The Wonderful World of Risotto

I would first like to apologize to you dear faithful readers of Tellurian Things for neglecting my duties as the monthly food blogger. I hope you were not too disappointed. I’ll make it up to you someday. I also need to apologize for breaking the promise that my next blog entry would be on something Honduran. I have been working on my Honduran food, but I haven’t taken any pictures and my writing is not entertaining enough to muddle through without a little eye candy. So you’ll have to wait for that. But, I promise to make it worth it.

BUT to make it up to you, this post is about one of the most delicious things you can eat. It also happens to be a pretty simple thing to prepare and there’s no limit to what you can do with it! This is, as mentioned in the title, risotto. I love risotto. And I don’t know anyone who doesn’t (except kind of for my dad) and can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t. It is delicious. But, a lot of people are intimidated by it.

I’m here to say, “Don’t be afraid! Cook risotto! Eat risotto!”

If you’ve never had it before, risotto is just an Italian rice dish made with arborio rice. Not all grocery stores have arborio rice, and you really need it for the right consistency for your risotto. Arborio makes the risotto really creamy without having to add any cream. But it is worth any lengths you must go to to find it.

Arborio rice, just find it.

Now one great thing about risotto is that you can add ANYTHING you want to it. The recipe I’m going to give you has sausage and shrimp with vegetables but you can really add anything. So without further adieu, here’s the recipe.

Cajun Sausage and Shrimp Risotto

• 1 C arborio rice
• 2-3 T butter or oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4-6 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 1/2 C homemade shrimp broth
• 1 1/2 C white wine
• 1 lb andouille sausage
• 1 lb medium shrimp, uncooked, heads, and shells removed and deveined
• 8 oz mushrooms (I used creminis, but use whatever you want)
• 1 bundle of asparagus (around 20 stalks)
• 1 C cheese (I used about half mozzarella and half Romano, but you could use parmesan, too)
• Salt, pepper, and cajun seasoning to taste

The first thing you need to do is prepare and cook your shrimp. You might have to take off the shells and devein them yourself. (You don’t have to devein them, but I recommend it because the vein is not a vein, it’s the shrimp GI tract… just sayin’) When your preparing them, SAVE the shells. You want them for your broth. Once the shrimp are ready, boil them in salted water until they turn white. They cook really, really fast, so don’t walk away. After they’re cooked, remove the shrimp from the water and add the shells. I had some extra mushrooms in my fridge that were a few days old and I had a bay leaf, so I threw them in there, too. Leave this to simmer for a while, maybe 10-20 minutes. Strain the shells and vegetables out and that’s your broth.

My broth in the making

While your broth is simmering, it’s a good time to cook your vegetables. Slice the mushrooms and chop the asparagus into thirds. Sauté them in oil and cook until the mushrooms are soft and the asparagus is bright green.

Next, slice the sausage in about 1/4″ slices and sauté them in a skillet until they are browned on both sides. This smells WONDERFUL!

Warning: this will make you house smell so good.

Now to the risotto:

While the sausage is cooking, melt the butter with the garlic and onion in a medium sized stock pot over medium heat. Once the onions start to cook, add the rice and stir to coat the rice in the butter and oil. You don’t want to cook the rice, just get it coated and stir for a few minutes. Mix the wine and the stock together and add a cup of the liquid to the rice.

the rice will still be white when you’re ready to add the liquid

Stir until the liquid is absorbed and add another cup. Stir, and when that cup is absorbed, add the last cup. I forgot to add the liquid one cup at a time and it still worked out fine, I just had to add more liquid later. Add the meat with the last cup of liquid so that the flavors will mix. Once the liquid is absorbed, add the vegetables and the cheese. Stir until the cheese is melted and the vegetables are mixed in.

The final product

Now you’re ready to serve, eat, and enjoy! This makes a lot, so you might need to invite some people over, or freeze it. Now that you know how to make risotto, add whatever you want: italian sausage, chicken, sundried tomatoes, green peas, whatever!

