Panna Cotte

This is yet another all time favorite. It is also supremely easy to make, comforting and delicious.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of navy/white kidney beans
• 1 bunch of escarole
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 1/2 teaspoon garlic paste/crushed garlic
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese.
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Pieces of crusty bread

Here’s how we do it:

1. Soak the beans overnight (at least 6 hours). Drain and wash.
2. Chop and sauté the onion.
3. Add the sautéed onion, 3-4 cups of water, 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste) to the beans and cook this mixture. The easiest way is to pressure cook the beans/water/salt/onion mixture.
4. Separately, wash 1 bunch escarole, remove the core, tear up the leaves and sauté them (in a different pot) in olive oil along with 1 ½ teaspoon of garlic paste/crushed garlic. When sautéing, start at high heat then lower it so escarole wilts and the garlic does not burn.
5. Add the cooked beans to the cooked wilted escarole/garlic mix.
6. Add black pepper, freshly squeezed lemon juice to taste. Mix it all in gently. Cook 4-5 minutes at low-medium heat to evaporate some liquid.
7. Add some crusty bread pieces and mix them in.
8. Place the soup in oven safe bowls, top with freshly grated parmesan cheese and heat in the oven at 250F to melt the the cheese. 
9. All done!
   

 

Red Risotto

This risotto came about from a ‘clean up the fridge’ and a ‘let me not waste this beet from the farmer’s market’ and a ‘what’s for dinner?’ I did put a little thought into it and was very happy with how it came out.

Ingredients:

1. 1 large beet
2. 1 lb chopped (bite sized) carrots
3. 1/2 lb peas
4. 1 1/2 cup arborio rice
5. 1 1/2 cup white wine (Dry pinot grigio?)
6. 1 1/2 cup water
7. A little sherry
8. Salt to taste
9. Fresh basil leaves (About 20 or so)
10. Thyme
11. Rosemary
12. Black pepper
13. Freshly grated parmesan
14. 2 tablespoon butter

Method:

1. Cook the beet: gently snip off the tail/ greens off the beet. Make sure it’s a clean cut and you don’t cut off the skin from the beet.  (It’s not a disaster if you do, but it’ll bleed red color for the time you boil it!)  Boil the beet for half hour or till it softens up in a pot after fully covering it with water. After it’s cooked, place it under cold water and peel the skin carefully (The beet itself may still be warm).

2. Chop the beet (keep away from your clothes!), carrots and saute them in 1 tablespoon butter. Keep the heat on high for a couple of minutes and then lower the heat and cook in lower heat, stirring occasionally.

3.  As they get soft, add the peas in as well and saute them in. When you add the peas, get heat back up high for a few minutes and then lower it again and cook all three vegetables in. Stir occasionally so nothing burns but take off the heat once everything is softened up. On this occasion, I even added a bit of sherry. What this does is the liquid helps cook the vegetables quicker. I chose sherry because carrots, beets and peas are naturally sweet, and adding the sherry would enhance the sweetness as well, as sherry would get infused with the softened, cooked vegetables.

4. Remove the vegetables from the pot, add the second tablespoon of butter and raise the heat to high. Add and coat in butter the arborio rice. Keep stirring so it does not burn. After the rice is fully coated and has been on heat for say, a minute or two, add in 3/4 cup of wine and 3/4 cup of water. Continue to cook on high for about 3 minutes, till the liquid has been bubbling for about a minute and then lower the heat.

5. Add the vegetables back in, mix them in. Slowly add the rest of the water and the wine an occasionally stir gently as the rice cooks to that lovely al dente texture. Once in a while stir up from the bottom of the pot to make sure nothing burns.

6. Add in the herbs and spices as it cooks, reserve the basil leaves and parmesan for last. Keep stirring gently.

 

Winter Risotto

As I may have mentioned, I definitely love a good dish with plenty of stuff in it – the big pot dishes. Of such big pot, dishes, I am constantly trying out different variations and today I decided to use the seasonal fall-winter vegetables in a ‘winter risotto’.

So, right -what vegetables to choose? And more importantly, how to put them together in a dish that has its own cohesive taste. I thought of a pea and wild mushroom risotto I had some time back – that felt good. What if I would add on to the sweetness that peas bring, and build on that? Soft, yet not mush pieces of butternut squash would go well in a risotto, I felt. If cooked suitably, butternut squash has a similar, soft, yet tangibly separate creamy texture, just like the arborio rice keeps in a good risotto. What else – I decided on complimenting the butternut squash’s sweetness further with another seasonal beauty: beets. And just because I am all whimsical, could I add more? Might the risotto need something else to ‘bring the edge’ – some turnip, perhaps? (And when I picked some of those up, I could not just resist picking it’s cousin – the rutabaga up. I may have also been influenced by a dish Sarandipitea’s mom made a few days ago – mashed, spiced rutabaga. Yum). I choose green onions to do their thing ) felt this sweet, wintry risotto needed it to make it a more rounded dish!

