Sasha's Kitchen: Summer Vegetable Risotto

I can't exactly take all the credit for this dish. I had planned on making a summer vegetable risotto, after the spring vegetable risotto I made a while back was so good. I bought some great locally grown vegetables for the summer dish, but asked my mom and my husband to execute the actual recipe, since Brad is a skilled risotto maker and my mom was visiting. The end result was absolutely spectacular, and luckily we have great notes on each person's contributions to this dish. The vegetables were prepared perfectly, a lovely al dente, and this might just be the best risotto yet at our house - a true feast!

Garden Fresh Summer Vegetable Risotto

2 cups arborio risotto rice

6 cups low sodium chicken stock

4 carrots, chopped

2 ears of corn, shucked

1 cup of fresh english peas

5 scallions, thinly diced

2 yellow zucchini, thinly sliced

zest of two lemons

1 cup of white wine

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 onion, diced

1 heaping tablespoon of diced garlic
1 1/2 tsp fresh thyme

Saute the garlic and onions in about three tablespoons of olive oil. Cook for several minutes until the onions are translucent. Then add the arborio rice in three tablespoons of olive oil. Then add the wine and cook over medium heat until half of the white wine is gone and dissipated. Add one cup of chicken stock and allow to reduce before adding the next cup of chicken stock. Keep adding and reducing the chicken stock, one cup at a time until fully reduced and the risotto is fully cooked. In total you will add about six cups of chicken stock. 

The carrots were sliced and steamed in a steamer until almost tender. The peas were separately then steamed in the steamer, also until almost tender. Then, briefly saute the corn kernels in a scant tablespoon of olive oil. Saute the zucchini lightly, separately, in a tablespoon of olive oil. 

Add the vegetables to the risotto. Then mix in the thinly sliced scallions, thyme and lemon zest and a half of cup of grated parmesan cheese, and serve hot.

Sasha's Kitchen: Summer Vegetable Risotto

Sasha's Kitchen: Spring Vegetable Risotto

Spring is in the air, which means that Passover is around the corner - no leavened bread or items that can be used to make bread for eight days (or in my lazy case, six or seven). This also means no rice, grains, corn etc. But, before Passover starts tomorrow tonight, I decided to get in one more fabulous grain dish, and one that is just *oh*so*perfect* for spring, a spring vegetable risotto. Thus, this was our Sunday night dinner. Risotto is fairly simple to make and vary recipes once you get the technique down of slowly cooking the risotto while reducing the wine and chicken broth. At that point, you can pretty much add just about anything to risotto. I have made the gamut of risottos, from tomato thyme risotto to asparagus risotto to various mushroom risottos to even truffle risotto. This time, I decided to prepare a risotto that is inspired by the spring - one that uses just about ever fresh spring vegetable that I could get my hands on (plus some pattypan squash, which is more of a summer vegetable, but I couldn't resist). This turned a delicious risotto that is perfect for the springtime, and also pretty healthy as well.

Sasha's Spring Vegetable Risotto
1 1/2 cups arborio (risotto) rice
4 cups of low sodium chicken stock
2/3 cup white wine
2/3 cup thinly sliced sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes)
1 1/2  cups sweet peas or English peas
1 1/3 cup thinly sliced pattypan squash (stems sliced off)
1 large handfulls fresh baby spinach
8 stalks white asparagus, chopped into small pieces, bottom ends of stalk discarded
2 cloves of garlic, diced
4 T olive oil
6 sprigs of thyme
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

First, prepare the vegetables to they will be read to add to the risotto at the right time. The different vegetables will take different amount of times to cook, so it is important to add them in the proper order. First, slice the sunchokes and saute over medium to medium-high heat in 2 tablespoons oil for about ten minutes. Then add the pattypan squash and saute over medium heat for another five minutes before adding the white asparagus, garlic and peas. Saute until everything is just cooked (but not overcooked and mushy) for about 5 to 10 more minutes. If you need to, you can add additional olive oil to the pan.