And, again, I do promise to someday teach you haw to make some delicious Honduran cuisine. AND, maybe next time I post will not be the day of a test and I’ll have stuff to talk about other than just eating food. Even though the list of things I like to talk about more than food is pretty short…

Until then,

Griffin

Chicken Cordon Bleu

Well get your pinkies out because today we’re gettin’ a little fancy. This post comes to you by request of my dear friend, Stephanie Cowart. Stephanie is known for many things. At present, she is most notably known for working in a super cool country that is not America! She is also known for enjoying games, traveling, A Very Potter Musical, anything else related to Harry Potter, and laughing. She is not, however known for being a graceful loser at Disney Scene It…. I think she has only lost once (and it was to a team that I was on. just saying.)

sorry, Stephanie, you know I can’t resist bringing this up….
also, for the record, I’m making that weird face because I was laughing.

All gloating aside, Stephanie and I have been through a lot of adventures together and, as do most of my adventures, they usually involved me cooking something. Labor Day weekend of my senior year at Auburn, some camp people all decided to go to Jackson, TN for the second annual Labor Day Camp Friends Reunion (it was also the last, unfortunately…). While we were there, we decided to make a nice dinner and I decided to make Chicken Cordon Bleu, and one bent skillet and one alienated neighbor later, we had a delicious dinner prepared. Stephanie, I hope that you’ll be able to get all of these ingredients…

Chicken Cordon Bleu sounds, looks and tastes like it is really complicated to make. But, the beauty of it is that it is actually fairly simple. A little time consuming until you get the hang of it, but overall, not too difficult. First, here is what you’ll need:

• One boneless chicken breast for every person
• One slice of swiss cheese for every person (I use baby swiss and get it sliced at a #2 thickness at Wal-Mart, you want them to be thick enough to be cheesy but not so thick that they won’t roll up. Basically, just get whatever you want!)
• One slice of ham for every person the same thickness as the cheese
• Store bought bread crumbs
• Parsley
• 1 can of cream of mushroom soup (or make your own…it’s really easy, I promise)
• 1/2 lb sour cream
• olive oil and butter
• 1 lemon, zested (optional)
• Garlic (always!)

Pound your chicken breasts (using a mallet, flat skillet, big spoon, etc.) until they are abound 1/2″ thick. (Hint: If you don’t want to be covered in salmonella, potentially, and raw chicken, place each breast in a ziplock bag or between wax paper to pound it out)

Season each piece of chicken with salt, pepper, and some of the chopped parsley; you could also add some lemon zest here, if you want.

Place one slice of the cheese, and a slice of ham on each piece of chicken and roll them up. When you roll them: each piece will have a pointy end and a blunt end. Let any excess ham and cheese hang off at the pointy end and start rolling there. This will help your chicken make a better “package.” It helps to stick a couple of toothpicks in the ends to hold each roll together. But, if you’re like me, and can never remember to buy toothpicks, you can make it work–just be more careful.

 

Once each piece of chicken is rolled up, roll each piece in the bread crumbs, then in the oil, then back in the bread crumbs so that you have a nice coating. You might still see some of the chicken through the crumbs, but that’s fine.

 

After you’re done dredging, melt some butter, or pour some olive oil in the bottom of a skillet over medium heat. When the butter or oil is hot, brown each piece of chicken on the entire breaded surface (don’t stand it up on its end, that would make a mess) and place them in a baking dish once they’re browned. This is really quick. DON’T try to actually cook the chicken, we just want a nice crispy coat on each piece. The middle is still cold and raw at this point. Save the drippings in the pan!!

 

Put the baking dish in the oven at 350° for about 20-25 minutes.

In the meantime, add the garlic (as much as you want, I usually use a couple of cloves) to the drippings in the pan. Give the garlic a minute or two to cook and add the sour cream and cream of mushroom soup. You want about equal parts of sour cream and cream of mushroom soup. Stir that together and turn the heat down to low so that the sauce can stay warm. If you want, you could also add lemon zest and/or parsley here.

