Risotto Milanese

Here's the nth time I've tried making risotto from the Joy of Cooking. I must say that I really dislike the way instructions are written for a lot of their recipes. I think I finally have the order of operations down for this rice dish. Saffron can easily be one of the most expensive spice to get, but it doesn't have to cost more than all other ingredients in the dish. I used Mexican saffron which still imparts the same warm yellowish coloring to the rice, and has a lightly fragrant scent. Currently, I'm cooking for one, so the list below reflects that. The JoC recipe uses a pound of arborio rice which I don't see myself consuming all at once or even for leftovers. Also, my version doesn't add grated Parmesan cheese. I like Parmesan cheese, but oddly, only on spaghetti sauce. Total cook/prep time is 30 minutes. Risotto can be heated up as leftovers, but it isn't as tasty as other types of rice. The ingredients & directions: 1. In a small saucepan, bring to boil 1 cup of chicken broth and a generous pinch of saffron threads. Remove from heat and set aside. 2. In a large saucepan, heat 2 tbsp EVOO and add your optional ingredients. Today I used diced carrots instead of mushrooms, but you can also use fennel, rosemary, garlic, etc. Let the carrots sweat in the oil until partly cooked but not tender. 2a. Remove carrots to a bowl and reserve. You don't want them cooking the entire time since they will get mushy. 2b. In a separate pot, heat 4 cups of chicken stock and set aside. 2c. Add 2 tbsp butter to the saucepan, 1 clove minced garlic, and heat until the oil is fragrant. Add 1 cup of arborio rice and stir until combined. Raise heat to medium. Add chicken stock, one cup at a time until it has been absorbed by the rice. Add the carrots, salt, and freshly ground black pepper. 2d. Add the saffron-chicken stock to the rice and stir until the excess liquid has been absorbed. Turn off heat and serve. Ingredient summary: 1 c. chicken stock 1 generous pinch of saffron threads 2 tbsp EVOO 1 medium organic carrot, diced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 c. arborio rice 2 tbsp unsalted butter 4 c. chicken stock, hot salt & pepper to taste A pepper note: I don't have ground white pepper in my kitchen pantry. It's used in so few recipes that I know of that I only have black pepper available. If you don't want to see little black specks in your risotto, by all means, use ground white pepper.

Apple bars

This is a quick, easy recipe for apple bars. It uses fresh apples and can be a party food.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9" x 13" baking dish.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. organic rolled oats
1 1/3 c. unbleached white flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
12 tbsp unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened or melted
3/4 c. brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 sweet, firm apples (I used Gala apples)
2-3 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. In a bowl, sift flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together; then mix in the rolled oats

2. Melt butter and let cool, then whisk together with eggs, vanilla, and brown sugar.

3. Fold together the flour mix and the butter mix until well combined. Pour into prepared baking dish and Bake for 35-40 minutes. Let cool for at least 30 minutes, then cut into bars and remove from baking pan.

Oven notes: My oven doesn't heat properly and heats up unevenly, so I tend to bake for 5-10 minutes longer. If you have an accurate oven, these bars should be baked for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean in the middle.

Elk curry

I am a big fan of wild game meat, except I live in a quaint suburb of Los Angeles and there's often no such meat to be had unless I go out of my way to a specialty meat shop. Fortunately, there's a shop a few miles away, Harmony Farms. I have eaten elk jerky before, but with all the spices really hard to tell what elk really tastes like.

Any meat cooked with curry is prepared a lot like a stew. You take some flavoring agent like ginger or garlic, heat it up with some oil (usually 2 tbsp) in a skillet and add whatever meat. With the exception to roast duck, I don't think anyone else in my family likes eating game meats. I love it and I love reading folklorist-styled cookbooks that talk about the olde ways of preparing food. Anyhow.. onto the recipe.

There's a small hole-in-the-wall Middle-Eastern foods specialty shop that sells a lot of dried goods and spices in Burbank called Y & K Distributing. The curry that I have is packaged under their label and the spice ratios of it are unknown to me; but it is rather mild and flavorful.

Ingredients:

4 tsp curry powder + enough water to make a paste
2 tbsp EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1 lb elk stew meat
boiling water
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp wine (I used red xiao-xing wine)

Directions:

1. In a skillet, heat oil until hot but not smoking; add curry paste and stir until fragrant but not burning.
2. Add the elk meat and brown the elk meat. This step takes a lot less time than with beef stew meat since there is a lot less fat in elk meat. About 5 mins, or less.
3. Add enough boiling water to cover the meat.
4. Add soy sauce (this is a natural glutamate)
5. Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. You could add wine to this step. It is optional.

Serve with steamed rice, noodles, or fresh lavash bread.