Meanwhile, prepare the risotto by adding the arborio rice to the remaining tow tablespoons of olive oil, cooking for a couple of minutes over medium heat. Add the white wine over medium heat and allow the wine to reduce for about five minutes, at least by half, before adding the first cup of chicken stock. Simmer over medium heat to reduce each cup of chicken stock before adding the next. You should need about three and a half to four cups in total (about one quart). Once the last cup of chicken stock is almost reduced, stir in the vegetables. Add two large handfulls of baby spinach, which will shrink a couple minutes after it is added to the pot. Continue until the chicken stock is reduced to the texture of risotto (not too runny) and then stir in the parmesan cheese (you can leave this out if you prefer ). Serve hot. Note: you can use vegetable or mushroom stock in lieu of chicken stock to make this dish vegetarian.

Sasha's Kitchen: Spring Vegetable Risotto

Sasha's Kitchen: Beef Tenderloin Medallions with Potato Risotto

I haven't had the chance to post yet this week, as I have been busy with my pre-birthday festivities with my husband. But I have plenty of new recipes that I just need the time to write up. This recipe is one that I found on Epicurious. I had bought medallions of petit filet from Fresh Direct because they looked good and were a lot less expensive than Filet Mignon, so certainly worth a try. I was doing some research on the best way to prepare them and came across a recipe for beef tenderloin medallions with a potato risotto and I was intrigued.  I love traditional risottos and thought that making a risotto style dish using potatoes instead of rice/pasta would be a fun and delicious variation. So I decided to give it a try. I seasoned the meat much differently than in the original recipe, so I am including my variations in the write-up below. The original recipe is here, and is from a February 2010 issue of Bon Appetit.

Beef Tenderloin Medallions with Potato Risotto
1 T butter or olive oil
2 cup finely chopped onion
1 lb mini Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1/8 inch cubes
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 cups low sodium chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup finely diced chives
4 6 oz beef tenderloin steaks
thyme, salt, pepper, rosemary and oregano for seasoning the meat

Melt the butter (or olive oil) in a large sauce pan and add the onion. Cook until translucent, stirring occasionally, for about seven minutes. Add the potato cubes and the pinch of cayenne, while seasoning with salt and pepper. Add the chicken stock, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium until the potatoes are almost tender. Add more chicken broth if needed, if the potatoes are too dry. Don't add extra though, or you run the risk of over-mushing the potatoes in the risotto. It is a delicate balance! Simmer for about 10 minutes, and then add the cream. Simmer until the potatoes are tender but still hold their shape, stirring often, for about ten minutes. Stir in the chives and parmesan cheese. This can be made ahead of time.

For the medallions, season the steaks with salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme and oregano to taste. Heat some olive oil in your grill pan and cook the steaks until done over medium heat, adding more oil if necessary.

Sasha's Kitchen: Beef Tenderloin Medallions with Potato Risotto

Sasha & Brad's Kitchen: Butternut Squash Risotto

Squash and pumpkin are my two favorite vegetables this time of year.  I plan on making some squash soup for thanksgiving to rival the pumpkin soups I made this time last year and shared here. I figured that squash (or pumpkin) would make a delicious risotto, and I was definitely correct. I engineered this recipe, but this time my husband executed and prepared it - it was a delicious and perfect fall treat, prepared using the delicious ShopRite risotto that I received as part of the ShopRite blog panel that I am part of. You really could make this with fresh pumpkin as well, and it would also be great. You can prepare this using fresh butternut squash from your garden, or make it easy on yourself and buy it already cut up. Either way, the dish is surprisingly easy to make once you have the risotto making art down pat. Risotto is one of my husband's favorite dishes (both to make and to eat) and this one is certain to appear again on our dinner table. Brad and I are hosting Thanksgiving for my family this year, so I am really excited to try some great new pumpkin and squash recipes along with our holiday turkey!


Sasha & Brad's Butternut Squash Risotto
1 lb fresh squash, broiled and diced
1 onion, diced
2 T of butter or olive oil
1 cup white cooking wine
4-5 cups of low sodium chicken stock
1 1/2 cups of risotto
1/2 tsp cinnamon

To prepare the risotto, first roast the butternut squash at 400 degrees for about an hour and a half, until cooked. If you are using fresh squash, then get rid of the skin. If using cut up squash, you can then cut into smaller pieces. Squash is really hard to cut before you broil it - I always have a hard time cutting whole squashes open before putting them in the oven!

