A Revisit to Summer's Quintessence: Tomato Tart with Corn, Basil, and Chevre

It was nearly a year ago that I blogged with profuse apologies about making a corn and tomato galette over the first weekend of November. I'd just discovered a blog with the full monty of beautiful food porn called Alexandra's Kitchen. Her photos are just so gorgeous that I just wanted to start making her recipes on the spot, they looked that delicious. While the result of my November undertaking was pretty damn good, I've been wanting to revisit the same recipe all summer long this year to atone for having made the dish in the fall when both tomatoes and corn were past their prime. This tart is for me the quintessence of summer's bounty, but I guess I'm just too busy going to the beach to actually make it in the summer!

Well, this past weekend was fall by the calendar yet sunny and warm during the day. And having bought on Saturday what is probably the last of the season's corn at the farmers market (this corn is not for eating off the cob but rather cooking in soups and in my favorite succotash that I will probably use as stuffing in some globe zucchini as a final good-bye to summer, but I digress) along with some pretty nice looking tomatoes, I knew Sunday morning had to be a revisit to this corn and tomato galette. (I know, late to the party again, but truth be told I was only able last year to make the galette in November because I'd bought corn and kept it past its prime in the fridge for two weeks! And while it was still good enough to cook and eat, this recipe deserves quality ingredients--and a nice side salad, and the warm sun on your cheek as you enjoy it with a bellini to capture the summer's best offerings.)

As per my usual of late in maintaining my ethos of "eating down the fridge," I was also inclined to make this recipe because I had two cheeses in my fridge I wanted to make good use of before they might go bad, in this case goat cheese and ricotta I'd purchased at the farmers market the previous week. Having made this recipe just once and blogged about the result, I'd thought that it had a layer of creme fraiche on its bottom that was then layered with sauteed corn and onion before being topped by the thick tomato slices. Only after I'd made the crust did I realize that my memory had failed me slightly in that I was combining the ingredients for Alexandra's quiche recipe, which has homemade creme fraiche, with the ingredients for the tomato galette, which has no cheese base but has lots of grated cheese either above or below the tomatoes. No worries! A quick whisk to combine the chevre and ricotta on hand with a dash or two of goat's milk and an egg, some dried thyme, and salt and pepper and I had a beautiful cheese bed upon which to lay my sauteed corn and onion and the sliced tomatoes.

Also, I keep referring to this recipe as a galette, i.e. a free form tart that is not baked in a special pan. The ingredients are laid in the middle of the rolled-out dough, leaving a two inch border that is then folded and pleated over the contents to form a rustic tart that is baked and sliced up almost like a thick piece of pizza. However, I wanted to make the dish in my rectangular tart pan which I'd bought for an asparagus recipe of Jamie Oliver's that is delicious but a bit too much work so I've only ever used the pan once before. Added bonus is that rolling the dough out into a rectangle vs. a circle is rather easy so getting the dough to fit into my tart pan was quite easy. Ironically, Alexandra's galette recipe was a redux of her original tart preparation, which she had first made in a round tart pan. What with the addition of my cheesy base layer, I guess I can call this recipe my own for my return trip, which I happily present below. Also, do yourself a favor and double the pastry recipe, which I foolishly did not do. I can guarantee that you'll want to make it again for this recipe or a quiche or even a peach pie!

Tomato Tart with Corn, Basil, and Chevre

Serves 4 to 6

Pastry recipe

Adapted from Alexandra Stafford's adaptation from Fine Cooking, August 2000

• 1-1/4 cups (5 oz.) all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (1-1/2 oz.) fine yellow cornmeal [I used masa harina as I tend to buy medium rather than fine corn meal]
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 6 T. (3 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
• 3 T. olive oil
• 1/4 cup ice water

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt. Cut in the chilled butter using a stand mixer, a food processor, or a pastry blender until it’s evenly distributed but still in large, visible pieces. Add the olive oil and ice water a tablespoon at a time and mix until the dough begins to come together. It should still be separate crumbs mostly. Gather the dough with your hands and shape it into a disk. Wrap the disk in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. [Tip: It's best to make this dough the day before you need it because of the blind baking step which adds to the prep time. If impatient like me you can place the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes and then put in the fridge until ready to use.]

Filling

• 1 large and 2 small to medium ripe tomatoes (about 1 pound total) cut into 1/3-inch slices, lightly salted and draining on paper towels as you go about preparing the onions and corn
• 2 Tbs. olive oil
• 1 large red onion, roughly chopped
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Kernels from 2 ears of corn (generous 1 cup) [Tip: to cut corn off the cob without the kernels flying everywhere, hold the ear upright on your cutting board, but start cutting halfway down the ear, rotating to remove all the corn from one half of the ear; turn the ear over and repeat for the half you were holding. Voila! Corn on the cutting board (mostly) and not on your counter, plus your fingertips are well away from your knife blade!]
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 bunch basil coarsely chopped to yield about 1/2 cup
• 8 oz. soft cheese such as goat cheese or ricotta
• 2 -3 Tbs. milk
• 2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme or 1 tsp. dried
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste.
• 1 recipe cornmeal pastry (see above)
• 1/4 cup grated semi-hard or hard cheese, such as manchego or parmesan
• Garnish of your choice: chopped parsley, chives, basil or scallion, optional

Adjust an oven rack to the center position and heat the oven to 375°F.
Prep the onions and corn: Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan, over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until softened but not browned, about 10 min. Season with salt and pepper. Add the corn and cook another 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and mix in the garlic and chopped basil, letting the mixture cool in the pan.
Blind bake the tart shell: Meanwhile, if it's been long enough to firm up the dough, roll it out on a floured surface until big enough to fit your tart pan. Transfer the pastry to your tart pan and fit it into the sides without stretching. Trim off any excess and if necessary patch the dough where needed by moistening the edge with water and fitting the extra piece into the bare spot. Prick the bottom all over with a fork and lay a piece of parchment paper larger than the tart pan into the bottom. Fill the parchment paper with pie weights (I use about a pound of beans and rice reserved for this purpose) and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes remove the parchment and pie weights to a bowl and let cool for use another day. Return the tart to the oven for another 10 minutes until it becomes golden brown. Let cool slightly. [Tart crust can be prepared a day in advance. Wrap the tart pan in plastic wrap once cool and store at room temperature.]
Prep the chevre base layer: Whisk together the goat cheese, egg, thyme, salt and pepper with 2 tablespoons of the milk until a smooth spreadable consistency. If too thick, add some milk a little bit at at a time until the mixture is spreadable like cake frosting. Spread the cheese mixture into the bottom of the slightly cooled tart crust using a rubber spatula or the back of a spoon. Layer the onion and corn mixture on top. Pat the tomato slices dry with a paper towel and arrange decoratively on top of the corn mixture. Fit the tomatoes snugly without overlapping as they will shrink as the tart bakes. Sprinkle or grate some parmesan or other cheese over the top of the tomatoes.
Bake and serve: Bake until the crust has browned and the tomatoes have roasted and shriveled slightly, 35 to 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Slice the tart and serve with the herb or scallion garnish of your choice (which I forgot to do as you see in the picture below cuz I was so eager to taste this bad boy).