IMHO, it tastes pretty good.

Red bean mooncakes

So, on my quest to make mooncakes from scratch this year instead of buying them for $20/4pc.. I soaked some azuki beans in water for 2 hours, drained off the water, then proceeded to boil them at a simmer until they were soft. I blended them into a soppy paste with some lard and sugar, except the paste has too much water in it. Hmm.. and, the paste is of a purplish hue instead of dark red -- like what you'd get out of canned, sweetened red bean paste. The recipe I'm using isn't for the faint of heart. There's lard in both dough mixes. Mmmm.. lard.. Well, these look pretty darn strange coming out of the oven (See also: pic2 & pic3). Since I didn't use an egg wash, none of the mooncakes retained their mould image. The crust is about right, a little on the thick side and not sweet even though I added about 1/8 cup sugar to the outer crust recipe. The purple azuki bean paste looks pretty purple, so maybe for the next batch I should use the canned red bean paste instead. Maybe there's a video on this somewhere of how to form these things. The instructions I have suggest to put the fold side into the mould so that the fold is imprinted, but that's just all wacky. Here're the ingredients: One 14 oz package of azuki beans water 3/4 c. lard 1 c. sugar Water-lard dough: 2 c. unbleached white flour 5 tbsp. lard 10+ tbsp cold water 1/8 c. sugar Flaky dough: 1 c. unbleached white flour 5 tbsp lard This batch yielded 12 malformed mooncakes. For this recipe, I used duck lard and while the dough faintly smelled of roast duck (kao ya), the taste didn't stay with the pastry after baking. I ended up using more than 10 tbsp water with the water-lard dough just to get the dough to come together. The bean paste doesn't taste all that sweet because I misread the recipe. It originally called for 1 3/4 c. sugar. Now that I've gone through the process once, I think that a bit of powdered sugar can be added to the water-lard dough without it drying out too much. It would impart more sweetness and still be a dough. The ratio has yet to be determined.

Mápó dòufu (hot spicy tofu)

This dish is commonly regarded as one of the signature dishes of the Szechuan province in China. It is pretty easy to prepare. I'm not a fan of this dish, but after watching this prepared in an episode of the comedy anime series Chuka Ichiban (Cooking Master Boy), I got awfully interested in cooking it. Everyone else in my family is proficient at cooking it. 

My mom tells me that it isn't complicated at all... "You fry the pork and green onion. Put in the tofu and fry it. Add the sauce and you're done." 

My dad's recipe, as it was told over the telephone, went like this: "Take one box of tofu and chop it into whatever shape you want. Fry ground pork until crispy with soy sauce. Add some chicken broth. Put a little salt on it. When it starts to bubble, put the ground pork in. Add 1/2 tsp black pepper. Cook with medium-thick cornstarch until it is a little shiny and sticky. If you like it hot, chop up a red pepper. Put spring onion on it. Add a few drops of sesame oil. Add the hot bean sauce last so that it's not too hot." 

My brother's recipe had less of the how and more of the what to put in the dish: sauce is 1/4 c. stock, 1 tbsp hot bean sauce, 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce; green onions, minced ginger, minced garlic, tofu, 1 lb ground pork, and Szechuan peppercorns (btw, these are no longer a banned ingredient in the USA). 

Here's what transpired on the stove tonight... 

Ingredients: 

1 box soft tofu (should be firm, but this is all I had in my pantry) 
1/4 pound ground pork 
1/2 tsp fresh ginger, minced 
2 cloves garlic, minced 
1 stalk green onion, sliced, for garnish 
1 tsp sesame oil (optional) 
1/4 c. chicken broth 
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying freshly ground black pepper 
Sauce thickener (optional): 1 tsp cornstarch 2 tsp cold water

Sauce (mildly spicy): 
1 tsp hot bean sauce (1 tbsp for very spicy) 
1 tsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt (up to 1 1/2 tsp salt) 

Directions: 

1. Cube the bean curd into 1/2" pieces and set aside. 

2. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a pan and fry the ground pork until almost no pinkness remains. Set aside. 

3. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a pan and add the garlic and ginger. When these start to lightly brown, add the tofu and cook for about 2 minutes. Add the pork, chicken broth, and sauce. Simmer for about 3 minutes. 

4. Dissolve the cornstarch with the cold water and pour this into the pan. This will thicken the sauce. 

5. Stir in the sesame oil and sprinkle with green onions. 

6. Remove from heat and serve. Looked like mapo tofu, tastes like mild mapo tofu. Well, it has all the flavor and very little of the hot spicyness. This can be converted into a vegetarian dish by omitting the ground meat and using a vegetable broth instead.