Cut up the onion and saute in the butter or olive oil. Then add the rice and coat in the olive oil / butter. Add the white wine, and allow to reduce by half. Add the chicken stock, one cup at a time, allowing the first cup of chicken stock to reduce by at least half before adding the next cup. In total, you will add somewhere between 4 to 5 cups of chicken stock before it gets to the right texture. Just before the risotto is done, mix in the cinnamon.

Usually we make risotto with parmesan cheese, but this time we left it out and it was just perfect - and healthier too! I did garnish with a tiny bit on top.

Sasha & Brad's Kitchen: Butternut Squash Risotto

Sasha's Kitchen: Asparagus Truffle Risotto

I've been making a lot of risotto recently, so when I received ShopRite's private label risotto in my recent shipment of products to try from ShopRite as a member of their new blog panel, I was ready. I love the combination of a bit of truffle oil in my risotto, so I decided to combine with some fresh asparagus. You can use just about any vegetable in risotto. If i did this again, I might even add a bit of sweet corn, as well. I used La Tournagelle Infused Black truffle oil, which is a bit expensive, but a little goes a long way. It's certainly less pricy than buying actual truffles, that's for sure. I was impressed with the high quality of the ShopRite arborio rice in the private label risotto. It had just the right consistency for a perfect risotto.

Sasha's Truffle-Asparagus Risotto
2 cups of arborio risotto rice
4 T of olive oil (I used the ShopRite private label olive oil, once again)
3 cloves of fresh garlic
1 onion, diced
1 bunch of fresh asparagus, chopped, ends discarded
4 sprigs of thyme
1 cup of white cooking wine
4 cups of low sodium chicken broth
1 T of truffle oil
1/3 of a cup of grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

To prepare the risotto, saute the asparagus, onion, diced garlic and thyme for about 5 minutes over medium heat, using two tablespoons of the olive oil. In another saute pan, add the arborio risotto rice to the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil and coat well.  Add the white wine and cook over medium high hear for a few minutes.  Add the asparagus/onion mix and the truffle oil. Then add the chicken stock, one cup at a time, and continue heating over medium high heat, allowing the liquid to reduce. When each cup is reduced, then add the next cup of the chicken stock. Once all of the chicken stock is reduced, the risotto should look expanded and cooked al dente. Then stir in the grated parmesan cheese. Delicious!

Sasha's Kitchen: Asparagus Truffle Risotto

Sasha's Kitchen: Cherry Tomato-Thyme Risotto

Risotto is one of my favorite foods, and there are so many ways to prepare delicious risotto, from mushroom risottos to Belgian style mussels risottos. A good risotto is also a great way to showcase high-quality food products from good olive oil to delicious cheese to quality fish and vegetables. I was inspired to create a new tomato-risotto using some of the products I received in my package from Shop-Rite as part of the soon-to-launch Shop-Rite blog panel. For this new recipe, I tested out two private-label Shop-Rite products, Shop-Rite's imported extra-virgin Olive Oil and whole cherry tomatoes. The products were top-notch. The olive oil was smooth and delicious - top notch Italian extra-virgin olive oil. I was also really impressed with the quality of the cherry tomatoes. They were juicy and delicious and worked just perfectly in the risotto. They were  the perfect choice for making a delicious tomato risotto with bursts of fresh tomato flavor and just the right size (bite-size) for risotto. They truly were the star of the dish!

I am a big fan of thyme and tomato as a food combination so I used plenty of thyme in this recipe. I also decided that some pine nuts (pignolia nuts) would complement the flavors of the tomato and the thyme well.

Sasha's Cherry Tomato-Thyme Risotto

1 onion, diced

2 tsp diced garlic

4 T Shop-Rite private label Extra-Virgin Olive Oil

8-10 sprigs of fresh thyme

2 1/2 cups of Arborio risotto rice

2 T of tomato paste

1 cup white cooking wine

4 cups of sodium-free chicken broth

2/3 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined (or leave this out to make a vegetarian tomato risotto)

