Summer Sweet Corn

I have vivid recollections of driving in the country side over summer on the way to my Grandparents lake house. On the half hour drive, we would pass many produce stands that dotted the back roads. I was too young to think about field after field of corn and the connection with the produce stands. I just knew that the corn we bought and later ate at my Grandparents house was really tasty and sweet. Now that I am older, and hopefully wiser, I realize that the corn was so good because it was grown and sold within feet from each other. Add to the fact that while you can get corn year round now a days, it is at its peak in the summer and fall. Corn is an amazing vegetable. It has some fantastic properties, starchy and naturally sweet. In the coming weeks, I will showcase some of my favorite uses and corn recipes. While none are better than corn on the cob boiled with salt and butter, I will share my different takes.

Summer is a time of year when produce blossoms. The heat makes plants go crazy and we reap the benefits. This recipe is all about the quality of your ingredients. Find a produce stand in the country or head to your local farmers market to get top quality ingredients.

Corn And Potatoes With Heirloom Tomatoes

Serves: 6

Ingredients

¼ lb bacon (about 4 thick slices) chopped

1 shallot, minced

½ cup dry white wine

3 Yukon gold potatoes, 1/3 inch dice

1 ¼ cups water

8 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob

1 teaspoon sweet Spanish paprika

¼ teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped

½ lb heirloom or cherry tomatoes, chopped or halved

Salt, as needed

Pepper, as needed

• Cook bacon in a heavy bottom saucepan until crispy, remove with a slotted spoon and put on paper towels
• Add the shallot to the pan with a dash of salt, cooking on low heat until the shallot is soft
• Add the white wine and scrap up and brown bits stuck to the pan. Raise the heat and cook until the wine is reduced by half
• Add the potatoes and ½ cup of water, simmer uncovered until liquid is almost gone
• Meanwhile, puree 1 cup of corn with just enough water to make it puree. Force the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Keep the liquid and discard the solids
• Add the remaining corn to the potato mixture along with the paprika, thyme, and the remaining ¾ cup of water. Simmer until corn and potatoes are just tender and liquid is almost dry
• Remove from heat and add in the tomatoes, season to taste

Risotto Tips and Strategies

• Risotto is a dish that requires patience. You need to have a half hour to devote to the cooking. Tender love and care is the name of the game. You must constantly stir risotto. I prefer using a heavy duty heat resistant spatula rather than a wooden spoon. I find the spatula allows me to scrap the sides of the pot better.
• Always use stock when making risotto. Many recipes call for water. If you use water, your finished product will be bland! The qualities of store bought stocks have come a long way, but nothing compares to a good homemade stock. Store bought stocks are too high in salt and lack a depth of flavor. I strongly urge you to make your own stock. I will be posting in the future on how to make a great dark chicken stock.
• Make sure the stock is at a slow boil before adding it to the rice. You need to add hot liquid to encourage the starch to come out of the rice.
• A heavy bottom pot is key in the cooking of risotto. You don't want the rice to scorch on the bottom. A stainless steel or copper pot with an aluminum core that distributes heat evenly is preferable.
• Make sure you mince the onion and garlic if using finely and evenly. You want to sweat the onion and garlic slowly so that it is soft. If you don't sweat the onion and garlic long enough, it will be crunchy in the final product. I try to mince the onion and garlic no larger than the dry rice itself.
• Make sure you get a good toast on the rice before hitting it with the wine. This is key in starting the starch releasing process. Turn the heat down if you need to. You don't want to burn the rice! The trick is to find the right balance between heat and stirring. You want the rice to just barely catch on the bottom of the pan but not stick. I toast the rice until there is just a tiny white dot in the middle of each grain. As the rice cooks, you will notice the color change.
• After toasting the rice, I add a generous amount of dry white wine. Make sure you use a wine that you would enjoy drinking as well. Since you are essentially cooking out the alcohol and magnifying the flavor of the wine you want a wine you enjoy.
• Risotto is dish that needs to be served and eaten right away, as it cools it thickens up. One

Monday, June 15th Recipe

Now that the temperatures have reached the mid to upper 90's here in Texas, the race is on to find refreshing dining options. Nobody wants to sit down to a steaming hot bowl of soup. A chilled soup though is an invigorating alternative! Gazpacho is a cold Spanish tomato based raw vegetable soup, originating in the southern region of Andalucía. Traditionally, gazpacho has bread as one of its ingredients. My recipe wanders off the path a little bit from the traditional recipes and omits the bread.