Ina Garten's Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Hazelnut Buttercream

The other day I offered to bring cupcakes to work for a co-worker's last day celebration. Volunteering for this duty turned out to be fortuitous on many levels as I'll explain below, but let me tell you that these bad boys turned out to be a frabjous (word of the day on my Droid dictionary app) treat enjoyed by all. Moist and chocolatey, they're a great thing in a small package, somewhere smack in the middle of cake-like and fudge-like, which is a description so often used to describe brownies. They're moist AND light without being dense. In fact, because the chocolate in this recipe comes from Hershey's syrup and uses only one cup of flour, the batter was much thinner than I expected,* but they came together just fine.

The cupcake trend--shops galore, cupcakes in lieu of wedding cakes, etc.--has more than worn out its welcome in my book. But because I get so tired of being subjected to the many store bought items that come into the office, and because the person leaving was someone I'd worked with closely over the last few months, I wanted to make the gift a bit more personal, and so I volunteered.

Mind you I was more than a bit tired perusing my cupcake repertoire after dinner the other night because I'd been out to the Washington Nationals' penultimate home game the night before in which they beat the Phillies the day after the Phillies beat the Nats to clinch the NL East title. I only had enough mojo to settle on a cupcake recipe of Ina's though I did not intend to make the chocolate ganache frosting (video here) she recommended to go along with them and couldn't even make her peanut butter frosting as we were out of peanut butter! Since my partner Brian warned me (correctly) that tahini might not be a good substitution for the peanut butter in this instance, I had to find an alternative that was quick and easy and wouldn't use an excess of butter since most of mine was frozen. I was too tired to find a frosting recipe to go with but resolved to find something on the web that would use chocolate hazelnut spread, i.e. Nutella, and went to bed, planning to get up at 5:00 the next morning to start baking. (Personally, I've always done better getting up early rather than staying up late when I need extra hours to get something done.)

Very often when I offer to bring something to share it's because I've a benign ulterior motive to make use of something at home that I have in excess or that I want to use before I forget about it and it ends up at the back of the cupboard, expiration date long since overdue! I went a bit crazy at Chocolate World at Hershey Park over the summer and hadn't used any of the special dark cocoa powder I'd purchased, not to mention the cinnamon chips! But the clincher for me was that this particular cupcake recipe uses neither cocoa nor melted chocolate but rather chocolate syrup, Hershey's recommended.

As it happened, I'd also purchased Hershey's special dark syrup and was dismayed upon first using it and looking at the ingredient list that it's sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. "Corn sugar" is not something we consume unless it comes with the corn itself, so I was more than happy to use up almost all of this chocolate syrup to make cupcakes for my co-workers. I'd never seen this particular type of chocolate syrup anywhere before which made me buy it, and according to some of the reviews on Amazon, it's apparently hard to find and somewhat expensive (I think I paid $3-$4 for 22 ounces). Even Wal-Mart won't tell you what the price is unless you're willing to go to one of their stores with the UPC in hand!

Reading some of the reviews, I wonder now if it was this special dark syrup that made the cupcakes so delicious. One person said of this syrup that it's "chocolate syrup for adults. It is not overly sweet, with a rich chocolate taste, but not bitter as you usually imagine dark chocolate to be." That is exactly how my cupcakes tasted. So I was definitely pleased that I was able to use up nearly all of this special dark syrup and I'm sure it made better cupcakes than the canned version of the syrup recommended by Ms. Ina.

Deciding to use the chocolate syrup and to make Nutella frosting were based on a similar line of thinking on my part of wanting to "eat down the fridge" as it were. I've always loved Nutella, especially after a trip we took to the Netherlands a few years back for a bike trip and learned to appreciate how the Dutch and other Europeans use it to spread on bread and bananas for breakfast and snacking just as we Amerians do with peanut butter. But the chocolate hazelnuttiness of it all just makes it seem so much more sophisticated! Still, I have been known to let it languish on the shelf and one time had to throw a jar away as it smelled and tasted way off. I think people let items in the pantry, fridge, and spice rack accumulate for fear that when something is needed it might mean a trip to the store. This "bird in the hand" mentality--which I first heard from my grandmother I'm sure--leads to holding onto things rather than letting them go so new things can come into your now opened hands. Besides, I know that I have a well stocked pantry/fridge/spice rack so I'm just not afraid of making substitutions.

In looking for the Nutella frosting recipe I found a website dedicated to this foodstuff that had numerous recipes in honor of World Nutella Day on February 5th each year. Who knew of this annual commemoration and didn't tell me? I've already marked my calendar though! I found one frosting recipe that only used 5 tablespoons of butter, a cup of Nutella, and a cup of confectioners sugar, as opposed to other recipes that used more sugar and butter. However, it also called for cream which I didn't have. Thanks to the internet, I learned that cream can be substituted in a recipe by using butter (I ended up using the whole stick) and whole milk. Voila!

As it happened, a friend gave us another brand of chocolate hazelnut spread that requires refrigeration so I was all too happy to use up all of the Nutella on hand plus more than half the jar of the other spread, which means I'm nearly ready to buy new when I see it on sale or I see another brand that I might like to try. So, here is my take on one of the many Barefoot Contessa cupcake recipes with Nutella frosting on top just for fun.

Chocolate cupcake by way of Hershey Park and Nutella.