1 can of Shop-Rite cherry tomatoes

3 T of pine nuts

1/2 cups of grated parmesan cheese

First, combine the onion, garlic and two tablespoons of the extra virgin olive oil in a saute pan and cook over medium heat until the onions have softened. Add the thyme as well. Next, add the risotto and another two tablespoons of olive oil and mix to coat the risotto with the olive oil.  After another minute or so, add the white cooking wine, cherry tomatoes and tomato paste to the pan. Cook for about five minutes over medium-high heat before adding the chicken broth. You don't want to add the chicken broth until the wine has reduced by half. Then, add the first cup of the chicken stock.  As my husband, Brad explained in a previous post, add the chicken stock one cup at a time (and not all at once). Allow the first cup of chicken stock to reduce by half before adding the second cup, and so on. This allows you to make sure that there is always some chicken stock mixed in with the other ingredients and keeps the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pan. The entire adding, reducing and stirring process should take about 20-25 minutes. When you add the last cup of stock, allow it to reduce completely. Then stir in the pine nuts and grated parmesan cheese.  I also added the shrimp at this point, which I cooked separately in a pan using the Shop-Rite extra virgin olive oil.  This was delicious, but if you prefer a vegetarian dish, feel free to leave them out - the cherry tomatoes can completely carry this dish!  The risotto tasted great, and is such a pretty color too!

Sasha's Kitchen: Cherry Tomato-Thyme Risotto

Eric's Kitchen in NJ: Ginger Glazed Mahi & Scallops Risotto

For Mother's Day my Mom and Grandma had me make them both of these dishes as their 'gift'. I had actually never cooked Mahi Mahi before but knew my Mom loved it so I looked up some recipes, considering what she already had in the house and settled on this one. As for the risotto, my Mom was more specific, saying she wanted, seared scallops with mushrooms, and leeks.

Let's start with the Mahi Mahi.

Ingredients (served 4-5 but we had two dishes):
2 large Mahi Mahi fillets
3 tbsp honey
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 bunch of scallions, chopped
1 tbsp garlic, minced (2 cloves)
1 tbsp ginger minced
2 tsp olive oil
Cracked black pepper

Mix everything but the fish in a bowl and then add the fish and let marinate for 20 minutes in the fridge. After that, heat some light olive oil (takes high heat better my Mom taught me) in a pan and then add the fish, skin down, without the marinade and let it brown until crispy before turning. I only turn anything once and after I turned it, I let the other side sear for a minute or so before adding the marinade and letting it cook and thicken until the fish was done. The recipe suggested cooking the fish first and the marinade separately probably to let the fish cook completely without rushing it or to properly thicken the sauce but I ignored or forgot this and it turned out great anyway. The sauce had an amazing flavor! Also check out Sasha's Mahi Mahi Fish Tacos with Mango Salsa.

On to the risotto!

Ingredients (served 5 and there was a ton left over):
2 lbs. of sea scallops
2 cups of dry arborio rice
8 cups of 'better than bullion' mushroom stock (I forget how many tsp of bullion this is)
1 leek, chopped
1/2 a bunch of scallions
1 package of baby bella mushrooms, washed and thinly sliced
cracked pepper
1/2 cup white wine, we used a chardonnay
1 tbsp white truffle oil

Start by sauteing the veggies in olive oil & white truffle oil until soft while heating the broth and then add the rice and the wine and continue to stir until the rice has absorbed most of the liquid. Then add the hot mushroom broth and stir until the rice absorbs it, maybe 1/2 a cup to a cup at a time until the rice is soft. Definitely taste it as you will know when it's done. It took around 45 minutes but we had it on the wrong burner to start without enough heat or it may have been quicker. Also we had a cup or so of broth left over but considering how much risotto we had left over, we will probably use it when re-heating. Here are a few other risotto recipes on this blog.

In the meantime, sear your scallops with butter and some white wine to de-glaze the pan as the butter starts to darken and dry out. Keep from adding TOO much butter or wine as it will prevent the scallops from properly searing. Also don't crowd the scallops in the pan as this can also prevent them from browning. I love seared scallops and added a picture mainly because they looked nice...

It took about 4 rounds of searing the scallops while Jenn stirred the risotto until everything was done so we set aside the scallops until the end and then mixed it all together. Everything turned out very nicely and my Mom and Grandma were both very happy! Now if I can only get them to read my blog entries!

