Risotto con fragole

So here is the recipe of 'Risotto con fragole', i.e. 'Strawberry risotto', that I showed at the roundup for the last FPOM.. sorry for having it up only now. :) Actually, I already posted about this recipe here, but I think it's better to rewrite it - and I now have a decent picture. :)

Risotto con fragole / Strawberry risotto

This is not the typical 'risotto': usually risotto is made with cheese, vegetables and/or meat - typically, for example, mushrooms, or asparagus, or some type of fish. Yet, risotto alle fragole is a quite famous dish, although not many people have tried it. It's considered somewhat 'fancy'. And in fact, it is, and if you make it, you'll taste a very different flavor than the usual risotto dishes you have had. This is a little tart, and yet creamy and savory at the same time. Hard to describe.

Ok, no more introduction. To make this, soak about 1 pound of strawberries cut into pieces in ~ 4 cups of white wine, overnight. When you're ready to make the risotto, take a pot (~10 inches diameter, 8 inches high, just to give you an idea). Add ~1 tbsp butter and sautee one onion (finely cut) in it, then add ~8 handfuls of rice, and sautee the rice with the onion. Then, add the wine where the strawberries had been soaked. The liquid should be enough to cover the rice, and about two fingers higher than the level of the rice in the pot (the fingers are measured horizontally :) ). If the strawberry-infused wine is not enough for this, add some more white wine. Add a vegetable bouillon, too. Add salt (~2 tsp) and cover the pot with a lid. Let the rice cook for about 20 minutes. Open, make sure there's still a little bit of liquid, and add the pieces of strawberries. Taste and check for the salt in the meanwhile. At this point, I also like to add some cheese that melts easily, like a very mild cheddar or some sort of fake mozzarella square cheese that they sell in the US. Cook for another 5-10 minutes, until rice is done. The rice can be served with some coarsely ground black pepper and a little bit of grated parmigiano on top. It's very good, and it's nicely colored. Guaranteed success. :)

Risotto con zucca

A few days ago I prepared a delicious squash risotto, which I'm going to present for my blog-event, 'Fresh Produce of the Month', which this month is dedicated to Squash. You still have a few more days, so please send in some delicious entries!
The risotto I'm going to present is typically Italian, although we would use pumpkin instead of squash. In Italy there aren't as many types of squash as there are in the US, strangely enough, so right now I'm really enjoying trying out all the different varieties, and deciding which ones I like the best. For this risotto, I used two squashes, Ambercup and Carnival. You can see them here, after I baked them.
I tasted a bit of pulp before using them for the risotto, and I found that the Carnival had a delicious sweet and full taste, whereas the Ambercup was much more blend, and I used it mostly in order to give some creaminess to the sauce. If you want to have a few more information on the various types of squash that can be found in the US, look here.

Risotto alla zucca / Squash risotto
To make it, first of all bake the squash, remove the skins and cut the pulp in cubes. As you can see, I had a really big squash and a smaller one. You'll need quite a lot, if you follow the rest of the doses, and you'll end up having rice for ~10 people. Then, finely cut one big onion and sautee it on medium heat in 2 tbsp olive oil, until gold. Add 3 cups of arborio rice, and stir for a few minutes, so the rice is coated in oil. Add the squash pieces, salt (~1.5 tbsp), and cover with enough water so that you have at least half an inch of water that covers the mixture of rice and squash. This should be about 5-6 cups of water. Cover with a lid and bring to boil. Once it boils, decrease the heat, and simmer for ~15 min. Add 1/2 cup of cheese of your choice (I used blue cheese for a stronger taste, but cheddar would also work well), stir so that the cheese can melt, and cover the lid. Simmer for another 5 min, making sure that there is enough water. Adjust salt. The rice should be cooked and still firm but definitely not al dente. If it's too hard, add some HOT water and simmer for a few more minutes. Turn off the heat and let the risotto rest for about 5 minutes. This will make the rice soft and of the right consistency. Serve with some parseley, Parmesan cheese and black pepper to taste.