Chocolate Cupcakes Made with Hershey's Special Dark Syrup

Adapted from the Ina Garten's recipe found on the Food Network

Makes 12 [my recipe produced 16 cupcakes actually*]

Ingredients
1/4 pound unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
4 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
11 fluid ounces chocolate syrup (recommended: Hershey's)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour

Directions

• Line muffin pans with paper liners. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
  
• Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, 1 at a time. Mix in the chocolate syrup and vanilla. Add the flour and mix until just combined. Don't overbeat, or the cupcakes will be tough.
  
• Scoop the batter into the muffin cups and bake for 30 minutes, or until just set in the middle. Don't overbake! Let the cupcakes cool thoroughly in the pan.

Nutella Frosting
Courtesy The Unrepentant Carbivore for World Nutella Day
Makes more than enough for 16 cupcakes

Ingredients
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 cup Nutella
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature [I used a whole stick...]
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 cup heavy cream [...and used 2 tablespoons whole milk instead of the cream]

Place the confectioners' sugar, Nutella, butter, vanilla, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on medium-low speed until creamy, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula as you work. Add the cream and beat on high speed until the mixture is light and smooth.

* Egads! The cooking time to bring this chocolatey magic together was 15 minutes longer for me than the recommended time. But that's because I printed this recipe in 2006(yes that means I'd banked this recipe for four years!), and my printout says 16 ounces of chocolate syrup. However, on the FN website today 11 ounces of syrup is in the recipe. No wonder my batter was so fluid and I got four additional cupcakes out of the recipe! I even had to increase the oven temperature for the last 15 minutes and was going to therefore recommend 350 degrees for the duration rather than 325. However, with less syrup in the batter, the cupcake batter won't be so wet and might finish baking in 30 minutes. Still, no one complained about the results, which were more than worth the time and effort.

Winter Comfort Food I: Molly Stevens' Braised Stuffed Lamb

It's winter on the East Coast and it's supposed to be cold I always say! But DC has been walloped with three storms in 8 days making this winter the snowiest on record ever. The capital of the free world has been shut down for four and a half days as I write this, and we have been hunkered down in our condo for seven days!

At the beginning it was all fun and novel. There were tweets for mass snowball fights at Dupont Circle and other locales. Brian and I went cross country skiing out our front door and were interviewed by journalists from Finland and Belgium. I was even photographed by the AP! Back before the cabin fever set in, we even decided to have some friends over for dinner on the Saturday night of Snow-pocalypse. No one would be going out to the movies or to any bars or anything. So why stay home watching the tube when you can hang out with friends over some cozy comfort food?

Comfort food usually involves two things: the oven and foods from childhood, including Sunday suppers like roasted chicken, meatloaf, casseroles, etc. and for me, especially something braised in red wine using my French (nee Dutch) oven. And so it was that I consulted my braising bible (All About Braising by Molly Stevens) and my freezer to see what might intersect. I was thinking about revisiting my EDF (eating down the fridge) meal of beef burgundy which I love to make, but the freezer only gave up a ham and a boneless lamb leg, which I'd bought last summer (gasp!) imagining I'd be grilling it with a yogurt marinade. Molly's recipe for the lamb is actually the cover recipe for her cookbook. It was a little less complicated than the ham recipe that calls for madeira, which I don't have, while the lamb preparation called for a red wine braise, and our wine cabinet is still full of bottles received at our annual holiday party.

Molly's braised lamb stuffed with herbs was an uncomplicated preparation with simple, accessible ingredients. Most braised meat dishes follow a simple five step cooking process:

1. Brown the meat on the outside and set aside
   
2. Cook the aromatic vegetables (usually, onions, carrots, garlic, etc.)
3. Deglaze with wine and stock and reduce
   
4. Return the meat to the pan and simmer for two plus hours until the meat is super tender
5. Finish the sauce by reducing and thickening if desired

Normally I like to do a braised meat dish a day ahead, letting it cool in its braising liquid and really soak up the flavors. A simple reheat before serving and no one would complain about being served leftovers. This post cooking marinade guarantees tenderness and full umami as most braised dishes do indeed taste better the next day. But Friday evening was taken up with baking bread, so I decided to just make the lamb the evening it would be served. Give yourself a good 45 minutes to prepare the stuffing, brown the lamb, saute the veggies, and reduce the braising liquid before the dish is to go in the oven for its two and a half hours. Molly doesn't recommend it here, but I also decided to marinate the lamb in red wine for almost a day. Not a requirement but just my take that marinading up front is also beneficial.

Molly's recipe calls for a 5 pound boneless leg of lamb, while I had on hand a frozen 3.25 pound boneless leg. I kept all her proportions the same for the aromatics and the stuffing, figuring that any extra sauce would make a delicious soup the next day (which it did with aplomb with a simple addition of some additional aromatics, stock, tomatoes, leftover green beans, and leftover penne!).

The only substitution I had to make was curly parsley for flat leaf. I never buy curly parsley! Who would have thought that my local Yes Organic Market would have had a run on the flat leaf parsley during the storms? Herbiage not withstanding, here is this very simple and delicious meal, perfect for a cold winter night. Serving it with polenta and green beans couldn't have been homier!

Herb Stuffed Leg of Lamb Braised in Red Wine

Adapted from All About Braising by Molly Stevens

Yield: Serves 6 to 8

Cooking Time: 2 to 2 ½ hours

Ingredients

One 5-pound boneless leg of lamb (plus reserved bones, sawed or chopped into 1-inch pieces; optional); [Mine was just 3¼ pounds]
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

The stuffing:

½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley; stems reserved [I had to use curly!]
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, mint, rosemary, and/or sage (in any combination) [I used all except the sage]
1 shallot, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
¼ teaspoon ground allspice

The braise:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large yellow onion (about 8 ounces), coarsely chopped
2 large carrots, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme, mint, rosemary, and/or sage (the same combination you used in the stuffing)
2 bay leaves
Reserved parsley stems from the stuffing, torn into 4-inch lengths
1 cup dry red wine
2 cups lamb, veal, or chicken stock, homemade or store-bought [I happened to have a combo of homemade beef and lamb stock that I'd made after Christmas using bones from a rib roast and a leg of lamb.]

