Because I haven’t done a #cooking post in a while…

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

CNxHYtLUcAESoz1I made blueberry risotto for dinner tonight, using a Facebook post from an old friend and this recipe as inspiration.  Changes were minor, mostly involving using more blueberries than the recipe called for (a full pint initially and then another half-cup or so as garnish afterwards; I don’t think you can really overdo the blueberries in this dish) and using heavy cream instead of light cream, since no grocery store in Indiana knows what the hell light cream is.  After tasting it, I endorse this change; I don’t think it would have been creamy enough without the extra fat content.

Basically: melt 3 tablespoons of butter and sauté a diced onion in it at medium or medium-low heat for a couple of minutes.  Meanwhile, have 6-7 cups of vegetable stock (chicken would be fine too) at a boil in a nearby pot.  Add 2 cups of arborio rice and stir until golden-brown, which shouldn’t take more than another couple of minutes.  Add 3/4 cup of white wine, stir again until the liquid is gone, then add the blueberries.  Start adding stock about half a cup or 3/4 of a cup at a time, and don’t worry too much about the amounts.  You’re basically stirring in between each dose of stock until the majority of the liquid is gone– the rule of thumb I use is that if I can split the rice in half with the spoon and it takes more than 2-3 seconds to merge back together again it’s time for another dose of liquid.  Once all the liquid is absorbed– which means 25 minutes or so of constant stirring, probably– taste the rice to make sure it’s done.  Actually, you should probably be tasting it along the way so you don’t overcook.  Don’t worry about adding more stock or even water if you’re out.

Once the rice is done, add some more blueberries, half a cup of heavy cream, and half a cup of parmesan, and then whip the hell out of it, trying to spill as little of the cream as possible, for at least a couple of minutes.  Then?  Done.  I may fiddle with extra ingredients next time, as both my wife and I thought it needed something, but weren’t quite sure what, and add salt, pepper, and extra parmesan to taste.

Delish.

Because the entire internet needs to know

Luther M. Siler6 Comments

1903017_10152171209133926_1978914301_n…I had perfect for dinner, guys.

 

Some odds and ends

Luther M. Siler

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Day Four of the Great Vegetarian Experiment:  risotto!  Mushroom risotto, to be precise.  I didn’t know what risotto was until I started watching Gordon Ramsay shows, and now that I’ve made it I can never stop.  Soooo goddamn good.  Tomorrow will be some sort of pasta, I think, and then I just have to make it through Friday and Saturday and I can have an entire pig for breakfast on Sunday if I want.

I’ll admit I cheated a tiiiny bit on this one, because the risotto was made with chicken stock, although there isn’t any actual meat in there.  However, I said in the ground rules that I wasn’t going to worry about chicken stock, and the people at Slate say chicken stock isn’t meat anyway, so nyah.  (Sidenote:  I’m entertained to note that the guy in the article is also using chicken stock to make mushroom risotto.  That’s a coincidence, I swear.)

Today was the first day where I really missed meat, to be honest– which manifested itself in three different ways:  first, whatever the kids were having for lunch in the cafeteria smelled really good.  Second, I hit the vending machine for a snack during my prep period (my lunch is really early in the day, so this happens probably more often than it should, since my prep is last hour) and was halfway toward getting vending machine jerky before it hit me that a) vending machine jerky is meat, and b) are you kidding?  Vending machine jerky?  Like hell I’m eating vending machine jerky.  Then on the way home I drove past Arby’s, which is still prominently advertising their Arby’s Smokehouse Brisket Sandwich, and… I’m not gonna lie, there might have been some drooling.  No buying, no eating, but drooling.

I promised “odds and ends” in the title of the post, but the two other things I was going to talk about– the bullying movie the whole building had to watch today and the release of Bill Ayers’ Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident both kinda feel like full-sized posts now that I’m thinking about them.  So maybe I’ll overpost for the next couple of days if I get them written.  Many of you are probably tired of hearing about food by now anyway, I imagine.

 

Pfah.

Luther M. Siler

“Write every day, no matter what,” they tell me.

“Stay in practice,” they tell me.

“Have good ideas and something to talk about every day,” NO ONE EVER SAYS.

Stupid writing advice.

I made friends with a bug last night.  But the story ends in tears so I’m not going to tell it.  Instead, I’m going to go make soup.  I like soup.  It’s tasty.  Tomorrow, I will make risotto and invite Joe Bastianich over to eat my food.  He won’t come, but at least I’m trying.

The end.