GAZPACHO

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

10 Roma tomatoes, cored and chopped

1 red bell pepper, cored seeded and chopped

1 English cucumber, peeled seeded and chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

½ cup fresh parsley leaves, rough chopped

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 cups tomato juice

½ cup water

¼ cup sherry wine vinegar

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

Salt, as needed

Black pepper, as needed

Garnish

¼ cup red bell pepper, cored seeded and small diced

¼ cup yellow bell pepper, cored seeded and small diced

¼ cup red onion, small diced

¼ cup cucumber, peeled and seeded, small diced

½ cup, red and yellow tear drop tomatoes, halved

2 avocados, small diced

1 cup, fresh cilantro leaves, minced

¼ cup fresh lime juice

Salt and pepper, as needed

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients for the soup. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour. In another bowl, combine all the ingredients for the garnish. Season to taste and cover and refrigerate until needed. Remove the bowl with the soup ingredients and place in a food processor. Season with salt and pepper and pulse until you have a good mixture, you want to leave some texture. Ladle into chilled soup bowls, and spoon a generous amount of garnish into the middle of each bowl.

For a twist, you can serve this in shot glasses as gazpacho shooters! Makes a nice hors d'oeuvre or appetizer.

Risotto And My Italian Roots

One of my first memorable food smells comes courtesy of my Grandma Moresco. The aroma that emanated from the kitchen while she was cooking risotto was so memorable that 20 years later I finally figured it out. Occasionally I would be in a restaurant, or working in a kitchen and I would get a small smell of the intoxicating aroma. Momentarily I was transported back to my Grandparents house when I was 7 years old. Even though I would get small glimpses of the smell every once in a while, I really never knew where the smell originated from. That was until one day, my chef at The Mansion on Turtle Creek was playing around with a special. He was sautéing a part of a chicken to create a sauce. Instantly I knew what my Grandmother used those many years ago in her risotto recipe. CHICKEN LIVERS. That's right, I said chicken livers. If you have never had the pleasure of the aroma they give off while being sautéed, I urge you to wait and pass judgment until you do so! Liver is one of those rich, fatty pieces that just melts away in your mouth. Duck and chicken livers are delicacy that I absolutely love. Foie gras anything and I am in heaven. I will tip toe gently around how the poor duck is force feed to enlarge its liver. Foie gras is way too good to ban!

So let's move ahead before the animal rights activists track me down on my blog and berate me. I have seen risotto made many different ways, with many different ingredients. Once you have mastered the art of making risotto, it provides a blank canvas for any ingredient to be added in. I have to say that one of the best I have ever had was my Grandmas. Now I don't know her exact recipe, but since I have made risotto many times I am going to guess at how she made hers. I believe she had to have started by sautéing chicken livers in a large pot. After the livers where nice and golden brown, she removed them and added in diced onion and garlic. She sweated the onion and garlic till it was transparent then added in the carnaroli rice. I will note here that later in the post I will touch on the definition of risotto. After toasting the carnaroli rice, she added a generous amount of white wine. She then cooked the wine down till it was almost dry. She then added enough hot chicken stock to just cover the rice. She stirred and stirred until all the stock was absorbed and then she added more. She repeated this process for about 20 minutes or so until the rice was creamy and al dente. That is how I envisioned my Grandma's risotto making to go. I plan on asking her if she will share her recipe with me and see how my analysis compares.

So what is the definition of risotto? Risotto refers to both the dish and also the technique. The technique is to add small amounts of hot stock to the rice and let the rice absorb and release its starch. The release of starch is what creates the creamy texture of risotto. The rice varieties make all the difference in the risotto.