Directions:

1. Trimming the lamb: open the lamb out flat, fat side down, on your work surface. If there are any especially thick spots, make a lengthwise incision with a knife, without cutting through the meat, and lay it open like a book. You want to get the meat as even in thickness as possible while keeping it intact. Season the cut side generously with salt and pepper.

2. The stuffing: in a small bowl, combine the parsley, mixed herbs, shallot, garlic, and allspice. Stir until evenly mixed together.

3. Stuffing and shaping the lamb: spread the stuffing over the cut side of the leg of lamb with a rubber spatula [I used my hands]. Press the stuffing into the meat with your hands to make it adhere, and spread it around so that it covers the entire inside surface. Roll the lamb up into a cylinder, and tie it neatly and snugly with kitchen string. Season the outside of the meat with salt and pepper. (The lamb can be prepared to this point and refrigate for up to 18 hours before braising. When you are ready to braise the lamb, remove it from the refrigerator, and let it sit at room temperature while you heat the oven.)

4. Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

5. Browning the lamb: add the oil to a heavy lidded Dutch oven or braising pan just large enough to hold the lamb (5-quart), and heat it over medium-high heat until it simmers. Lower the lamb into the pot with tongs, and brown it evenly, turning to brown all sides, until mahogany in spots but not at all burnt, 10 to 12 minutes total. Transfer the lamb to a platter. Add the bones to the pot if you have them, and brown them as best you can without charring, turning them ever 4 minutes, for about 12 minutes. Set aside with the lamb. Pour off all but about 1 tablespoon of fat from the pot. If the bottom is at all blackened, wipe those bits out with a damp paper towel, doing your best to leave behind the caramelized juices.

6. The aromatics and braising liquid: return the pot to medium-high heat, add the onion and carrots, and sauté, stirring, until beginning to brown, about 4 minutes. Add the tomato paste and stir it in with a wooden spoon so it coats the carrots and onions. Add the teaspoon of herbs, the bay leaves, and parsley stems. Pour in the wine and bring it to a boil, stirring and scraping with the spoon to dislodge all those wonderful caramelized bits stuck to the bottom of the pot from browning the lab. Boil to reduce the wine by about half, about 2 minutes. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil. Continue to boil, stirring occasionally, for about 4 minutes allowing the flavors to meld.

7. The braise: return the lamb to the pot, along with any juices that have seeped from the meat, and tuck the bones, if using, around the meat. Cover with a piece of parchment paper, pressing down so the paper nearly touched the meat and the edges extend over the sides of the pot by about an inch. Then put the lid in place, and slide the pot onto a rack in the lower third of the oven. After about 15 minutes, check to see that the liquid is simmering gently, not aggressively. If it’s simmering too vigorously, lower the oven heat 10 or 15 degrees. Continue to braise, turning the lamb with tongs and basting once or twice, until the meat is fork-tender and cooked through, 2 to 2 ½ hours.

8. The finish: transfer the lamb to a carving board with moat or platter to catch the juices, and cover loosely with foil to keep warm. Strain the pan juices into a saucepan, and skim off and discard excess fat – there may be as much ½ cup, so it’s a good chance to use your gravy separator, if you have one. Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes t concentrate the flavor and thicken it some. Taste: if it tastes too brothy, boil for another 3 or 4 minutes. Taste again for salt and pepper.

9. Serving: remove the string from the lamb, pour any juices that have accumulated on the carving board into the sauce, and carve the lamb into ½ inch slices. Arrange the slices on dinner plates or a serving platter, and pour over enough sauce to moisten. Pass the remaining sauce at the table.

Note on working ahead: The lamb can be seasoned, rolled, tied, covered, and refrigerated up to 18 hours before braising (steps 1 and 2) [I simply marinated mine in the red wine.]

Absolutely the Last Gasp of Summer: Alexandra's Tomato Galette

It's completely inappropriate to blog about a tomato and corn recipe in November. I know. However, if you're a huge summer tomato fan and a lover of fresh corn--as I am as a proud New Jersey native--you love both of these foods and you seek to celebrate them, especially when they get together, as in this wonderful end of summer soup. But when I discover a recipe this good (even in the fall when even the farmers market purveyors will tell you that the corn and tomatoes are past their prime), I have to blog!

So what can I say? I'll start by saying, "Mea culpa," and then offer profuse apologies for recommending a recipe that you really shouldn't make until next July. Second, this is late because I'm backed up in my blog postings by about three weeks (you should see all my draft posts awaiting publication!). And third, I can truthfully claim that I made this recipe from ingredients bought at my local farmers market in mid October, thus allowing me to adhere to my locavore orthodoxy.

As mentioned in my previous blog posting, I have a few new favorite blogs, among them Alexandra's Kitchen, which was mentioned in the Bitten column as (drum rolls please) "The First Featured Reader Blog." I clicked on over and was seduced by the beautiful photography and immediately wanted to make the quiche (and homemade creme fraiche) but then I realized I had on hand the corn and tomatoes to use and settled on the tomato galette with cornmeal pastry while my creme yogurt-ized itself into creme fraiche. Of course then I saw a link to the artisan bread and I thought, "Thank God it's the weekend otherwise I'd have to lose sleep to get through all these recipes that are on her first page alone!"

So Friday night a couple weeks ago was devoted to making the galette and the bread dough, which worked out fine really. Once I'd made the corn meal pastry, I switched to the bread dough while the pastry rested, and then let the bread dough do its rise while I went about sauteing the onions and corn for the galette. By the time the galette came out of the oven, the dough had completed its rise and was placed in the fridge to rest until baking the next morning. (Incidentally, you know you're more than slightly food-obsessed when you're glad to have no plans on a Friday night so that you can have an intimate evening at home with both pastry and bread dough.)

Since I'd a mind to make the quiche that Sunday, I doubled the corn meal pastry dough rather than make dough from scratch twice in the same weekend. (Unless I have dough in the freezer I usually double any pastry recipe to save time when I next want to bake something that needs a crust.) The recommended quiche pastry does not have corn meal in it all, but I had every confidence that the galette recipe would be perfectly fine for both preparations since I love corn meal biscuits and cobblers and such. Turns out my corn meal had some critters growing in it, so I had to throw it out. I don't blame the producer at all just because I haven't been making enough polenta and corn bread lately. My fault entirely! But fortunately I had some masa harina which I used in the same proportion and it provided the same corn flavor. The dough seemed a bit wet, but once it rested for an hour (or more actually as I was multitasking away), it rolled out beautifully.
I almost wasn't going to reproduce the recipe here and just direct you to Alexandra's recipe. Her writing is witty and her photos are amazing. But I feared my gentle readers might abandon me for greener pastures. So you may click over to her space if you promise to click back. (Just kidding.) So here is a recipe that I would ask you to make next summer if you can wait! It really is so delicious with heirloom tomatoes, corn, and the corn meal crust that you'll be glad you decided to wait. I promise!