So here goes: the ingredients I used for a nice big pot, say 6 generous portions:

• 2 cups, arborio rice
• 1 pound chopped butternut squash
• 3 small-medium golden beets (or red)
• 2 medium turnips
• 1 medium rutabaga
• 2/3 lb peas
• 3/4 cup (after chopping) green onions
• Butter
• Olive oil
• White wine (I used a dry riesling, mostly because this was going to be a sweeter risotto than usual)
• Spices: sage, thyme, basil, dill, oregano, freshly ground pepper, salt
• Freshly ground parmesan cheese to put on top

What did I do?

I prepared the vegetables:

1. The first thing I did was wash the beets gently, then chop off the greens and most of the stem (till say an inch off the top) off the beets and let them boil in a small pot for about 30-40 minutes.
2. I washed the turnips, the rutabaga and peeled, diced and sauteed them in olive oil. Bear in mind that turnips and rutabaga basically suck up olive oil! So I made sure the olive oil was spread evenly on my pan and then I stir fried the diced turnip + rutabaga first. I stirred it in quite a bit, ensuring an even coating of olive oil and making sure nothing burns. Eventually, I added some water in the pan (leaving the heat on high) and covered the pan. This helped soften and steam cook them. When done, I put these aside.
3. I similarly sauteed the butternut squash first in olive oil and then adding water, stirring and covering it – to help soften and cook it through.
4. In a big pot – the one where I will eventually mix it all up, I sauteed the chopped green onions.
5. In the same pot, I melted a tablespoon of butter, added 2 cups of arborio rice – coated it with the butter, all while on high heat for a few minutes, stirring continuously to ensure the rice does not burn.
6. I added 1 cup of wine and 1 cup of water and let it cook on high for a few minutes
7. By this time, the beets were done boiling. I removed them from the heat, ran cold water over them in a colander. Once cooled, I peeled them (this should be dead easy by now), chopped them into bite sized pieces.
8. Then I added the cooked turnip, rutabaga, butternut squash, the beets and the peas along with half a cup of water and half a cup of wine. I also added 1.5 teaspoons of salt and the other spices (fresh ground pepper, sage, thyme, oregano, basil, all to taste, better to err on the higher side ) and mixed it all up gently so as to not mush the vegetables.
9. After a little while I lowered the heat, added another half cup water and half cup of wine and let the risotto cook on medium high, then medium, then finally low heat to let the rice cook through. Stir occasionally to make sure nothing’s burning at the bottom of the pot and things are all mixed up nicely!
10. Serve warm, top with freshly ground parmesan cheese!

 

Vegetable Risotto

Yet another of my big pot o’food dishes with plenty of veggies and good stuff thrown in.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup chick peas
• 1 medium/large green squash
• 2 medium bell peppers
• 4 carrots
• 3 celery sticks
• 1 green apple
• 1 large or 2 medium onions (yellow/white)
• Arborio rice (2 cups)
• Butter (2 tablespoons)
• Light olive oil
• White wine (I like Pinot Grigio)
• Freshly ground black pepper, (sea) salt
• Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• Optional spices – cumin powder, coriander powder

Put it all together:

1. Cook the chick peas with a 1/3 teaspoon salt.
2. Chop the vegetables and the apple up.
3. Saute the onions in the main pan/pot with 1 tablespoon butter and saute the other vegetables in another pot on the side with light olive oil (don’t overheat)
4. After the onions have become translucent, add the other tablespoon of butter in the pot, add the 2 cups of rice, saute that too.
5. Slowly add 2 cups of white wine into the pot and cook the sauteed rice-onion mix in it and cook for a while.
6. Add the chopped green apple and cooked chick peas (drained) in the main pot, stir a few minutes.
7. Add the sauteed vegetable and 2 cups of water into the mix, along with the salt (about 1 teaspoon, more if needed later), freshly ground black pepper (about 0.75 teaspoon), and the other spices (1 teaspoon each of the cumin and coriander powder if you want). Mix thoroughly, stir it in, cook as rice soaks up the water and the vegetables and apple cook in the liquid.
8. Cover, lower heat and let it cook, return occasionally to pot to ensure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot or burning.
9. As rice softens up and cooks and vegetables seem cooked, add the freshly grated Parmesan cheese and stir it in well.