Making it up

Reading my new Italian cookbook again (see previous post), I was struck with how useful these kinds of cookbooks are - the ones where you're given a range of methods, and then shown how to ring the changes so that you can create a huge variety of dishes from the same concept.
      As well as my new Italian, I have Richard Ehrlich's The Lazy Cook: Simple, Sophisticated Food and How to Make It, running through pan-grilling, flash-roasting, gratins, and more. I treasure it, partly because Harvey bought it, but mainly because it's so user-friendly.
      The other day I downloaded my first e-cookbook, Fast, Fresh and Green, by Susie Middleton. In a nutshell, it gives nine interesting ways to prepare vegetables - quick-roasting, quick-braising, hands-on sauteing, walk-away sauteing, two-stepping, no-cooking, stir-frying and grilling - with lots of appealing examples. I expect it will boost my vege consumption very nicely.
       So tonight I took a leaf out of all these books and concocted my own risotto. Earlier I had sorted out the vege bin and cooked up a broth made mainly of rather tired leeks and spring onions, a proper onion and woody bits of asparagus, with a few green peas thrown in. When I blitzed it, it became a delicious thin green stock. There were a few fresh sticks of asparagus left too, but they were too good to go into the common pot. I cooked them separately and kept them warm to have as part of my dinner. But if you had plenty of asparagus, you could make the stock entirely of that, plus an onion - then it becomes asparagus risotto instead.

Green risotto
I melted some butter, softened a chopped onion in it, and added half a cup of arborio rice, turning it well in the butter to coat the grains.
I added the end of a bottle of white wine - about 3/4 of a cup - and turned up the heat to make it bubble.
I stirred the rice slowly to absorb the liquid, and as it disappeared, I added the hot green vege stock a ladleful at a time.
It took about five ladlefuls to reach the right consistency - definitely cooked through, but not soft. (I don't think "al dente" gets it quite right for rice - it shouldn't take much pressure to bite a grain in half, and it definitely shouldn't be in the least gritty.)
To finish it and bump up the protein, I stirred in an egg and a few more little pieces of butter, turned off the gas, and left the pot on the warm hob while I fried some cut-up bacon rashers and grated some pecorino cheese.

So my dinner was an Italian variation on Dr Seuss's green eggs and ham - a nice little pile of creamy pale green risotto, with crispy bacon scattered around, flakes of pecorino on top and asparagus on the side. It took very little time, and as my son likes to say, it was "delishwahse".
       But - and this is a recurring problem for me, though usually with meat dishes - it didn't LOOK wonderful, and I knew it wouldn't make a good photo. So you'll just have to imagine eating it instead!

Green goodness

Asparagus time again. Such a simple thing to cook. This week I worked my happy way through three bunches (with a little help from my friends), and kept all the snapped-off ends and turned them into soup.    

        

Apart from gorgeous, incredibly calorific hollandaise, what I like to have with asparagus is another really simple green thing, salsa verde, deliciously sharp and tangy. Fortunately I've now got enough parsley in the garden to make it with - you need a lot.




Salsa verde (adapted from Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy)
Green sauce Emilian style

25g white breadcrumbs
1 large bunch Italian flat-leaved parsley, roughly chopped (she says 350g but I use about 200g)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 Tbsp shallots or onion
1 flat tin anchovies, including oil
2 Tbsp capers
3 Tbsp lemon juice
olive oil

If you don't already have fresh crumbs, make them by processing the bread in the food processor. Take them out and set aside.
Process garlic and shallots or onion uintil finely chopped.
Add parsley and process until finely chopped.
Add anchovies, capers and lemon juice and process to mix well. Then add breadcrumbs and process again.
Add olive oil in a thin stream while processor is running until you get the consistency you want - thick or thinner.
Taste to see if it needs more lemon juice or a little salt.
Spoon into a shallow bowl and serve with asparagus -
or grilled chicken, or steak, or stirred into pasta.
Or you can spread it thinly on slices of toasted ciabatta and put sliced tomatoes on top.

Rummaging round the web, I found this very odd ad for asparagus. Stalking the American life, indeed...







Getting creative with asparagus

Asparagus time again. It's great to have a treat that's also got to be good for you!
         I got creative with it in the weekend. I had some blue cheese left over from Harvey's launch. (Yes, I know that was a while ago, but it was very good Kapiti blue cheese and it was perfectly fine.) And friends had brought us some walnuts from their tree.

         Harvey was pefectly happy with leftover mince on toast, but I felt like pasta (which he really isn't madly keen on). In my favourite Italian book, Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy, I found a recipe for gorgonzola sauce for spaghetti.

It's extremely simple: melt a little butter, stir in the crumbled cheese, mix well, add a little milk (I put a teaspoon of flour in the milk before adding it), stir well and pour over cooked spaghetti.

Before that, though, I snapped the woody ends of a bunch of skinny asparagus - we like the skinny ones best - and cooked the stalks until they were easy to bite but still crunchy.

While they were cooking, I fished out my ancient nutcracker and got to work on a little pile of walnuts, then finely chopped up the shelled nuts.

Once the spaghetti was cooked, I poured the sauce over it, scattered pieces of asparagus over the top, sprinkled over the chopped walnuts and added a good grinding of black pepper. Magnifico.