sunset tomato salad (with mushroom risotto)

I didn't get a great picture of this tomato salad, which Nathan and I made a couple of months ago. I normally make tomato salads with balsamic vinaigrette, basil, garlic and parsley, but when we didn't have garlic in the house, Nathan picked this out of his Sunset cookbook, and it proved to be a great alternative.

Unsurprisingly, considering it comes from a California lifestyle magazine, this tomato salad has a distinct Mexican flair, with spicy polano pepper and zesty lime juice, but make no mistake, this is tomato salad, not salsa. It was fresh and delicious, if slightly spicier than I would have liked.

Also, it was an excellent accompaniment to our famous mushroom risotto.

beet risotto

So what do you do when you don't like beets and your food co-op keeps providing them by the bushel? (I have to admit, I don't actually know how much a bushel is, but I suspect it is rather a large amount, so even though we get lots and lots of beets, I am probably exaggerating here.) Make something that I really really really like, and hope that it makes the boring beets more enjoyable. And so, beet risotto!

pastina risotto

This was another meal prepared out of necessity, thanks to my broken jaw. Pastina is the smallest type of pasta around. It comes in different shapes, but I've only ever seen it in tiny little stars, which are just adorable. My mom used to make it for me all the time when I was a baby, because it is so soft and small. Obviously, it is a logical dinner choice for one who cannot chew.

Unlike regular pasta, you don't need to salt a big pot of boiling water to make pastina. It is so delicate and small that it would probably pass straight through the strainer and down into the sink if you tried to drain it in a colander. Instead, you can make pastina like risotto, adding the water little by little and stirring it consistently. It can be just as delicious as the real deal, but it takes a fraction of the time to cook, since pastina cooks to her perfection in such a short amount of time.

I made three different versions of this pastina dish, mainly because the first time it was so incredibly delicious. My parents had their own grown up dinners, but they kept sneaking bites of mine because it was just that good. Unfortunately, I was unable to quite replicate my success on the second and third go arounds. The trick to this dish is making sure to add enough liquid to keep it creamy and delicious, rather than gummy and dry.

I started by making a quick sauce with a little garlic and oil and these golden tomatoes from the food co-op. Then I added the pastina, letting it "toast" in the oil like you would risotto, and then adding some water and letting it cook in the liquid. As the pasta began to absorb the sauce, I poured in a little half and half to make sure it wouldn't dry out. After it was mostly cooked through, I put the pastina in a bowl. I stirred in some grated romano cheese, some shredded basil leaves and finally cracked an egg in and mixed it all about. The egg cooked and it became a deliciously rich and creamy dish.

This was only a few days after I had had the rubber bands put it, so solid food was still a wonder and this pastina was the best food I had eaten in weeks. Lest you think it was only good in comparison, my mom kept exclaiming how good it was and asking for more. She was really impressed with my little improvised dinner.




The next night I did much the same thing, only with red tomatoes and a big dollop of ricotta cheese. Unfortunately, I think I cooked it too long, and didn't keep it moist enough, because this turned into a bit of a gluey paste. Not at all tasty, and it was all the more unfortunate because I knew just how good it could have been.




I also made one more slight variation, trying to mix in some extra veggies. I tossed in some zucchini and corn, but the flavors all got a bit muddled and again a bit dry and overcooked. It was better than the incredibly sticky and bland red tomato sauce edition, but it just couldn't compare to the golden tomato pastina.

You can see in the photos just how much creamier the first go around looked. It really came out perfectly.




The pastina risotto method is a bit temperamental, I guess, but it's definitely worth messing around with because the results can be spectacular. Pastina may be a popular baby food, but soft food diet or not, I certainly did enjoy it. And if delicious isn't enough for you, this has also got to be the quickest pasta dish you'll ever make. Quick and easy, but totally homemade and tasty. I'd say that's pretty awesome.

meatball and spinach risotto

So something I like to make is a meatball risotto. I am not sure if people usually put meatballs in risotto. I have a feeling they don't, but I don't care. I love meatballs, and I love risotto, so I see no reason not to combine the two into one meal.


risotto meatball and spinach, topped with shaved parmesan

I've made this meatball risotto twice now, once last summer for my dear friend Mary Kate, and now again this summer for Nathan, his mom and his grandma. I make little meatballs and cook them in the pot I'll be using for the risotto. Once they are cooked through, I take them out of the pot and add the onions, and then the rice. In this instance I also added some thinly sliced garlic scapes. Otherwise, the preparation of this risotto was pretty much the same as it always is. White wine, followed by lots and lots of chicken stock. At the end I added the chopped spinach some nice food co-op parsley, a hunk of butter and some shaved parmesan.


salad with radishes and garlic scapes

I also made up this beautiful fresh salad of Boston lettuce from the food co-op, more garlic scapes and those green market radishes. I've been working on finished up that $1 bunch since the tenth of June now! That is just crazy. Yesterday I tried roasting them, I'm so desperate to get rid of them!