Tomato and Corn Galette
Adapted from Alexandra Stafford's adaptation from Fine Cooking, August 2000

Heirloom tomato slices in place atop the corn, onion, and basil mixture

• 1-1/4 cups (5 oz.) all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (1-1/2 oz.) fine yellow cornmeal [I used masa harina]
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1-1/4 tsp. salt
• 6 T. (3 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
• 3 T. olive oil
• 1/4 cup ice water

In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt. Cut in the chilled butter using a stand mixer, a food processor, or a pastry blender until it’s evenly distributed but still in large, visible pieces. Add the olive oil and ice water and mix until the dough begins to come together. Gather the dough with your hands and shape it into a disk. Wrap the disk in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

• 2 Tbs. olive oil
• 1 large white onion, thinly sliced
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• 1/2 bunch basil or tarragon, washed, dried, and coarsely chopped, (to yield about 1/2 cup); plus 10 whole leaves
• Kernels from 1 ear of corn (about 1 cup)
• 1 recipe Cornmeal Galette Dough (see above)
• 1 large or 2 medium ripe tomatoes (about 3/4 lb. total) cut into 1/3-inch slices, drained on paper towels
• 3 oz. Comté or Gruyère cheese, shredded [I used manchego actually and I'd be hard pressed to think of a cheese that wouldn't work well here.]
• 1 large egg yolk mixed with 1 tsp. milk or cream

1. Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan, preferably nonstick, over medium heat. Add the sliced onion and cook, stirring frequently, until lightly browned, about 10 min. Season with salt and pepper. Add the garlic, chopped basil, and corn and cook for 30 seconds. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and set aside to cool.
2. Adjust an oven rack to the center position and heat the oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet, preferably one without sides, with kitchen parchment. (If your baking sheet has sides, flip it over and use the back.)
3. Roll the dough on a floured surface into a 15-inch round, lifting the dough with a metal spatula as you roll to make sure it’s not sticking. If it is, dust the surface with more flour. Transfer it by rolling it around the rolling pin and unrolling it on the lined baking sheet.
4. Spread the onion and corn mixture over the dough, leaving a 2-inch border without filling. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer over the onions and season them with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the cheese over the tomatoes. [Here's where Alexandra's pictures don't match the recipe instructions as her beautiful heirloom tomatoes are clearly visible in the finished product. I followed her written directions and topped the tomatoes with the cheese.] Lift the edges of the dough and fold them inward over the filling, pleating as you go, to form a folded-over border. Pinch together any tears in the dough. Brush the egg yolk and milk mixture over the exposed crust.
5. Bake until the crust has browned and the cheese has melted, 35 to 45 min. Slide the galette off the parchment and onto a cooling rack. Let cool for 10 min. Stack the remaining 10 basil leaves and use a sharp knife to cut them into a chiffonade. Cut the galette into wedges, sprinkle with the basil, and serve.

More Blog Inspirations and Improvements

Another of my cell phone pics of great pumpkins galore!

Last week I was so proud of myself for having updated the look of my little blog from summer to fall with more seasonal colors and a picture of pumpkins taken at Jones Family Farms in Connecticut. Then this past Friday's Bitten column, which I didn't see until Monday, pointed out a blog with jaw-dropping photography and food styling. Talk about food porn to drool over! Puts my little cell phone pics like the one above that I was sooooooo proud of to shame! And dammit, don't you know this blog--Alexandra's Kitchen--is so well written that my mouth was watering as I considered how I might be able to work her quiche recipe--which is adapted from the Tartine cookbook--into my rotation as I cannot wait until Sunday brunch.

Quiche though? I thought that quiche was out in favor of fritata (no crust to make, chill and roll out, right?), but now quiche is probably back in in some sort of retro way and I missed the article in the Times that Wednesday! Well then quiche it shall be, perhaps for dinner on Friday? On top of that Alexandra's quiche uses creme fraiche which is footnoted in case you might want to make your own, and who wouldn't? The food lust is taking over! You have to check out Alexandra's photography page too BTW for a veritable centerfold of food porn! My only consolation is that, like me, Alexandra doesn't necessarily post often.

Leonor de Sousa Bastos' Flagrante Delicia is another exquisite blog, this one from a Portuguese pastry chef whose work is seductively photographed by her blog partner, himself a professional photographer. Somehow Alexandra's Kitchen led me to Flagrante Delicia (perhaps via Serious Eats?) but I don't feel like retracing my history to get the exact link. The first recipe I saw was her yogurt cake garnished with pomegranate seeds that looked luminescent! I mean, yogurt cake? With pomegranate seeds? Come on! Of course I will be preparing!

So I've updated my humble little blog with some links to some other preferred blogs and food sites, as well as a search and RSS subscription. All of which is humorous to me as this blog is most likely read by a mere handful of stalwarts, so who's going to subscribe? I like Aaron Kagan's take on the whole blog thang with this quote from his blog Tea and Food:

"I don't describe this process [making steak] because I feel that it's the best, or even because I want others to follow my technique, which isn't even "my" technique but something I once read somewhere. I share this information in the democratic and confessional spirit of food blogging: this is what I do, know that, and now go do what you do."

Most people who even respond to my blog postings do so via my Facebook/Notes links, and I'm sure as many of my friends are as pissed off at my food obsessions as other friends may be intrigued. So to anyone reading this, my sincere thanks for indulging my musings and reading my indulgences!

A Good-bye to Summer's Bounty: Lynn Alley's Three Sisters Stew

These three sisters--corn, beans, and squash--really rock it when they get together! I love food names like this that tell a bit of a story, like moros y cristianos for Cuban black beans and rice. The three sisters were often grown as a trio by Native Americans in parts of North America. Corn is the eldest sister who allows the beans to climb while the broad leaves of squash shade the soil, keeping it moist and blocking weeds from seeing the sun.

