at it - it was begging to be portrait-moded) and chopped up the bulb.
Just like the risotto from last week, the rice goes in next to get coated in the butter. And then we liquid. In this case, a small amount of white wine followed by ladle-fuls of simmering chicken stock added periodically. She would prefer that I use homemade. I would prefer that she Get a Grip.
I broke my mom's cardinal rule of reading the entire recipe before beginning to cook, because I'd made this once or twice before and thought I knew what was up. I was wrong. I neglected to start water boiling to blanch my asparagus. I ABSOLUTELY HATE blanching things. My resolution henceforth is to just skip recipes that call for blanching things. I just tried ask the internet why it's even important and it says, "It stops enzyme actions which can cause loss of flavor, color and texture. Blanching cleanses the surface of dirt and organisms, brightens the color and helps retard loss of vitamins." So I truly have no clue what an "enzyme action" is and I do not care; I also feel that basically trying to lock in the vitamins or whatever is a bit irrelevant since I'm just going to smother the health benefits of vegetables in carbs and fat by putting them in a risotto. I did it, this time, For The Blog, but really. Miss me with the blanching. Two whole entire extra dirty dishes and for what? Stopping enzyme actions. GOD FORBID there should be continuous enzyme action. UGH. Anyway, I forgot to blanch, and at the point that I was supposed to be DONE blanching, the salt water had barely boiled. Oops.
This appetizing mixture here is mascarpone whisked with lemon juice. (Mascarpone, if you're not familiar, is basically Italian cream cheese and has a lot milder of a flavor than normal cream cheese. The most likely thing you'd have eaten it in is tiramisu.) This bears an unsettling resemblance to Greek yogurt, which is one of my most despised foods. I gag it down - for the protein, bro - but its texture is for SURE in my top five least favorite food textures. It's up there with pretty much all beans and things that were supposed to be dry and aren't anymore, like those cakes that you pour liquid in. Anyway, once the risotto has absorbed all the chicken stock and is finished, this mascarpone-lemon mixture gets stirred in off the heat.
Mmmm...a pot of hot, creamy food for an oppressively hot day. Actually, the weather was doing the weird thing it's been doing where it's like a million degrees with the humidity index of a southeast Asian country, VIOLENTLY pouring rain for like 15 minutes, and then returning to being sunny. I believe I have adequately emphasized how wrong the weather was for this food, but alas. It really bothers me.
This risotto has a lot going for it: it's automatically delicious because it's risotto, it has all of the best vegetables in it, and the bright flavor from the lemon zest and lemon is a refreshing contrast to its intensely rich comfort food vibes. Honestly, it's been my favorite risotto I've made for a long time, until last week when I made the mushroom one. The mushroom one is way better. BUT. What this has that the mushroom risotto doesn't is a reasonably affordable ingredient list. That is its best charm to recommend it, as Jane Austen would say. If you live somewhere that seasonal produce is a thing, even better! I imagine this would be great in actual spring, when there's still a bit of coolness outside and these vegetables are readily available. (In Alaska, it's not really ever bad weather for risotto but it's also not really ever good weather for vegetables so they're always expensive.)
The verdict, then, is this: It's great. It's super delicious. It's everything you could want out of a risotto WITH vegetables added and with that nice kick of lemon. Make it for your friends when they're sad. Make it on a day when you can wear a light jacket. (April 25, LOL.) We'll give Ina credit here - this was basic enough to actually be called "basic". Maybe not, like, Kraft mac and cheese basic. But it's basic. You don't have to try to find any ridiculously scarce items. I've never seen store-bought risotto, well actually, yes I have! Trader Joe's has an asparagus brand! But in this case, I'm here to testify: make this one, store-bought is way less fine. Maybe wait till February though.
The verdict, then, is this: It's great. It's super delicious. It's everything you could want out of a risotto WITH vegetables added and with that nice kick of lemon. Make it for your friends when they're sad. Make it on a day when you can wear a light jacket. (April 25, LOL.) We'll give Ina credit here - this was basic enough to actually be called "basic". Maybe not, like, Kraft mac and cheese basic. But it's basic. You don't have to try to find any ridiculously scarce items. I've never seen store-bought risotto, well actually, yes I have! Trader Joe's has an asparagus brand! But in this case, I'm here to testify: make this one, store-bought is way less fine. Maybe wait till February though.
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!