I'll probably do a more in depth write up of my meatballs at a future date, but I usually just mix in seasoned breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, minced garlic and parsley and form it into little balls. I try not to over mix the meat so it won't get tough. This particular time, I was using meat I had gotten over the winter from the old good co-op, and I think it was a little too lean because they weren't the most tender. Or maybe I just needed to add more milk and eggs. In any event, these meatballs didn't have to stand on their own, so they were quite good enough for my purposes. We all enjoyed the meal, and each others' company, which is really all you can ask for.

In one of my earliest posts I had talked about another dinner I made and Nathan's grandma's house. It was a very time consuming affair, so this time I did a lot of the prep work before heading down to Chelsea. Having the meatballs mixed and the garlic scapes and radishes chopped meant I didn't have to waste much time slicing and dicing, and that I could dive right into the cooking. This meant I was able to have dinner on the table only 30 to 40 minutes later than initially planned. I'm getting faster you guys, slowly but surely!

mushroom risotto/fava bean toasts

a Mother's Day feast

This was the dinner table for Mother's Day this year, and I think Dad and I have reason to be proud of the spread we put out. Matt would have helped had he not been working, but he did buy the lovely flowers. I picked up a nice bottle of chardonnay at Lenox Wines, and then whipped up some mushroom risotto and a fava bean spread on Arthur Avenue bread. Dad chipped in with some luscious dijon mustard sword fish. It was a heavenly meal.

Since graduating college, I've become a big fan of risotto and have made it a number of times, including a particularly memorable batch prepared in honor of Nathan's twenty second birthday with pumpkin, porcini mushrooms and red wine. To die for. However, there was a time that I found this simple dish absolutely intimidating. If it were not for my friend Anthony, who is an amazing cook, I doubt I would have ever even attempted the dish. I remember Tony making it for Natalie's birthday senior year and being amazed that he had prepared such an ambitious menu. Pork loin and risotto for 20 people is certainly an impressive feat, but the risotto itself is not nearly as complicated or tricky as I had one believed. With good ingredients and a little patience, anyone can make a delicious, creamy risotto in under an hour.


mushroom risotto

The trick to risotto is knowing that unlike regular rice, which typically uses a 2:1 ratio of water to rice, risotto can absorb more than four times its volume in liquid. In order for the rice to cook properly, the broth must be added gradually so as to not overcook it. The broth should also be warm, or the rice won't cook properly.

To start your risotto, heat some olive and then cook onions and garlic until they begin to soften. This is called the sofrito. Then you can add your extra ingredients, like the cremini mushrooms we used. There are plenty of great potential additions: anything from sausage, meatballs, shrimp, lobster, chard, asparagus or squash will be great. Once they're just about cooked, removed them from the pot with a slotted spoon to leave behind the olive oil, which will be nicely infused with the flavor of your added ingredients.

Toast the rice in the drippings for a few minutes, making sure it gets well coated. Pour in some wine, and stir until it evaporates. Then you can start to add the broth, one ladle at a time. Recipes vary on the exact amount to use, but you can probably get away with less if you cook over lower heat and let most of the broth absorb between additions. Cook at too high a temperature, and your broth will boil away before the rice can absorb it properly. Add more stock when the risotto starts to look dry, but be carefully not submerge the rice in liquid. Stir frequently to make sure the rice gets cooked evenly and doesn't stick to the pot.

Your risotto is done when the rice can't absorb any more liquid, and the two elements have become one cohesive mass. The individual grains should be soft but slightly chewy, and the risotto should be liquidy enough that you can pour it slowly, but solid enough that the broth won't separate from the rice. Add your mushrooms or whatever you're using, and stir to incorporate. Mix in some pats of butter, a good amount of grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper, and serve immediately.

As for the rest of the meal, dad handled the fish so I can't say much about it, but I can tell you about my fava bean toasts. They're something I learned to make when my food co-op threw a number of the then unfamiliar legumes at me last summer. I first tried making a stir-fry-esque dish with fennel and bacon that didn't quite come together. For my second attempt, I put the beans front and center with this bright green spread. It was an unqualified success. Basically, it's just a mash of olive oil roasted garlic, boiled fava beans, a little cream, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. It's so simple and tasty!

The only catch with fava beans is that getting them out of the shell is a little labor intensive. First, you have to peel the pods, and then you have to boil the beans for a couple of minutes. After that, you cool them off in ice water and shell them. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, actually, but it's not that hard. It's probably not worth the trouble on a regular basis, but they are a nice change of pace every so often.


fava bean toasts