Ina Garten's Spring Risotto

photograph credits to Sadiqeh

I have been loving Ina Garten lately. For my birthday, I bought myself Barefoot in Paris, in the hopes that I might learn a few French recipes before I get to France in September. She's so classy and elegant, and yet so effortless and calm. More than anything, her recipes are fun. They're recipes you can play around with and put your own twist on and eat any way you like. Ina treats her readers like they are her close friends, not her ignorant pupils. Best of all, I tend to have (relative) successes when attempting her recipes. She includes just enough information that you manage to pull it off, even when you're sure it will all fall apart.

When I was cooking for two of my most favorite friends last week, Sadiqeh and Idris, I knew I wanted to try another Ina recipe. I knew Sadiqeh in particular would appreciate the combination of deliberateness and comfort that I found from Ina's foods time and time again. I had a bunch of asparagus I wanted to get rid of so I picked her Springtime Risotto.

We all loved it. I kept tasting it periodically and it was good every time, but the addition of mascarpone and lemon zest right at the end really made it phenomenal. I had heard of mascarpone many times, but had never cooked with it before. It gave the risotto this amazingly creamy consistency without being too rich or overbearing. Its saltiness also added some depth to the peas and asparagus. My favorite part was definitely the freshness. I have always thought of risotto as a warm, winter comfort food and was amazed to see how fresh and light it could be with the addition of more vegetables and lemon juice. I omitted the fennel, because I just don't like fennel, and as usual the recipe below is my version (use the link for hers).

Spring Risotto
adapted from Ina Garten
serves 4

1 1/2 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts (2 leeks)
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
5 to 6 cups simmering chicken stock or vegetable stock
1 pound asparagus tips
10 ounces frozen peas, defrosted
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/3 cup Italian mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving
3 tablespoons minced fresh chives, plus extra for serving

Heat the olive oil and butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the leeks and sauté for 5 to 7 minutes, until tender. Add rice and stir for a minute to coat with the oil and butter. Add stock and simmer over low heat, stirring constantly, until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Add more stock, two ladles at a time, stirring almost constantly and waiting for the stock to be absorbed before adding more. The whole cooking process will take 25 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, discard the tough ends of the asparagus and cut the tips diagonally in 1 1/2-inch lengths. Blanch in boiling salted water for 4 to 5 minutes, until tender. Drain and cool immediately in ice water.

When the risotto has been cooking for 15 minutes, drain the asparagus and add to the risotto with the peas, lemon zest, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Continue cooking and adding stock, stirring almost constantly, until the rice is tender but still firm.

Whisk the lemon juice and mascarpone together in a small bowl. When the risotto is done, turn off the heat and stir in the mascarpone mixture, plus the Parmesan cheese. Allow to sit off the heat for a few minutes, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and serve hot with a sprinkling of chives and more Parmesan cheese.

Endless Summer Nights

As the school year comes to a close and Nayereh gets closer to graduation, I find myself spending more and more nights sitting outside---eating, talking, laughing with friends---and it makes me incredibly optimistic about this summer. I usually look forward to the summer because it involves some sort of traveling. Three summers ago my mother went to Iran and Syria together, two summers ago Nayereh and I backpacked through Europe, and last summer I was in Morocco, Germany, and Austria for a few months. This is the first summer in quite a while that I don't plan to do any traveling. Nevertheless, I look forward to it with as much anticipation as any other summer. I look forward to just relaxing, and using the opportunity to think about how lucky I've been to have done so much traveling and what I look for in my future traveling endeavors (I'll be leaving in September for Nice, where I'll be all of next year). Anyway, these nights we spend outdoors have become so frequent I figured it was worth snapping a few pictures (despite the bad lighting) to attempt to share the kind of warm summer tranquility we all share in our sunroom.

One of my favorite parts of the summer is the delicious, fresh ingredients availible. One of the best uses of perfectly ripe summer vegetables is bruschetta. Sadiqeh makes it everytime. I'm sure Nayereh and I could do it too, but she manages to slice and dice all the ingredients with such a perfect delicacy that makes each bite harmonious.