Here are some other seared scallop recipes:
Sasha's seared scallops with Papaya, blood orange vinegrette and carmelized shallots
Sasha's scallops with organic mushrooms, spicy coconut lemongrass-thyme broth and pomegranate seeds
My fettucine with scallops and mushroom cream sauce

Eric's Kitchen in NJ: Ginger Glazed Mahi & Scallops Risotto

Brad's Kitchen in Brooklyn: Green Apple Risotto

I basically have a few speciality dishes that I am able to make myself from start to finish without any assistance. One I wrote about recently, and that is chicken marsala. The other happens to be various incarnations of risotto. One of my favorites is a recipe I garnered from Mario Batali's Simple Italian Food cookbook, Green Apple Risotto.

Here is the recipe itself, with a couple of slight modifications, and listed in the order ingredients are added:

2 tablespoons unsalted Butter
2 tablespoons Canola Oil
1 large Onion, finely chopped
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and chopped
2 cups Arborio Rice (risotto rice)
1 cup dry White cooking Wine
4 to 5 cups Chicken Stock, added one cup at a time
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
A sprinkle of finely chopped Parsley
Salt & Pepper to taste

For this recipe, however I actually do ask my wife Sasha's help on a couple of preparatory items. The first is chopping an onion, which she is quite skilled at and saves me the trouble of having my eyes become watery. The second is peeling and slicing the apples. Ever since I accidentally peeled some of my finger while peeling a small papaya, my wife has been in charge of peeling round fruits or vegetables in our house. The only thing I peel now is cucumbers.

At any rate, the first step is to heat the butter & oil in a caserole dish at medium heat. Then add the chopped onions and cook until they soften but not brown for several minutes. Next add the apples and rice simultaneously and cook for 3-4 minutes. Then add the wine and mix with all the ingredients.

The key once you start adding the liquid, wine in this case, and later the chicken stock, is to make sure there is always some liquid mixed with the rice and other ingredients - at least until the point where the dish is ready. Another tip is to stir with some frequency throughout the process. This way the rice will not stick to the bottom of the dish, which is something you want to avoid.

After a few minutes when you notice the wine has reduced, add the first cup of chicken stock and stir together with the ingredients. Continue to add the remaining chicken stock, one cup at a time at the point where the previous cup has reduced in half. The entire cup adding process & stirring should take about 20-25 minutes. After the last cup of stock has been added and just about fully reduced, you can add in the parmigiano-reggiano cheese, parsley, salt & pepper and mix together fully. Then you are ready to dispatch from the caserole dish into a serving dish for your meal.



If you would like to check out another risotto recipe on this website, check out Sasha's Triple Mushroom Risotto, or Eric's Mussels Risotto.

Brad's Kitchen in Brooklyn: Green Apple Risotto

Sasha's Kitchen: Vegetarian Dinner Party and Simple Winter Squash Recipe

My husband and I had a vegetarian (or vegetable-oriented, perhaps a better term for it) dinner party last night with some friends of ours here in Brooklyn.  Here was the menu:

Appetizer: Baby Acorn Squash (recipe below)
Caesar Salad
Green Apple Risotto (My husband, Brad, prepared this and will post the recipe soon)
Sweet Potato Chipoltle Latkes (Pancakes) with Lingonberries
Rainbow Frosted Honey-Vanilla Cupcakes
Mini Chocolate Souffles (prepared by our friends for us, but something I plan on making for this site very soon)

Below is how to prepare the baby acorn squash, a perfect appetizer or side dish for a fall or winter dinner.  This recipe serves four, but they are so good, that you might want to prepare extras.

2 medium sized acorn squash
4 T butter
4 T brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

And a second variation of the dish, incorporating apples that I will be preparing this weekend for another dinner party:

Diced honeycrisp or gala apples, mixed with 1/2 tsp cinnamon and a 1 tsp of lemon juice

Cut the acorn squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Fill with the butter, cinnamon and brown sugar. Add the apple mixture too, if making that variation.

Bake at 350 F for an hour and a half.

The end result is a very simple, but delicious farm fresh seasonal treat, best prepared using organic or local produce. I really enjoy cooking vegetarian-style. It's not that I don't enjoy meat and fish - I do, and plenty of it. But too much of our eating revolves around the meat entree, and it doesn't always need to be that way. Sometimes it is nice too cook without meat, and it enhances the fresh fruits, vegetables, cheeses, grains and other ingredients that you are using. I find that I have learned a great deal of how to better work with these ingredients by occasionally leaving meat out of a meal.  Not only is it healthy to occasionally skip out on meat, but it enhances the experience we have eating everything else, as well as the quality of the produce.  I believe this is why I am such a big fan of the farm to table approach to cooking. I plan to do another vegetable-oriented dinner party next weekend, as well.

vegetarian
squash

Sasha's Kitchen: Vegetarian Dinner Party and Simple Winter Squash Recipe

Sasha's Kitchen: Triple-Mushroom Risotto And Food Sociology

I wasn't planning on posting anything today, 12/16, give that it is my birthday (I'm 26 again, for the 5th year in a row). However, now that it is after midnight, I couldn't resist sharing this recipe that my husband and I prepared last night.