Fresh Produce of the Month - reminder and short extension

This is a reminder for my dear readers that the deadline for this month's 'Fresh Produce of the month' was .. yesterday! But I'm going to give you a small extension for late entries till tomorrow, as I think I'll post the roundup Sun or Mon night.
The theme is 'Brussel sprouts', and just to excite you with more ideas, I'll present here another dish I recently prepared with this wonderful vegetable:
Risotto con cavoletti di Bruxelles e curcuma / Brussel sprouts and turmeric risotto
Wash and cut ~1/2 lb brussel sprouts into quarters. Sautee 1/2 onion finely cut, in 1 tbsp olive oil. Add the brussel sprouts and keep sauteeing. Add 1.5 cups rice (possibly Arborio) and ~1 tbsp salt. Sautee the rice for a few minutes, then add 3 cups water and 1 tsp turmeric. Cover. After ~5 min see if the water is boiling, and if so, lower the heat and keep cooking covered for 15 more minutes. I usually peak a little bit earlier to make sure the water is not evaporated, although this is sacrilegious in my mother's opinion. When the time has passed, taste the rice and make sure it's done. The water should be all absorbed. If the rice is not done yet, add a little bit hot water and cook covered for a few more minutes. If the rice is done and there's some water left, cook on very high heat to make sure the water evaporates. When everything is done, add some grated parmigiano cheese, mix, and let the rice stand covered in the pan for ~5 min before serving it with some black pepper freshly ground on top.

Risotto con cavolo e risotto con formaggio e noci

I'll post here the recipes for two risotti, i.e. rice italian style. The first recipe is taken from my Piemontese cookbook, whereas the second one is just an easy risotto that I made up.
Risotto con cavoli e brie (Ris e coj, in Piemontese dialect) / Cabbage and brie rice
Finely cut half a big Vidalia onion and saute in 2 tbsp olive oil. Finely cut half a big cabbage and add to the onions. Add salt. Cook for ~10 min. Add 1 lb rice (possibly arborio). Saute for ~2 min, add salt. Add enough warm water to cover the rice ~ 1 inch over the level of the rice, close the pot and cook for ~20 min. Take the lid off and check the status of the rice. If it's almost done, and the water is almost completley adsorbed, add 1/4 cup brie cut into pieces and stir, then let cook for another few minutes, turn off the heat and let rest ~5 min, covered, before serving. If the rice needs to cook longer, add a little bit of boiling water to it and cook with lid on a bit longer. If the rice is already done and you find out you put too much water, take lid off and turn heat on high, stirring, and try to evaporate the water.
Serve this rice with finely cut parseley.

Risotto con formaggio e noci / Cheese and pecan rice
The idea is the same as above. Instead of adding the cabbage, though, just saute the onion and then the rice. Add water and salt as described above. Towards the end add pieces of gorgonzola and provolone cheese, and pieces of pecan nuts. Stir in a little bit of hot milk to melt all the cheese and fluff the rice with it. When all the liquid is adsorbed, turn off the heat, let rest for five minutes and serve with pepper on top.

Risotto con zucca e ragu'

I bought a butternut squash some time ago, and I though I would do a good use of it if I made some risotto with it. One of my favorite risotto is made with pumpkin and sausage. It's similar to what Marco made with pasta - I have a picture in this post, but she used to make it with rice and mix the sausage with the rice.
I didn't have a sausage handy so I decided I would make it with my ragu sauce that I told you about recently, and that I froze in various aliquots.
So here it is!
Risotto con zucca e ragu' (rice with butternut squash and ragu')
Bake a butternut squash for ~40 min, turning it from time to time. Let the squash cool down, peel it and cut it in big pieces. Saute one onion finely cut, in a bit of olive oil. Add the squash to it and saute for a few minutes. Add 1 cup of ragu sauce. Add 1 cup of rice (I used whole rice) and add 1/2 tbsp salt. Cover with water (about 1" above the level of the rice), cover with a lid and cook for ~40 min or until the rice is soft. Check from time to time in order to make sure there's still enough water, and add if necessary. Taste and adjust with salt. Add black pepper and serve with a generous amount of grated parmesan.
For Susan in Italy from Porcini Chronicles, who recently posted a nice recipe of pasta with pumpkin and was curious about the variation with sausage: if you want to use sausage instead of ragu, and you want to make risotto: cook the sausage in a separate pan, cut it into pieces and add it to the rice about 5-10 min before the rice is done, so it gives some of its flavor to the rice. My mom used to serve it with some of the sausage in pieces into the rice, and half of a whole sausage on top of it. :)

Cena indiana - ovvero terza cena italiano/spagnola

Our last Spanish-Italian dinner had an Indian theme at it was hosted at Luisa's and Jorge's house. There was a lot of food, and I have a sample of everything on my plate:
From the top: spicy shrimp, samosas, aromatic rice, rice with lentils, fish kofta, naan bread and pakora (in the center).
The shrimp and the rice with lentils were made by Luisa, the samosas by Crissy, the pakora by Mariana, and the aromatic rice, the fish and the bread by me. The food was very good. There were also desserts.. I can give real Indian names and recipes of the dishes that I made below. Btw, I took all the recipes from this wonderful cook book that my Aunt Carla gave me some time ago. It's called 'Cooking glass Indian', from the 'Women's weekly cookbooks', and it's really nice. Any recipe I tried from that book turned out wonderful! Grazie mille, zia :)

