June 10: Bacon and Pea Risotto, with Warm Spinach Salad

I was reading Food & Wine magazine, and came across Tom Colicchio's pea and bacon risotto recipe. Bacon and risotto? Um, yes please. Paul is on a mission to perfect his risotto making, and this looked like a tasty dinner recipe to try. We invited over our friends Matt & Molly to partake in the risotto attempt, and help fuel any failures with lots of red wine.


Warning: please note this recipe came from Food AND Wine magazine. We took that very seriously.


We had some proscuitto e melone (prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe) to prevent us from getting "hangry" (hungry + angry). 

Paul's fave. I tried to add basil. But he wouldn't let me "ruin it" with any extra ingredients. Fair.

Paul diced and started cooking up the bacon.

Mmmmmmm. Bacon.

While the cooked bacon was resting (1 tablespoon of the bacon fat reserved), Paul began making the pea puree. Take half (1 cup) of the thawed peas, add one cup of water and puree. He also put the 7 cups of chicken stock in a pot on the stove to start warming it up (a key component in our risotto making).

Bottle #1 of wine? Done. Wine is critical with culinary spectating.

Cook 1 small onion (minced) in 2 tablespoons of olive oil for about 5 minutes. Then toss in the arborio rice, and stir until it is coated in the oil. Add the 1/2 cup of dry white wine and cook until almost evaporated. 

Note: You may want to set aside the wine you need for your recipe before your wife gets home and friends arrive. Wine tends to disappear fast, and you don't want to be left with none for your recipe. Ahem. 

What's nice about having other people over, is that they help take photos.

Add enough warmed chicken stock to cover the rice. Stir frequently (I think continuously is nearly impossible and probably counterproductive. We welcome debate on this issue.), until the stock is absorbed into the rice. Add a ladle of warm stock once the previous amount has been absorbed and continue to stir. Keep adding stock until it is gone, or until you think the rice is nearly cooked (this is determined by tasting it to see when it is just short of al dente). 

It's a good workout.

Add the pea puree, the remaining cup of frozen peas, and bacon, and stir until warmed. If you let the rice absorb too much of the liquid from the pea puree, it will be overcooked. I like the description used in that recipe -- cook until the rice is suspended in a creamy sauce.

Once warmed, take off the heat and add in the Parmesan cheese, butter, bacon fat and lemon juice. 

Added a little extra Parmesan cheese. Can't hurt, right?

I pulled together a warm spinach salad from a recipe I found online. After slicing red onion thinly with the mandolin, I cooked them on medium heat with some olive oil on the stove to soften them up. 

Cooking them down makes the onion breath a little better.

Then, make the vinaigrette, by whisking together vinegar, agave, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper. To emulsify, slowly drizzle in olive oil while whisking.

Whisking furiously!

Once the onions are cooked through, add the vinaigrette and the rinsed canned beans to the pan. Warm the pan ingredients. 

Top the spinach leaves with the warm bean/onion/vinaigrette mixture. 

I really liked this salad! The spinach leaves softened up when the warm bean/onion mix was placed on top. The vinaigrette was nice and sweet, and the beans added a bit of a creamy texture to the salad. 


P.S. Paul protested the posting of this picture. 
P.P.S. Say that five times fast. Alliteration is cool. 

Risotto, anyone? 

The risotto looked (and tasted great)! It had a little of a greenish tinge because of the pea puree. You could definitely taste the bacon, but it was not overpowering. The texture was great -- just a little toothiness to the rice, but bacon, onion and peas were nice and soft. Tommy C. (we're buds like that now) suggested that we pair this with pinot noir. OKAY. We still had a little left over to try this paring. Very tasty. 

To cap off the meal, we had a delicious dessert prepared by Molly. She made an awesome warm berry mix to cover angel food cake. She had also made homemade whipped cream and brought some delicious (real!) vanilla ice cream to add on top. 

Raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. I love summer.

And we had to have one more cocktail that matched up with dessert. Hello prosecco. 

The fruit makes it healthy!

The creator of this concoction (scoop of ice cream in the prosecco), shall remain nameless.

I cropped the culprit out of this photo.

Yum! The warm berries and cold ice cream made a delicious combination. (Note: I ate this for dessert for the next five days. I almost couldn't wait to get through dinner to have this for dessert!)

Delicious!

June 8: Carrot Soup with Cilantro alongside Brie and Spinach Grilled Cheese

As part of our 5 nights of blog posts resurgence, we chose one of the hottest days of the year to make soup. (Oh well.) We saw a recipe in our weekly produce newsletter for Carrot Soup with Cilantro, and decided it would be delicious with sourdough grilled cheese sandwiches.

I almost ran out of room on this cutting board. Holy carrots.

Chop up a ton of carrots (1 1/2 pounds), then add 1/2 pound of cubed sweet potatoes and one diced apple. We used a Gala apple we had in the house.

Woohoo, beta carotene.

This recipe was our first time using fennel seeds! Toast the fennel seeds in the pan with the heated vegetable oil for about 3 minutes before adding in the other ingredients.

Whatever, people. We were excited.

Then add the carrots, apple and sweet potatoes into the pot and cook for 5 minutes.

Someone (okay, me) was getting a little frantic trying to get the last ingredients (rice, turmeric, vegetable stock and bay leaf) in the pot, and may have caused a bit of a turmeric explosion. You know what stains? Turmeric. Paul had an interesting clean up idea.

I have to admit, it worked. Paper towels made it smeary.

Okay, back to the task at hand. Everything was finally in the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for about 30 minutes to get all the vegetables to soften.

While the soup cooked, Paul started making the spinach and brie sandwiches. We had gotten some great savoy spinach in the produce box, so we washed and chopped up the leaves.

We lightly buttered slices of sourdough bread, filled with spinach leaves and slices of brie cheese. We toasted these on the stove much like regular grilled cheese sandwiches.

Once the soup was finished cooking, I strained out the vegetables (and the bay leaf, which you throw away) and pureed them in batches in the food processor with a little bit of the broth. The directions said to just use a little bit of broth to puree the vegetables, but I still had quite a bit of broth left over once I finished pureeing everything. I decided to stir in the thickened puree with the remaining broth in the pot, while on a low heat. This helped incorporate the two together. I figured this would make it more soup-like vs. a plain vegetable puree.

Soup!

We topped the soup with a little chopped cilantro.

Do not adjust your television sets. It was really this bright orange.

The small grilled cheese sandwiches also came out nicely.

Crunchy toasted bread with cheese AND a vegetable? Yes, please.

While the soup wasn't the quickest to make, it was pretty easy. Even without cream, it was not too thin. I wasn't a fun of the light brie, and would go for regular brie next time. I did think the spinach leaves gave it a nice touch. I think the soup/sandwich combo will be a part of our easy dinner rotation.