For her bruschetta, she prefers Roma tomatoes which are more firm than the vine-ripened variety and hold up better when being diced. She finely dices several tomatoes with a handful of fresh basil (another amazing summer ingredient), a couple cloves of garlic, a shallot or two, and a bit of olive oil. Sometimes I forget how incredible fresh, simple ingredients can be and this bruschetta is a perfect reminder.

Another staple at our little evening feasts is my orzo salad, which I've been making for years from a Giada de Laurentiis recipe. It's so easy and so delicious, it's the perfect crowd-pleaser. You simply boil up some orzo and drain it. In a big bowl mix the warm orzo with salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, spinach (Giada prefers arugula), feta cheese, toasted pine nuts, dried cranberries (Giada prefers dried cherries), and fresh torn basil leaves. I feel like a cooking show host, but please, please, please try it. You will be amazed at how delicious something so simple and easy can be.

Here is a photo of our sunroom with the lights turned off, which is how we usually sit around. When you turn off the main overhead light, the few sources of light are the Christmas lights which Nayereh put up both out here and in her bedroom, a Moroccan lantern, and whatever candles we happen to have lying around.

This is a pretty standard spread at our table. In addition to the loaf of french bread, we have Sadiqeh's bruschetta, sliced fresh mozzarella, a fat wedge of Brie cheese, avocado slices, a medley of olives, a plate of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping, and my favorite orzo salad (to be served with the feta cheese which is kept separate because Nayereh is vegan). The unidentifiable black square on the left is Nayereh's ipod which provides the musical sylings of the evening.

I know I'll be having more delicious evenings like these (the summer hasn't even really begun, yet!), and I hope as the weather gets nicer more people take advantage of it and spend more time outdoors. Bring some cheese, and you're welcome to join us anytime!

Soups with Sadiqeh

One of my new favorite people is my friend Sadiqeh. She comes over sometimes on weekends and we eat always manage to have amazing conversations and enjoy equally amazing deliciousness. Both of us being soup fans, we have had soup together on two different occasions.

One Sunday night, weeks and weeks ago, I decided I wasn't really up for all the work I had due the next day and would rather have spent the night avoiding it and hanging out with Sadiqeh. She agreed to come over, even though we live about an hour away and she would have to go home relatively early because she had work the next morning. I wasn't sure what to make but wanted something warm and comforting because it wasn't yet as warm as it is these days. After little coaxing, I convinced Sadiqeh to stop by Whole Foods and pick up some fresh parsley, No-chicken Broth and Parmesan.

When she came over, we made delicious tortellini in broth, with fresh chopped parsley and Parmesan crisps. I had seen "recipes" for these Parmesan crisps everywhere! I first watched Giada de Laurentiis make them on Everyday Italian and then encountered them here and here. I love cheese and relish every excuse to eat it. Tossed into a fresh salad, sprinkled on baked fish fresh out of the oven, spread onto crunchy toast; you name it, and I'll put cheese on it. Soup? No different. This soup ended up being super cheesy because the tortellini was filled with cheese as well (hey, I'm not complaining...), and I thought it would be a good idea to just drop some Parmesan into the soup as well. Oh, and did I mention before the soup we shared fresh tomatoes, toast and Boursin?

Cheese lover or not, this soup was lovely. It was light because of the simplicity of ingredients but filling because of the hearty tortellini. The original recipe serves 8 and even though there were just two of us, I halved the recipe and took the rest to work for lunch the next day. Equally delicious!

The photo down at the bottom is one from a couple weeks ago when we weren't in the mood for anything too heavy and made Amy's Low-Fat Low-Sodium Cream of Tomato Soup, which I have already blogged about, even though it doesn't involve any real cooking. Sadiqeh and I dropped in some extra cream I had lying around to make it extra rich and delicious, and topped it with more fresh torn basil leaves.