After the 20-25 minutes have passed, remove the baking dish from the oven and spoon some of the sauce over the chicken. Return the chicken to the oven for a few more minutes (maybe 5). Sprinkle some more fresh chopped parsley over the top, and you’re good to go! I serve the rest of the sauce on the side so that anyone can have as much as they want.

 

If you’re gonna make your own cream of mushroom soup, I applaud you and here’s how you do it. It’s basically just like making the cheese sauce from the crispitos. You will need:

• Mushrooms
• Garlic
• Butter
• Flour
• Milk
• Salt and pepper

Chop about 5 oz of mushrooms (I used cremini, or baby bells) into cubes. Melt about 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan over medium heat and add the mushrooms and garlic to taste. Once the mushrooms are soft, add about 2 tablespoons of flour and stir until the flour makes a kind of paste on the mushrooms. Add about a cup of milk and stir until all of the flour is incorporated, don’t stop stirring until you have a smooth sauce or you can get clumpy soup… The soup will thicken as it cooks, but you can add milk if you need to make it thinner. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and you’re good to go!

When I made this last night, I served it with brown rice and roasted asparagus.

For the rice, I melted about 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter and sautéed the rice with a chopped onion and two cloves of garlic minced over medium heat. When the rice was brown, I added 1 tablespoon of chicken base (which is like bouillon, but a little stronger) and 3 cups of hot water. I stirred this over medium heat and just let it sit for a while. Rice is kind of my nemesis. It’s easy to make it bland and can be inconsistent for me when I make it flavorful. I think it’s just because I get bored looking at it. Parboiled rice is easier to pay attention to, but I’ve had some weird results when I used parboiled rice, you have been warned. I just kept adding water to the rice while I was cooking until the end. When I was about ready to serve, I let the water boil off, seasoned with salt and pepper and a little lemon juice (be careful with the lemon juice because it can overpower the rice for some nastiness…) and let the rice cook after the water boiled off for a while.

For the asparagus, I just poured olive oil over the top of them seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon zest and baked them at 350° with the chicken for about 15-20 minutes. Just watch the asparagus so they don’t get too done. They look ugly when they are overcooked.

And I’ll leave you with something to *hopefully* look forward to. Earlier this month, I got to go on a week long medical mission trip to Honduras. You can check out our blog from the trip here. While I was there, I got to learn how to make some of the local cuisine! I’m going to be practicing this month and hopefully next month, I’ll have some exciting Honduran food to talk about!

Til next time,

Griffin

Bonus: Strawberry Lemonade

I realize this is out of turn, but since tomorrow is Memorial Day, I wanted to share it with you. I love lemonade and it is perfect for a Memorial Day cookout or picnic. So here you go.

This will make about 1 liter of lemonade.

• 5 small lemons
• 1 C sugar
• 1 C water, plus more to dilute later
• 2-3 whole cloves
• optional: fresh or frozen strawberries, quartered (or any other berry for that matter), fresh basil or mint

The first thing you need to do is make a simple syrup. A lot of people are intimidated by simple syrup because it’s working with sugar. But this is seriously simple. With a fine grater, zest all of the lemons, making sure to not grate off any of the bitter, white pith. Add the zest to a small sauce pan with the sugar, water, and cloves. Bring this to a boil while stirring to dissolve the sugar. Once the sugar is dissolved, let the syrup boil for about 5 minutes and pour through a strainer to get the zest out. (If you don’t have a fine strainer, you can either leave the zest out or deal with zest in your lemonade)

Put the syrup in the fridge to cool it off and juice your lemons.

Once the lemons are juiced, mix the juice with about half of your syrup, you’ll have left over syrup, but you can always find other uses for simple syrup. If you’re adding more fruit or herbs, add them here. I added about half a quart of quartered strawberries and a couple of basil leaves out of the garden. Add more water to dilute the lemonade. Let the lemonade sit for a few hours to let all the flavors mix. Before you serve the lemonade, taste it and adjust any flavors if needed. I have found that it gets sweeter as the fruit sits in it, but I like it really sweet! I served it with some of the strawberries in the glass and garnished it with two more basil leaves.

The finished product

Now, I promise to leave you alone until the end of June.