It was last fall, perhaps after a visit to the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian, that I first heard of the three sisters. The cafeteria in this museum is probably the best--and most expensive--on the National Mall (the National Gallery of Art also has good eats IMHO) and features regional dishes inspired by the original inhabitants of the Americas. Was it a three sisters casserole that caught my eye that day? I can't quite remember, but I began bookmarking recipes last October, mindful that I would be revisiting this dish in my future.

The recipes that I found, however, seemed too hybrid Italian. One used a sage pesto with pine nuts and another was a pasta casserole for two. But a couple of days ago a co-worker and I were discussing his love of home cooked beans from scratch vs. the can. There's really no debate. Sure it's easy to open a can and no pantry should be without a few cans of beans like chickpeas, cannelinis, and/or black beans. But cooking beans oneself from dried beans is laughably simple, not to mention healthy and affordable. So he got me thinking that I too should be economizing and making beans from scratch, especially because it can all be done in the slow cooker while I'm out for the day.

Serendipitously I found a recipe in The Gourmet Slow Cooker Volume II for a three sisters stew, full of New World ingredients (i.e. Mexican) only. The other thing I liked about this recipe is that Lynn doesn't recommend soaking the beans overnight nor doing the quick soak (bring beans to a boil for a couple minutes then turn off the heat and let sit for an hour or two). While it's not a big deal to remember a day ahead that tomorrow is bean cooking day, I may not know until I've gotten up in the morning that I want beans for dinner that night so the soaking window might be closed.

There is debate among the culinary cognoscenti about the necessity of soaking anyway. Any authentic Mexican cookbook will not recommend the soak. Recipes I've seen from Europe as well as conventional wisdom usually insist on the soak. Rick Bayless scoffs at the idea and he's got the whole of Mexico to back him up. Without the soak, the beans may take longer to cook, but cooking beans isn't like cooking pasta in that the cooking time may vary widely depending on the beans themselves and how old they are anyway (older beans may take longer to come to doneness). I wasn't concerned though because I put the beans in my six quart slow cooker at 8:00 in the morning and knew that I wouldn't be home until after 6:00 so ten hours had to be long enough and it was.

Perhaps my beans were a bit overdone because some of them had given up a lot of starch and really thickened the stew beautifully IMO, but I could still see whole beans. That might also have occurred because I used both black beans and pink beans and probably different types of beans cook at different paces. If I were making a dish where most beans had to be kept whole, the super long cook might have been an issue, but that didn't matter for making a stew. In fact I was tempted to add a chopped up square of baking chocolate a la Tyler Florence to add even more silkiness, but refrained since I was interested in trying the dish as written since it was my first time preparing.

A lot of Amazon reviews for Lynn's slow cooker recipes criticize her for adding steps of grinding spices or browning meat or sauteing onions and garlic on the stove top. When slow cookers first became popular in the 1970s in the heyday of "convenience cooking" (when I was growing up incidentally), the "dump in all your ingredients in the morning and come home to your delicious dinner at the end of the day" was the selling point and this mentality has persisted to this day in some quarters. However, the slow cooker is not a magical cooking vessel. The end result depends on the quality of your ingredients and the steps taken to ensure a delicious result. This may often necessitate doing part of the preparation on top of the stove. Anyone who's made chili in a slow cooker is probably used to this idea as ground meat always has to be browned before adding. And if you're using preground spices, I'd just use the same amount as for whole. Whenever I measure whole seeds, I never level so a rounded teaspoon of whole seeds approximates closely enough a level measure of the same spice in my experience.

Now I'm going to sound like a hypocrite because I did not follow my own recommendation! I did not brown the onion at all, but just added it right in with the beans and chicken stock in the first step. The Three Sisters Stew is nearly a dish that follows the 1970s ethos of dump it all in and come home to a delicious meal. This was a move of pure laziness as I was trying to get to work and hadn't given myself enough time to saute the onion. I can't say that the dish suffered at all, but I'll attribute half of that to the quality of my spices and other ingredients from the farmers market. But browning meat? That is a step that should never be omitted.

Finally, this recipe defied other bean hegemony in addition to the no soak. I added marinara sauce to the beans from the beginning. Now I'd always heard that cooking beans in acidic liquid keeps them from reaching doneness, so I was skeptical of cooking the beans with a tomato based sauce, but no worries, mate! Perhaps ten hours was enough to overcome the situation, perhaps it was never a problem to begin with!

Three Sisters Stew
Adapted from Lynn Alley’s The Gourmet Slow Cooker Volume II: Regional Comfort-Food Classics
Makes 4 to 6 servings

• 2 cups dried pinto, Anasazi or red beans, rinsed [I used a half pound each of black and pink beans]
• 8 cups water or stock [I used chicken stock]
• 1 cup tomato or marinara sauce
• 1 tablespoon olive or corn oil
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon canned chili in adobo sauce, with sauce
• 1 poblano chili, seeded and chopped [I used two poblanos]
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped [I used 5 cloves of roasted garlic that I happened to have on hand]
• 1 pound chorizo sausage, sliced [I used 12 ounces of chicken and turkey habanero sausage, obviously not included for a vegetarian stew]
• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds, crushed [next time I'll toast the spices before crushing]
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, crushed
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 3 ears corn, cut into 2-inch lengths [I trimmed the kernels off the cob instead because it's easier to eat that way]
• 2 zucchini squash, sliced [1 pound of trimmed mini patty pan squash would do nicely here as they hold their shape after prolonged cooking]
• 1 cup beer
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• chopped cilantro, optional
• sour cream, optional
  

Combine beans, water and tomato sauce in the slow cooker. Heat oil in large saute pan over medium-high. Saute onion for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned. [I’m a total hypocrite for not doing this step but I was pressed for time!] Transfer to the slow cooker; add chilis and garlic. [Next time I might just add the whole sausages at this step to let them steep in the stew, but maybe they would add too much salt and/or acidity] Cover and cook on low 6 to 8 hours, until the beans are very tender.