Cheese Tortellini in Light Broth
from Giada de Laurentiis
serves 4

4 cups low-salt chicken broth
Freshly ground black pepper
1 (9-ounce) package cheese tortellini
1 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves

Pour the broth into a heavy large saucepan. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Season the broth with pepper, to taste. Add the tortellini. Simmer over medium heat until al dente, about 7 minutes.

Ladle the broth and tortellini into soup bowls. Top with parsley and Parmesan crisps and serve.

Parmesan Crisps from Giada de Laurentiis
makes 8-10 crisps

1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Pour a heaping tablespoon of Parmesan onto a silicone or parchment lined baking sheet and lightly pat down. Repeat with the remaining cheese, spacing the spoonfuls about a 1/2 inch apart.

Bake for 3 to 5 minutes or until golden and crisp. Cool.

photograph taken by sadiqeh

David Lebovitz's Devil's Food Cake

A few nights ago I had two friends coming over and an unfortunately empty fridge. They were coming over to hang out at about 9 or 10 at night, so I knew I wasn't exactly obliged to have a feast prepared. Nevertheless, I always like to have something for guests to munch on, but my fridge was failing me. I wracked my pantry to trying to figure out which ingredients I had on hand to whip something up with. Suddenly, I was inspired by the new box of cocoa powder I recently bought to make a chocolate cake. Now, because it was so late, I didn't want to opt for a tall, heavy cake with tons of layers and frosting or a rich, dense one either. After sifting through David Lebovitz's recipes (he's the best, isn't he?), I found this cake. Like he says, its the perfect compromise for different type of cake lovers. Instead of making two layers and a ganache, like David suggests, I halved the recipe and served the one layer with a dusting of powdered sugar. It was so good that the three of us (with a little help from one of my roommates) devoured the entire thing. I definitely recommend it if you want a lighter chocolate cake that isn't too dense but is still plenty moist and delicious.

Devil's Food Cake
adapted from David Lebovitz
serves 4-6

4.5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cups raw sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/4 cup strong coffee
1/4 cup 1% milk
powdered sugar (for dusting)

Adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 9" x 2" cake pans and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.

Sift together the cocoa powder, cake flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl. Beat together the butter and sugar about 5 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs. Mix together the coffee and milk. Stir half of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, the add the coffee and milk. Finally stir in the other half of the dry ingredients.

Divide the batter into the two prepared cake pans and bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

A Random Tuesday Lunch: Pasta Salad

I've been saying, since I started this blog, that I would start posting about more average culinary experiences. I love going into the kitchen with a recipe and a plan and challenging myself, but I live for the afternoons you whip something up without too much thought, with whatever you have on hand, and it turns out splendidly. Those are the culinary experiences that are so fun and thrilling and that I can't wait to share with others, who also probably have the same ingredients on hand and can try it out.

This morning/afternoon (when you wake up at 11, the lines between them are blurred, hehe), I knew I didn't want salad, or eggs, or a sandwich. I figured a pasta salad was a save bet, and I figured I'd throw some canned tuna in there to get some protein and of course tons of fresh parsley for flavor. It was delicious and fresh and totally satisfying---a perfect lunch for this lazy morning/afternoon. (I feel so good about it, I'm clensing my palate with a little extra deliciousness.) I've decided to enter it in as my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, this week hosted by the darling Susan from The Well-Seasoned Cook.

The "recipe" is as follows:

Tuesday Afternoon Pasta Salad
serves 1

1/2 cup pasta, cooked and drained (I used elbows because they're my favorite)
1 can of your favorite tuna
1 handful chopped parsley
1 handful grated Parmesan (I'm going to try feta next time)
3 small tomatoes, cut into wedges
1-2 tbsp olive oil
freshly ground salt and pepper

Mix and enjoy, baby!