I do most of the cooking (and the grocery shopping) in our house. However, my husband does his part as well - laundry and cleaning up messes (mostly mine). However, there are certain foods that Brad cooks and prepares extremely well, including any variety of risotto, Marsala, and boeuf borugignon.

I asked Brad to prepare a mushroom risotto last night, and bought enough mushrooms so that he would have quality ingredients to work with. The end result, a triple-mushroom risotto was excellent, and one of the best that I have had. It was only after tasting Blue Hill's mushroom risotto tonight that I have a couple of suggestions on how to improve the recipe.

According to my husband, the first step of the risotto is to saute the chopped onions (use 1 medium sized onion) in 2 tablespoons of canola oil and 2 tablespoons of butter. An additional note is that you could add a tablespoon of pure Truffle Oil if you are fortunate enough to have some (I am not, sadly). At that point, add a1 cup arborio/risotto rice and stir for 2 minutes. After that, add chicken stock, one cup at a time, until you have added a total of three cups, but only adding in one cup increments only when the stock has reduced. Continue stirring every couple minutes while it cooks so the rice does not get stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Another point to note is that we intended to prepare a homemade mushroom stock, in lieu of chicken stock, but did not have time to do this after a long work day so instead we substituted organic chicken stock. The end result was delicious, but I would highly recommend substituting a homemade mushroom stock if you have the time. A sample recipe for homemade mushroom stock can be found here. I suspect that this would have an excellent and rewarding result and plan to do this next time I prepare the dish and get started before 8 PM.

While performing the above, saute the assorted mushrooms in canola oil in another pan. With respect to the mushrooms - you can use any variety that is locally available (the more organic and unusual, the better, in my opinion). I selected Shitaki, portabello and cremeni. You should start with about twice the volume of mushroom that you need in the end (much to my husband's surprise), as they typically get reduce by about 50% as they cook and the mushroom juices come out. Midway through the third cup of chicken stock reducing, combine the sauteed mushrooms with the risotto and keep stirring until the third cup of stock has fully reduced. The last step is to add shredded or grated Parmesan or other cheese of your preference. It's also good to add some salt & pepper to taste.

Here's the recipe we used:

Sasha's Triple Mushroom Risotto

3 cups organic lowfat chicken stock or homemade mushroom stock
1 onion, diced
2 T butter
2 T canola oil
1 T truffle oil (if you are luckier than me and have truffle oil in your kitchen)
1 cup arborio/risotto rice
package of diced portabello mushrooms (stems removed)
package of diced cremeni mushrooms (stems removed)
package of diced shitaki mushrooms (stems removed)
salt to taste
pepper to taste
I would suggest adding 1 tsp star anise

I should add that tonight at my birthday dinner at Blue Hill we tasted a combination mushroom risotto that was strikingly similar to this dish. The main difference is that they had access to some super-fresh, delicious organic mushrooms from Stone Barns, and the mushrooms had a wonderful natural sweetness to them. I immediately (and correctly, after discussing with the waitstaff) identified this taste as the incorporation of star anise in the dish (Brad initially thought it was cinnamon). It was a great addition and one that I will surely incorporate next time I make the dish. I suggest that you do the same.

This is a dish my husband and I enjoy cooking together, even though we have different styles. I am a very experimental chef - I am not afraid to try new things, even though form time to time, they backfire. However, my food "experiments" have led me to a lot of great discoveries that I would not have learned any other way (i.e. like making tangerine salad dressing because I ran out of orange juice and needed to improvise, and actually discovering I liked it better because it was less acidic). My husband is more of a conventional cook - he likes to know what he is going to do before he does it and plan accordingly. Because this recipe was so improvised, I had to convince him that I knew what we were doing and just to do his thing with the rice and the mushrooms would work their way into the recipe.