Fish kofta
Boil some water, add salt and throw pieces of white fish fillets in it (1 1/3 lb=700 g), until cooked. Strain fish and reserve 2 cups of broth. Blend fish with 1 onion (cut into pieces), 2 spicy peppers (red in the recipe, I used green ones), and 1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves (I used ginger instead). Shape the mixture into elongated cilinders:
Heat 1/2 tbsp butter (ghee in the original recipe) in a non-sticking pan, and grill the fish kofta until browned on each side.
Heat 1/2 tbsp butter (ghee) in a pan, add one minced onion, 2 cloves of garlic, minced, 2 tsps ground coriander, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1/2 tsp ground turmeric, 2 sticks of cinnamon and sautee for a few minutes. Add 3 tomatoes (I used a big can of diced tomatoes), cook until tomatoes are soft, add the fish liquid, and simmer uncovered until sauce thickens. Add fish kofta gently and let them adsorb the liquid for about 5 min. Serve sprinkling with fresh coriander leaves.
It's really really good. It's a bit laborious to prepare, though, I must say: it's hard to grill the kofta without breaking them.

Parsee rice
This is the aromatic rice I made. It's extremely easy to make and the taste is wonderful, really indian. So, to make it, heat 1 tbsp butter (ghee) in a pan, stir in 2 small onions (minced), 3 cloves of garlic (crushed), 3 tsp cumin seeds, 2 tsps black mustard seeds, 4 cardamom pods, 2 bay leaves (I didn't have these so I didn't add them), 1/2 cup (75 g) shelled pistachios. Cook for about 5 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups (300 g) basmati rice, previously washed and drained. Stir for a few minutes and add 2 3/4 cups (680 ml) chicken stock. Simmer covered for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, fluff with fork and stand for 10 minutes covered before serving.

Naan
Naan is one of the best Indian bread. It's originally from the north of India, and it's cooked in a Tandoor oven. In its absence, a grill or a heavy-base pan on a very hot stove can do.
Add 1 tsp dry yeast and 1 tsp sugar to 2/3 cup of warm water. Mix and let stand for 10 min in a warm place. Mix 2 cups (300 g) plain flour and 1 tsp salt in a bowl. Add yeast mixture, 2 tbsps melted butter (ghee), 2 tbsp yogurt. Mix until you have a soft dough. In my case I thought I needed some more flour, so be aware of this. Kneed on a floured surface for at least 5 minutes, until the dough is elastic. Let stand in warm place, in a lightly greased container for 1 1/2 hour or at least dough doubled its volume (1 hour for me). Then, knead dough for another 5 minutes and divide into 6 balls. Flatten with a rolling pin until you obtain round 20 cm (~8 inch) Naan.
The best way to cook this would be to have a small grill that you can place directly on your stoves, so it gets really hot. I looked for it but couldn't find it. So, I lightly buttered a non-sticking pan and placed it on High heat on the stove. Once the pan is very hot, place one round disk, grill for about 2 min each side or until puffed and browned. Sprinkle with onion seed (I didn't do this) and grill for further 30 sec.Rebutter the pan in between each Naan. Keep Naan warm before serving it. It's really delicious (and Crissy just told me that Naan bought at the grocery store costs $9 for 2 disks!!!!).

As I mentioned earlier, we also had desserts! (Yes, we had a lot of food :) )
Luisa made this delicious Mango mousse:
And I made a semolina pudding.

Rava Kesari
Combine 1/2 cup sugar (1 cup in the original recipe! But to our taste, this sweetness was perfect), 1 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup milk, 1 tsp ground cardamom in a pan and heat stirring until sugar is dissolved. Heat 4 tbsps butter in a pan and add 1 cup (160 g) semolina. Stir for about 1 min until all semolina is covered with butter. Add water mixture and cook stirring until the mixture thickens and detaches from the borders of the pan. Add 2 tbsps raisins and 2 tbsps slivered almonds. Spread mixture in pre-greased rectangular 19 cm x 29 cm pan, and add whole almonds on top, dividing the dough into diamond shapes. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours. After this time, the dessert should be firm enough to be cut and divided. Mine wasn't :( - the taste was still good, but it was more like a real pudding. I think I didn't evaporate enough of the water/milk mixture.

During the dinner, we spoke a lot of English!! Shame on us :) - but actually after the dinner Luisa and I spent a long time speaking in Spanish about pretty serious issues. :)
I forgot to take pictures of ourselves at this dinner! I'll do better next time.