Brown chorizo in a saute pan over medium-high heat, 10 to 15 minutes. Drain. Add the chorizo, cumin, coriander, chili powder, corn, zucchini and beer to the cooker and continue cooking for 1 hour, until the zucchini is tender and the corn is cooked. Season to taste with salt. Serve hot, garnished with cilantro and sour cream.

Chris Kimball's Sweet and Sour Apple and Fennel Coleslaw

This past Saturday in Washington, DC was rainy and reportedly a record cold day, but that didn't stop me from getting up early and eager to hit the farmers' market after a four week hiatus. Having recently "eaten down the fridge," I had every excuse to replenish my stocks and as unseasonably cold as it was, the slow cooker would be part of the plan. I made a small list and looked up some recipes and found one that I'd made more than a year ago (Carolina pulled pork barbecue) and one that had been on my mind for over a year (three sisters stew).

The three sisters stew (corn, squash, and beans) is something that I will blog about more extensively after preparing the dish, but suffice it to say that I was very glad that so late in the season I was still able to get corn and zucchini. The pork shoulder for Carolina barbecue had to come from my favorite meat purveyor at the market who has actually spoiled me as far as pork products are concerned. Farm raised and succulent, I imagine his pork products taste the storied way pork used to taste before the pork industry decided to lean pork out and market it as "the other white meat." I know that I'll be building my pork and bacon reserves over the next four weeks because once the market finishes for the year the weekend before Thanksgiving, I won't be buying any pork again until the spring. Sniff!

Having spent the long Columbus Day weekend in Asheville, NC and enjoying some really good Carolina and Texas barbecue at Ed Boudroux's, a place in the heart of Asheville recommended by a friend, I was happy to come home and try my hand once more at a very simple slow cooker preparation. This provided an excuse to make my signature hamburger buns and my favorite coleslaw recipe using apples and fennel. Chris Kimball's coleslaw recipe always gets rave reviews because it has some ingredients that people aren't expecting like apples. He has another Asian coleslaw recipe that I also like to make that has a spicy peanut flavored dressing.

Kimball caused a bit of a stink in the food blogosphere recently regarding his take on the demise of Gourmet, which was published in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. Personally I've never had a problem with the man, having enjoyed his appearances on morning television and NPR on various occasions, and America's Test Kitchen is an old school PBS stalwart of a cooking show that's all about the technique and not about the glam. But he really dissed the current state of food writing and concluded his piece with a decidedly elitist tone and even had the nerve to presume the views of the deceased Mme. Child after name dropping that he was a neighbor and frequent guest at her home. Since I'm not in the big leagues with my personal little blog space, I can's say that I took offense, but others certainly did and Amateur Gourmet as well as Serious Eats had pretty good rejoinders old guard vs. the new.

Kimball's opinions on the publishing world vs. the blogosphere notwithstanding, his coleslaw recipe is pretty simple and never fails to impress. The technique of using salt to draw out the moisture and wilt the cabbage is one I first saw in Japan in a cooking class I took there. Having made this slaw so many times over the years, I have adapted certain parts of the recipe to make it my own, the most significant being the use of dill instead of tarragon, and the addition of bell pepper, carrots, and radishes, which just makes the slaw more flavorful and visually appealing.

Coleslaw with Apple, Fennel, and Dill
Adapted from Chris Kimball's Sweet and Sour Slaw with Apple and Fennel as demonstrated on Martha Stewart's old TV show

Makes about 10 cups

• 1 pound (about half a medium head) green cabbage, finely shredded [savoy or Chinese cabbage works nicely because they hold the dressing nicely]
• 1 medium head fennel, thinly sliced (about 2 1/2 cups)
• 2 large carrots peeled and thinly sliced in rounds
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 small red onion, finely chopped [I used a whole onion]
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons rice-wine vinegar [I used apple cider vinegar]
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon mustard
• 1 teaspoon celery seed [my addition]
• 1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4-inch pieces [any firm apple will do and I don't necessarily bother peeling]
• 1 sweet bell pepper (red, orange, or yellow) cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 6 radishes thinly sliced
• 2 teaspoons minced fresh tarragon leaves [replaced by 1/3 cup chopped dill]
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Toss cabbage, with salt in a colander or large mesh strainer set over a medium bowl. [Chris just has you wilt the cabbage with the salt, but I like to also wilt the fennel and carrot at the same time] Let stand until cabbage wilts, 1 to 4 hours. Rinse under cold running water (or in large bowl of ice water if serving slaw immediately). Press, but do not squeeze, to drain; pat dry with paper towels. (Can be stored in a resealable plastic bag and refrigerated overnight.)
2. Stir together honey, vinegar, oil, mustard, and celery seed in a medium bowl and set dressing aside.
3. Toss the cabbage, fennel, carrot, apple, pepper, radishes, and tarragon [I prefer dill] with the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper. [You probably won't need much salt.] Cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

New look for the blog!

The look of old

Inspired by a page over at the Smitten Kitchen and after a friend told me that some of the pumpkin pics I'd taken with my cell phone looked like magazine quality, I decided to change the look of the blog to go with the season. Summer veggies are out and the fall look is in!

Kim O'Donnell's Eating Down the Fridge Challenge

Readers of this blog might remember a couple of posts about "eating down the fridge." The idea first came to my attention via Kim O'Donnell, formerly of washingtonpost.com who used to host a weekly chat and blog about all things food related. Kim has moved on to another cyber space called True Slant where she continues her mission.

In the spring of this year Kim challenged her Post readers to eat down the fridge by foregoing the weekly shopping ritual--except for essentials--and making meals from the contents of the fridge, freezer, and pantry. "Essential" is subjectively defined: my essentials (coffee, milk, OJ, yogurt, olive oil) might not seem like a requirement to someone else, but the point is to minimize the weekly grocery haul and just consume what you already have on hand.

For the fall EDF challenge Kim invited guest bloggers to write about their EDF challenges and perspectives, and yours truly was the Friday blogger. You can read my dispatch and then think about how to incorporate the EDF ethos into your own weekly shopping and cooking habits. EDF is a money saving idea in these hard economic times, but it's also a way to clean out the kitchen clutter and start afresh. Think of it as fall cleanup as we transition from summer's dwindling abundance of corn, tomatoes, peaches, and zucchini to fall's harvest offerings of butternut squash, brussel sprouts, and apples. As you eat down your own fridge/freezer/pantry, substitutions are indeed encouraged (no fresh oregano for that sauce? try some dried thyme instead).

