Wild mushroom and curry risotto

I read an article online that if you make risotto correctly, the rice becomes naturally creamy in the broth & wine when it cooks in due to its high starch content; and that you should never add butter or cream as the finishing step. I picked up some arborio rice from Whole Foods today. All the recipes that I came across seemed to have a similar theme going on... Some type of oil + rice + broth >> Simmer >> Add other ingredients >> Add other seasonings >> Simmer >> Add wine >> Simmer >> Serve For this experiment, I didn't use much curry since I only wanted to color the dish yellow and not have a curried rice dish; much like how saffron is typically used to flavor and impart color to the rice in a traditional risotto. This recipe makes 2 cups of cooked rice. Ingredients & Directions: 1 tbsp butter or olive oil 1 c. dry arborio rice Heat a skillet and add the butter. Once the butter has melted, add the rice. No, you're not cooking the rice in the butter. This is to keep it the starch in the rice from sticking to the pan. In a separate pot, rehydrate the dried mushroom with 1 c. boiling water. When softened, drain and reserve the mushrooms. Before the rice has a chance to burn and before all the moisture wicks itself away from the pan, add: 2 c. chicken broth 1 c. broken bits of dried mushroom Cook on low-medium heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes until nearly all the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. If you're going to watch the director's cut of Dune while cooking, stir and check the rice frequently. Add some white wine, no more than 1/4 cup or the alcohol won't burn off before its served When this liquid has all been just about absorbed by the rice or cooked off, turn off the stove and stir in 1 tsp curry powder. The curry taste mellows out when the rice sits refrigerated for a day or so. Salt to taste. Total cook and prep time: 40 minutes Notes: In the mushroom rehydration step, you can reserve the liquid as a mushroom dashi soup base for another dish. The curry powder could also have been added to the butter and heated until fragrant.

Sweet Tamarind Drink

I think tamarind is the foreign equivalent to the lemon in its sourness and use for medicinal and culinary purposes. This is one of the recipes that I've been meaning to try after reading about it in Saveur magazine. Basically you take about a pound of fresh tamarind pods, you'd want them fresher if you wanted a drink or pulp that was less sour. Shell them out and remove whatever harder strings are attached to the pulp. Put them in 2 quarts of water and boil until the pulp is soft (about 15-20 minutes). Strain the water through a sieve and reserve the liquid. This is where I deviated from the recipe a bit. In the pot where I had boiled the pulp, I added about a quart and a half of cool water and just used my hands to separate the seeds from the pulp. Instead of using a blender, I put the pulp through the sieve to separate the pulp from the seeds. At this point, you could scrape the bottom of the sieve with a spoon to get your tamarind pulp for other dishes. Anyhow, strain all the tamarind liquid and pulp into an 8-quart pot. Bring that pot to a boil and cool. Sugar to taste and serve. For 1 cup of tamarind liquid, 2 tsp of sugar seems to sweeten it enough so that it isn't overbearingly tart. After having made this from scratch, I can see why the advertised pictures of tamarind drink never resembles what it does if you make it fresh. I must say that the whole preparation process tastes better than it looks. The drink itself smells rather earthy, like boiled plants--not vegetables, but like someone cooked up peat moss and served it as a drink. Seeing how it's autumn now, I suppose that sour drinks aren't as refreshing when the weather is cooler. Kudos to the wild plant gatherer 3,000 years ago who convinced someone else to drink a brownish liquid made from the seed pulp that resembles nearly dried cat sh**.

Beef and Vegetable Soup

It might have tasted meatier if I'd used beef broth instead of vegetable broth, but that's what was already in my pantry. Most recipes of this particular flavor use a bag of mixed frozen vegetables. I remember from my youth that I disliked half the vegetables in that mix, mostly because lima beans tasted pasty, the green beans were way over-cooked, the peas were flavorless, and you didn't nearly get enough of what you did like.

Ingredients:

4 c. vegetable broth
2 white potatoes, cubed
2 carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks, cubed
1 c. fresh corn
5 medium white mushrooms, sliced
1/2 lb. stew beef, cut into smaller pieces
dash of cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. sea salt
black pepper, to taste
1/2 c. white wine (optional)

1 shallot, chopped
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil

Directions:

1. Frying pan - On medium heat, add butter, olive oil, and shallots. Once the shallots have been lightly browned, add the beef and stir fry until the beef is nearly done. Set aside the beef. Add carrots, celery, and potatoes and cook until carrots are nearly tender.