Cucinare con la frutta

In the past two weeks I was in the mood of using fruit to cook savory dishes. So, I made up a few new dishes, and I also made some more traditional ones.

Maiale con barbabietole e pere (pork with beets and pears)
This was a pork chop, that I just cooked in olive oil for about ten minutes, turning it from time to time so that it was well roasted on both sides, and then, I added a puree of a beet, a pear and two tablespoons of yogurt. The beet had been previously roasted in the oven. I let the meat finish to cook in the sauce (about another 10-15 minutes), and in the end, I served it topped by the red sauce - in the picture, it's served together with steamed rice and sauteed cabbage and peas, spiced up by red pepper to contrast the sweetness of the meat. It was good! In fact, pork and fruit are well known to go well together.
And doesn't it look pretty, like a red heart? :)

Salsiccia di tacchino con peperoni e banane (turkey sausage with peppers and bananas)
In this case, I sauteed some onions, green peppers, and added turkey sausage, cut up into pieces. I let it cook for about 20 minutes, adding salt and pepper to spice it up a little bit, and then, in the last 5-10 minutes, I added some mushrooms and a banana cut into pieces. I added some rum, and let it evaporate. I really liked it. I think banana is great with this type of food! It made a sweet sauce, that went really well with the peppers and the sausage. In the picture, it's served together with a 'bruschetta' topped with freshly made guacamole (to make it, cut into pieces a ripe avocado, a small tomato, garlic and cilantro, add red pepper, salt and the juice of a lime, and mix everything up. Quick and delicious. Usually eaten with tortilla chips in Mexican restaurants).

Risotto con fragole (rice with strawberries)
This is a dish that is part of the 'new' Italian cuisine, in that it's become famous in the last few years. I never tried it in Italy, so I decided to make it for a dinner that we had on a girls'night at my place, when Lucas was away.
It was a great success. To make it, soak in white wine about 1 pound of strawberries cut into pieces. Then, sautee some onions in a little butter (1 tablespoon), add 8 handfuls of rice, sautee the rice. Then, add the wine where the strawberries had been soaked. The liquid should be enough to cover the rice, and about one finger more than that. If it's not enough, add a little water. Add salt and cover the lid. Let the rice cook for about 20 minutes. Open, make sure there's still a little bit of liquid, and add the pieces of strawberries. Cook for another 5-10 minutes, until rice is done. The rice is very good, the taste is very different from every type of rice I had before, and it's nicely colored.

This procedure is my mom's simplified version to make every possible type of risotto (the real recipe would make you add the water a little at at time, stirring continously. It's a lot more boring). We used the same procedure to make risotto agli asparagi (rice with asparagus), on that girls' night. Just, instead of adding the wine, add some water and a bouillon to give a nice taste to the rice, and at about 10 minutes from the end, add about a pound of asparagus cut into pieces. Before serving, stir in some pieces of cheese that can nicely melt (I used Italian pecorino di Pienza, which is delicious, but you can use colby or whatever you like).

Spiedini di frutta e formaggio (cheese and fruit skewers)
My aunt used to make something similar when she had nice dinners at her place. She used to use a grapefruit instead of a loaf of bread, to stick the skewers into, but I decided we had too many for a grapefruit and a loaf of bread would be better.
It makes a very nice centertable and it's easy and fun to prepare. Basically, you cut into pieces all sort of things that can come into your mind and put them onto the skewers. Since I was in this fruit mood, I decided to use different types of fruit and cheese, and a little ham and olives. The fruits we used were pineapple, papaja, apple, pear and avocado. The cheese was 'ricotta salata' and another Spanish cheese that I found in Whole Foods and I may look for the name if someone is interested, because I forgot it. When the skewers are ready, stick them on the bread loaf.

Mousse di frutta (fruit mousse)
At last, a sweet thing made with fruit :) - I prepared these two types of mousse for the girls'night. One was a simple strawberry mousse, because it's strawberry season! So, just blend strawberries, add whipped cream (make it!!!), and honey, cool down and add grated chocolate on top before serving. Nice and sweet, probably very good for children. For more 'adult' tastes, try the other type, though, because it was really delicious. I blended together two mangos, a quarter of papaja and two bananas, and then added some ginger powder to it and two tablespoons of whipping cream. After pouring it in the glasses, I added a strawberry sauce on top (just blend some strawberries) - this was to cut the sweetness of the banana and mango. All of the girls loved it.. it was very flavorful, and at first you could taste the banana, and in the end, you would have a taste of mango and papaja in your mouth, and a tickling due to the ginger. :) - you can also cut down on the banana, I think, if you want the mango taste show up more. Again, to be served chilled and with pieces of chocolate on top.