EDF dinner with with wine

My own experience of the latest round of EDF was to host a French inspired dinner last Saturday using mostly contents from my freezer: boeuf bourguignon using a beef sirloin tip roast, parsley buttered noodles from frozen homemade pasta dough, haricots verts using green beans bought at a Connecticut farmstand, and tarte tatin using frozen homemade pie crust and apples picked two weeks earlier. I also extended my focus to my wine cabinet and opened a special bottle of 1997 Ferrari-Carano Cabernet Sauvignon in the spirit of the WSJ wine writers' "Open that Bottle of Wine Night." Every year they challenge readers to stop saving that special bottle and open it to share with friends and loved ones. We finally got to enjoy a bottle we'd bought seven years ago and it was a sheer pleasure enjoyed with good friends over a delightful evening that cost next to nothing as we made dinner from ingredients we mostly had on hand.

Risotto with Radicchio and Red Wine

There is really no reason to be intimidated by risotto. The technique is quite simple and once you make a couple of decisions about whether to cook it over high heat vs. low--which bears on how you prefer to arrive at al dente for your risotto--you're laughing! If you like the risotto very al dente, I'd say cook it on high for a rigorous boil and near constant stirring. If you like your risotto less al dente and don't feel like constantly stirring, cook it over medium to medium low heat and let the rice do its thang.

This risotto recipe resulted from my stepping up to the Eating Down the Fridge/Freezer/Pantry challenge that took place on one of my favorite food blogs, A Mighty Appetite on washingtonpost.com. The concept is simple really. Hold off on buying most groceries beyond your essentials (milk, coffee, eggs, produce, or however you choose to define "essential") and cook with what you have on hand from your fridge, freezer, pantry, and spice rack. If you can't see the back of your fridge/pantry/freezer and haven't used your curry since the last time you made vindaloo before the millenium turned, it's time to eat down your fridge, folks! In a larger sense it's about not being wasteful in these tough economic times when we are all mindful of where our money is going and trying to get the most out of a dollar. I'd had a half head of radicchio and some leftover wine that I wanted to use and this is the perfect recipe for both.


As is my usual way, I have consulted multiple sources with the resulting recipe being a hybrid of two different recipes. The main recipe is Faith Willinger's who is one of the leading proponents of Italian cooking, especially in the style of Tuscany where her husband is from. I bought her book Red, White & Greens years ago after hearing her interviewed on NPR. After I became a devotee of my DC farmers market nearly four years ago, I perused her cookbook anew, finding many delicious preparations in which vegetables are the star, though the dish may not be vegetarian. She recommends making the recipe below with white wine and endive, but informs us that radicchio can be used instead of the endive.

The Risotto al Cabernet Michael Chiarello made in an episode of Easy Entertaining was one of those recipes that stuck with me because I knew I would want to try it sometime. I usually make risotto when I have a bit of leftover wine and since we drink more reds than whites, I tend to have more bottles of red to use up and the mind turns to ragu bolognaise and such. I especially like Chiarello's recipe because you can prepare the risotto up to a point and then finish it up by heating and thinning with the red wine. This technique makes the risotto a make ahead possibility when entertaining since it can be completed just before serving.

Risotto al Vino Rosso con Radicchio
Adapted from Faith Willinger's Red, White, & Greens: The Italian Way with Vegetables and Michael Chiarello's Risotto al Cabernet
Serves 4 to 6

4 tablespoons olive oil (and/or butter)
1 small onion, chopped [can also subsitute leeks or shallots if preferred]
1/2 head radicchio, halved, cored, and cut into strips (or 2 Belgian endive cut into strips)
2 garlic cloves, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup arborio rice
3/4 cup wine [I'd suggest red wine for the radicchio and white for the endive]
5 cups or so simmering stock
1/4 to 1/2 cup of wine that you'll be having with dinner, or leftover
1/2 cup grated Parmagianno-Reggiano
2 tablespoons butter, optional
chopped herbs, such as chives or parsley, optional

1. Bring your stock to a simmer over low heat on a back burner. If finishing with butter, set aside in a small dish and allow it to soften as you prepare the risotto.
   
2. Heat the olive oil/butter over medium heat and add the chopped onion. Season with salt and pepper. Stir to coat and soften the onion without browning for about 5 minutes. Stir in the radicchio and stir until wilted, about 3 minutes.
3. Add the rice. Stir to coat, adding oil if necessary, and cook stirring as needed until the rice turns opaque. Some grains may brown lightly which is also desirable.
4. Deglaze with the wine, stirring to loosen any bits that have stuck to the bottom of the pan.
   
5. Ladle in about 1 cup of stock. Here is where you decide if you want to give the risotto your undivided attention and cook on medium high with frequent stirring (Ms. Willinger's preference) or cook on medium low with less attention and only occasional stirring. Both methods will take about 20 minutes so it depends on YOU. If you're a multi-tasker in the kitchen like me, you may want to simmer the risotto on medium low as you go about other preparations. In either case you add enough stock--usually 1/2 to 1 cup or so--to raise the liquid level to about half an inch above the rice. As the stock is absorbed into the rice, the level of the liquid will be about the same as the rice and you will hear some sizzle from the bottom of the pot. At this point, add more stock--a 1/2 cup to 1 cup at a time--and give a stir making sure the rice does not stick. It is the repeated adding of liquid and stirring that releases the starch from the rice and makes the risotto creamy before even adding melted butter, cheese, or cream. It's really no different from cooking old-fashioned or steel cut oats which can be made deliciously creamy via a slow simmer.
   
6. After the third addition of stock, season with salt and pepper, mindful that the addition of Parmesan cheese at the end will also contribute some saltiness. After 15 minutes and/or the fourth addition of stock, you may want to taste the risotto to see how close it is to doneness. Risotto should not be completely soft like cooked rice. It should be toothsome, i.e. al dente, such that there's a bit of resistance when chewed, although it should not be crunchy at all. It should also have a loose consistency, although Mario Batali likes to serve it soupy.
7. Remove from the heat and stir in the Parmesan and butter if using. Finish with a half cup or so of wine which you can stir into the pot or add smaller amounts to each person's dish as it is served. Garnish with chopped herbs if using. Buon Apetito!