In addition, I am a very messy chef. I am much better than I used to be, but I generally make a large mess when I cook, which Brad is usually patient and sweet enough to clean up without complaining. Brad is the opposite - he prefers to clean up as he goes along, even if it gets in the way of cooking. I have often joked that he reminds me of the "anal-retentive chef" skit from SNL, with the beloved Phil Hartman. (If you have not already noticed, I am a huge SNL fan, expecially of the old classics and also linked a great skit to my recent Iceland post).

As noted above, tonight was my birthday dinner, which, my husband and I celebrated at Blue Hill. I will complete a full review of Blue Hill tomorrow night. For tonight, my comments are mainly reserved for a discourse on food-sociology. One of the many reasons I started the blog was to explore the psychology and sociology behind cooking and eating, as this is something that fascinates me.

Since tonight was my birthday, I couldn't help but thinking about how special occaisons (holidays, both secular and religious, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries etc. . ) are always celebrated with food. The only special events we mark without food tend to be sad occasions (funerals and fast/mourning holidays). We give thanks for food at special occasions (harvest, holidays like thanksgiving and Sukkot). We pray for rain (i.e. Native American and Jewish prayers) so it will cause crops to grow so we will have enough food.

Whenever we choose to socialize with friends, it is almost always with our centered around food (dinner,drinks, holidays etc). The few occasions that are not centered around food that we do socialize for - i.e. sporting events - usually wind up involving food in the end (have you ever been to a super bowl party or baseball game where you didn't eat?). Every society that I have read about from the ancient Egyptians to the Romans to modern societies incorporates food, and plenty of it, into their religious and social rituals and practices.

The bottom line is that food is central to our celebration of special moments and to our social discourse. Humans simply cannot socialize without food. I truly believe that eating different varieties of food, and eating with others makes people happier and that food play a central role in our happiness. My birthday was a really good one this year, for a variety of reasons, but the good food certainly played a role in making that happen. I guess this is just some food for thought (pun intended). This concept of "food sociology" and why and how people eat, and the role it plays in human socialization, emotion and happiness is a topic I plan to explore in the future on this blog.

Risotto is a one of the "roundtable" ingrediants at akitcheninbrooklyn.com for the month of December. For another risotto recipe, click here for Eric's Mussels Risotto.

Sasha's Kitchen: Triple-Mushroom Risotto And Food Sociology

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Mussels Risotto

This recipe came about while dining out in Jersey City a few months ago. My girlfriend and I were at LITM bar and restaurant where they had a special on Belgian mussels. $15 for all-you-can-eat mussels enticed us to go in. We also decided to order the mushroom risotto as an appetizer. When it all came out, the risotto had probably been sitting too long under the heat lamp and had congealed and dried out. We decided to take some of the extra broth from the mussels and revitalize the risotto which worked wonderfully. I decided that I needed to try this out at home and see what would happen when combining too things I love.

I started out by making the Belgian-style mussels with Duvell ale, shallots, mushrooms and fresh parsley. For those who have not tried this style of mussels, you clean the mussels, then saute the veggies in a pot until soft. Add your ale and mussels and steam them, covered, until they open up. I strained all the veggies and mussels from the broth and set them aside and kept them warm.

When making risotto, it helps to coat the rice with fat. In this case we used a thick-cut bacon, copped finely and then cooked until crispy in the bottom of the pot for the risotto. I added the risotto, then some of the broth from the mussels and cooked until most of the liquid had been absorbed. You repeatedly do this until the risotto is done cooking; about 20-25 minutes. You will most likely use all your broth and may have to add some chicken broth or other broth to finish off the risotto. You can also add in the veggies from the mussels about halfway through the risotto. Save the mussels until the very end to avoid over-cooking them.

In the end you should have a delicious dish that combines Belgian-style mussels and risotto, similar to a Paella.

Ingredients:
~2Lb. Mussels
1 bunch of parsley
1 shallot
1 bottle of Duvell Belgian Ale (use 1-2 cups for the mussels)
1/2 lb bacon
1 container baby bella mushrooms
extra chicken stock or broth if needed.
1 cup of Arborio rice

One more link: The first (and still the best) place I had Belgian-style mussels is Monk's Cafe in Philly.

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Mussels Risotto