Summertime

One of the many wonderful reasons for composting: random vegetables show up in your garden. Cucumber seedlings must have sprouted in my compost pile because I never planted these guys.

Eek! Don't fear the Leek

There are always these mammoth sized leeks at the College Park farmers' market and they always intrigue me because they look like prehistoric onions.


So I made leek risotto. Ran into a little snafu though. I thought I had vegetable broth in my kitchen but it turned out to be creamy corn & roasted red pepper soup instead. Oops... So I used 1 cup soup plus 3 cups water in place of the broth. I've also just realized how wonderful aborio rice is. It's an Italian short-grain rice which is firm, creamy, and chewy, because of its higher amylopectin starch content. Gave the risotto a wonderful crunch.


Leek Risotto with Basil Coulis:

1 1/4 cups arborio rice
1 quart chicken or vegetable stock
5 leeks, thoroughly cleaned and finely chopped
3 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tbsp mustard
1 small bunch basil
2 cloves garlic, smashed
2 tbsp olive oil
juice from one lemon
salt and pepper to taste

In a large sauce pan, slowly bring the stock to a strong simmer. Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Chop the whites of the leeks, discarding the tough greens. Lightly saute the leeks in the butter until just cooked. Add the arborio rice, gently tossing frequently to coat each grain in a little butter. Cook until translucent. Add a ladleful of simmering stock to the rice, stirring to combine. Keeping adding only one ladleful of stock to the rice only after the rice has absorbed all of the previous ladles worth of stock. Stir each time to add the stock and occasionally as needed.



Between ladlefuls, place basil, garlic, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, and 1/4 cup stock in a food processor. Process until very smooth and strain through a fine mesh strainer to remove any left over solids. Season with salt and pepper and reserve.

When the risotto is almost finished, stir in the remaining butter and remove from the heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste and stir in the mustard basil coulis.

Matt (the mushroom delivery man) brought fresh mushrooms to my door tonight so I sauted them in olive oil.

Fresh Catfish from the Eastern Shore

One of the guys from work went fishing on Thursday and brought back catfish fillets to share with everyone in the lab. I grilled these beautiful fillets last night.

Marinade:
2 TBS soft butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
juice from one lemon
pepper

I mixed the butter, garlic, and lemon juice in a bowl, then smeared it on the fillets and placed on a large piece of tin foil. Poured the rest of the juice on top of the fillets, placed a few thinly sliced pieces of lemon on top, and sprinkled with pepper. Wrapped up the fillets tightly in the foil to make a package. Cooked on a medium hot grill for ~8 minutes on one side and 5 on the other. Peeled back the foil and enjoyed. The lemon slices were so tender I ate them whole, rind and all.

Food Jammers

I had so much fun watching the cooking channel last night (different from the Food Network). In particular this show food jammers. These three dudes come up with cooking experiments every show that are more like engineering projects. In the episode I watched last night, they made the world's tiniest tofu burgers cooked in a 8 foot bamboo steamer, a 10-ft long sausage, and a flying-saucer-like rotisserie chicken devise. It was amazing.

This channel even plays Julia Child episodes in addition to all my favorites, Nigella, Giada, Alton... Now you're probably not going to learn how to perfecting barbecue chicken from the food jammers, but you will become highly motivated to explore the kitchen and get creative. This article, What's cookin' on the food tube from the Chicago Tribune is exactly right: such shows may remove the fear of the unknown – the kitchen – from generations raised on prepared foods.

Summer Desserts

Been really busy lately but managed to bake two desserts this past week. Didn't take any pictures because as soon as they were made I had them wrapped up and out the door.

First was a phenomenal carrot cake (bourke street bakery carrot cake). I don't know what this Bourke St Bakery is but it must be a pretty big deal because when I was searching for carrot cake recipes this one kept coming up. You make a meringue and fold it into the cake batter just enough so you still have white swirls in the batter. This made the cake much lighter than most other carrot cakes. Then you add only one layer of cream cheese frosting in the center. A lighter cake without heavy frosting to bulk it up--perfect for summer. I also like that it forgoes pineapple and raisins and all that other junk that doesn't belong in the cake anyway. I followed the recipe except for pouring the batter into two separate 9-inch round cake tins as apposed to one tin and then slicing the cake horizontally and filling with frosting 1) bc I didn't have time to let the cake cool before cutting it and 2) I didn't feel skilled enough to actually be able to do that. My method worked better though, the cake rose a lot! If I had only used one tin I'm sure it would have spilled over.

Second was a rhubarb and strawberry pie. This was my first rhubarb experience and it was just wonderful. I was really concerned because it looked just like celery, but oh does it have a fantastically sour and unique flavor. I used Mary's pie dough recipe:

1 1/2 all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c butter
1/4 c ice cold milk

sift the dry ingredients together then work in the butter by cutting with two knives until like peas. add the milk and mold into ball. chill for at least 2 hours. you're supposed to get two crusts from this but it was too humid in my kitchen to successfully roll the dough that thin so I just used it all.

filling:

4 c sliced rhubarb
2 c slice strawberries
3/4 c sugar
4 tsp cornstarch

let the filling sit for 5 minutes before pouring into crust. bake at 400 degrees for 40-45 minutes. added fresh mint for garnish. delicious.