Black Bean Salad

One of my favorite types of American cuisines is Southwestern. There is something about the combination of lime and cilantro that makes my mouth water with delight. One of the things about Southwestern cuisine thought, is that, like Mediterranean cuisine, it's not very complicated in the process, so you need to make sure you have the best possible ingredients. For this reason, I find myself not usually making Southwestern style foods as much in the winter because things like tomatoes and cilantro never seems fresh enough. When my friend Sam had a barbecue for his birthday a couple weeks ago though, and the weather was warm and perfect, I knew it was close enough to summer to make a nice big Southwestern salad. This one was super easy and was finished within minutes of putting it out on the table. I'd definitely recommend it if you want something a little different to make. The combination of lime and honey and cumin and cilantro that hits you in every bite is phenomenal. Give it a whirl!

Black Bean Salad
from Guy Fieri
serves 6-8

2 cans black beans, drained, about 30 ounces
1 (15-ounce) can corn, drained
2 Roma tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
1/4 cup diced red onion
1/4 cup diced green onions
1/4 cup diced pineapple
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro leaves
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
4 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Juice of 1/2 lime
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
Pinch ground cumin

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies

I will admit: I was a little hesitant to post these cookies so soon after the other cookies, but then I figured there can never be too many cookies. I loved the Dorie Greenspan cake I made for last month’s Daring Bakers challenge, so when I needed to bake some chocolate-y cookies I went to Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies. The title of these cookies also did a little persuading for me also.

So my sister, who is much more religious than I, decided to throw a “pray for world peace” get together at her house. Her husband is Iraqi, and I suppose this was a way for them to feel as though they were doing something about all the mayhem and death taking place over there. I don’t know how I feel about praying to achieve a goal though. Don’t get me wrong, despite my secular beliefs about society and government, I like prayer. I believe in a sort of personal connection one can make to God and the warm and fuzzy kind of dialogue that can take place when you do (think Marjane Satrapi’s conversations with God in the beginning of Persepolis). Recently especially, I have been particularly skeptical about using prayer to achieve tangible, life-or-death goals.

Although, I have heard stories about miraculous things happening when people put their collective energies into willing something to be true, and I suppose I do believe them, so I’m not a complete cynic. Finally, I decided to show up, partially because I figured it can’t hurt, and partially because my sister was sick so I wanted to help her with baking the goods for people to eat post-prayer.

I’m not really one for group prayer because I tend to think of prayer as a sort of personal thing, so I won’t talk about the experience of being there. Instead, allow me to focus on the cookies. I decided to make them because I thought it was rather fitting to make World Peace Cookies for a Pray-for-World-Peace event. Also, so many people have posted these cookies that I had to give them a try for myself and see how they turned out.

Boy, were they delicious! I loved the kind of kick of chocolate goodness that they pack in every bite. The chunks of chocolate gives them a more dynamic cookie, with more varied texture. My only complaints were that the mixture was so thick and crumbly that several cookies fell apart as I attempted to cut them from the refridgerated log (In fact, now that I think about it, that whole cutting process was rather annoying…). Also, the cookies were left out on the table for people to take at their will and I found they were much drier later in the night. Perhaps this is because I only had time to refrigerate them for an hour, before baking. Either way, they sure did taste good, and I was glad to try out a recipe so many bloggers have posted about.

World Peace Cookies
from Dorie Greenspan
Makes 12 big cookies

175g all-purpose flour
30g unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
155g unsalted butter, at room temperature
145g light brown sugar
50g caster sugar
½ teaspoon fleur de sel or ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt – I used salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
140g bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous ¾ cup mini chocolate chips – I used semisweet but will bake them again using bittersweet

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder together. Beat the butter until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more. Pour in the dry ingredients and mix just until combined - for the best texture, work the dough as little as possible once the flour is added, and don’t be concerned if the dough looks a little crumbly. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half – I weighed the dough to make sure the parts would be even. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 4cm in diameter. Wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours - the dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you’ve frozen the dough, you needn’t defrost it before making- bake for 1 minute longer.

Preheat oven to 160˚C and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats. Using a sharp knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1 cm thick - the rounds are likely to crack as you’re cutting them- don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie. Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 3cm between them.

Bake the cookies on sheet at a time for 12 minutes- they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, but that’s just the way they should be. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet until they’re cold – that’s when they’ll be firm. Serve them warm or at room temperature.