2. Covered stockpot - Add broth, corn, and mushrooms, bring to a boil then simmer. Add the vegetables and beef. Add spices. Add the wine (optional). Cook on medium heat for 20 minutes, then simmer until potatoes are almost soft but haven't disintegrated.

Total prep time: 30 minutes
Total cook time: 1-2 hours, or longer

Steamed Whole Tilapia

There are three chain ethic supermarkets in southern California near where I live: Ranch 99, Vallarta, and Jons. Meats, seafood, spices, seasonal fruits, and odd-things-to-try-out, etc., are very inexpensive here. At the latter two places I can buy a lot of whole tilapia for a very good price. The following is a relatively generic, but simple way to steam tilapia. I'd imagine that this preparation style is common to asian households.

Ingredients:

1 whole tilapia, thawed and cleaned
2 stalks green onions, sliced
1-2 slices of peeled ginger, thinly sliced
1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine (red or white, doesn't matter)

Before the fish is steamed, you need to make two slits on each side of the fish (through the flesh to the bone but not cutting through the fish, this helps it steam evenly and cook faster). Pour the wine over the fish and place the ginger and green onions on top.

The average whole tilapia will be under a pound, total cooking time is about 20 minutes. This seems like a long time, especially for fish, but I skip the process where you let a steamer come up to temperature then put the fish in. The flesh of the fish should be of a white-ish color when fully cooked. Promptly remove from heat and serve.

Whole fish pairs with steamed rice (brown, white, or "wild"). It goes pleasantly with a dry riesling wine, like Columbia Crest (which you can usually get from Trader Joe's).

I eat this with a sauce that has equal parts rice wine vinegar and light soy sauce.

Pastelitos de guayaba y queso

This dessert goes by different names (pasteles de guayaba, pastelitos de guayaba y queso, guava and cheese strudel) depending on who you ask. I don't see why it wouldn't be more popular among bakers. It is an easy recipe that doesn't involve working with filo dough. Mine came out lighter in color because I don't use egg washes when baking. The recipe comes from the cookbook, In a Cuban Kitchenby Alex Garcia. I "halved" the recipe because this was a first run, and while I like experimental cooking, I don't like to waste ingredients. It is possible that it's not a popular dessert because the dough requires a chilling step before it is rolled out, then cut into squares.

When I went shopping for guava paste at Vallarta's, I couldn't find any that didn't have red food coloring in it. I picked up a seemingly harmless brick of guava paste. When these bricks are packaged and shipped, the sugar in the paste crystalizes and forms a crusty outer edge around the brick. I sliced off the crystalized sugar part and am saving it for other uses.

I have a third of my "half" dough mixture leftover which I will combine with a new batch tonight. This batch (minus that third) made 11 pastries, 7 cheese pocket-shaped (take a square, put paste in the center, take the corners of two of the opposing edges and fold them to the center) and 4 rugelach shaped (need a rectangle, put guava paste in the center, fold over the edges so that it looks like a small bundle, crimp edges). Tonight I'll make them turnover-shaped (take a square, fill it with guava paste, fold it in half diagonally, and crimp the edges). Finished product looked like this: pic1 and pic2.

Ingredients

8 oz cream cheese, softened
2 c. unbleached white flour
2 sticks butter, softened
guava paste

Directions

1. Blend cream cheese, flour, and butter together. Wrap it in plastic (or put it into a lidded pot) and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes).
2. After the dough has been chilled, roll it out once. This keeps the gluten in the flour from being all worked up.
3. Add 1 tsp or so of guava paste to a random danish pastry shape.
4. If the pastry shape requires edge crimping, use fork tines to do this or squeeze the edges together with the back edge of a knife.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes, or until lightly browned.

The guava paste didn't melt like all the pictures that I've seen of this dessert. I may have to work with the brick to see if I can reconstitute it into a jam-like consistency. The dough came out quite nice, flaky enough to be crisp and has a little bit of weight because as the dough starts to sweat (need to roll it out while it is very cold), it became rather hard to get it rolled out to the 1/4-inch thickness that the pastry shell requires.

Since it is just a pastry method, I expect that both savory and sweet fillings can be used.