"A high-starch (amylopectin), low-amylose round medium grain rice is used to make risotto. Such rices have the ability to absorb liquids and to release starch and so they are stickier than the long grain varieties. The principal varieties used in Italy are Carnaroli^[1] and Vialone Nano ^[2]and to a lesser degree Arborio.^[3] Carnaroli and Vialone Nano are considered to be the best (and most expensive) varieties, with different users preferring one over the other. They have slightly different properties: for example Carnaroli is less likely to get overcooked than Vialone Nano, but the latter being smaller cooks faster and some say^[who?] absorbs condiments better. Other varieties like Roma, Baldo, Ribe and Originario may be used but will not have the creaminess of the traditional dish. These varieties are considered better for other non-risotto rice dishes and for making sweet rices. Rice designations of Superfino, Semifino (varietie Maratelli) and fino refer to the size and shape (narrowness) of the grains, not the quality." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risotto

I am very proud of my risotto ability. It is a very rewarding dish to make because it takes patience and time. Then end result is nothing short of amazing though. To coax the starch out of a grain of rice is worth the time it takes. So I suggest the next time you are in the mood for Italian food, don't order pizza, instead make yourself some risotto. And if you really want to taste and smell something amazing, use the chicken livers!

Tuesday, May 19th Recipe

Orzo is commonly mistaken as rice, but it is actually made of semolina flour. The name orzo means "barley" and refers to the rice shaped pasta.

ORZO PASTA SALAD

INGREDIENTS

1 (16 oz) package of orzo

10 Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced

1 celery stalk, small diced

1 red pepper, small diced

1 bunch basil, chopped

1 bunch parsley, chopped

Lemon juice, as needed

Red wine vinegar, as needed

Olive oil, as needed

Salt and pepper, as needed

1. Cook the pasta as directed on the box, substitute chicken or vegetable stock instead of water for more flavor
2. Combine lemon juice, vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper in a bowl to create a vinaigrette. Season to your liking.
3. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and toss in all vegetables and herbs
4. Toss with the vinaigrette and taste for seasoning

To add even more flavor, you can toast the orzo before cooking it. To do this, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and spread the orzo on a sheet pan. Toast in the oven for about 5 minutes or until the orzo turns a nice golden brown color. Let it cool before you add any liquid to it!

The Spice of Weight Loss

I recently came across a couple of articles that talked about using spices to help with weight loss. After reading the articles, I thought to myself, wow that's pretty much common sense. I had really never thought of it that way before. The gist of the articles was that by substituting spices for fat and sugar, you will lose weight. Obviously there is more to losing weight than just cutting fat and sugar intake. Cardiovascular exercise and calorie intake along with weight training are also big parts of the formula. Since I want to focus of food on this blog, I will stick with talking about spices and the benefits of using the in cooking.

The trick cooking is making food taste great. Why does food at a restaurant always seem to taste better than what we make at home? Is it the atmosphere, the fact that we don't have to put in the effort to cook it? Or is it the ingredients that are being used? Having working in numerous restaurants, I can tell you that the ingredients used are different from what the home cook uses. The amount of butter and cream used in restaurants is amazing. Why, because fat tastes good and allows you to achieve certain mouth feels and textures in food. So let's get back to the spice argument. How can you make food taste good without using butter and cream or other fats? Spices are one great trick in doing this. Peppers, ginger, mustard seeds, turmeric, cinnamon, chili powder, cumin and many other spices add intense flavor to cooking. Not only are they good substitutes for fats, but they also are beneficial in other ways. Certain spices can help speed up your metabolism. I read that less than 1 teaspoon of dry mustard can increase your metabolism by 25% for three hours. Have you ever noticed that when eating spicy foods you break into a sweat? That's the spices at work increasing your metabolism.

Another benefit of spices is that they have been proven to be an important part of the brain's mechanism of regulating appetite. Aromatic foods send a signal to the satiety part of the brain, this part of the brain tells the body that it's had enough. The more aromatic the food, the stronger the signal to the brain to stop eating.

I am going to try to work more spices into my cooking and I encourage you to do the same. Not only to increase the flavor of food, but also because of the benefits that spices bring to the table!

Monday, May 4th Recipe

Like I mentioned a little while back, I am really trying to eat healthier lately. It is not an easy task to create healthy food that still has lots of flavor. I think the trick is to cut out all processed food and really add different fresh flavors and ingredients. In this recipe, I have taken the classic mayonnaise based cole slaw and lightened it up.

Healthy Cole Slaw

Ingredients

1 head green cabbage, shredded

1 tomato, finely chopped

1 red onion, finely chopped

1 jalapeno, finely minced

1 bunch cilantro, finely chiffonaded

4 limes, juiced

Extra virgin olive oil, as needed

Salt, as needed

Pepper, as needed

1. This one is simple, most of the prep time lies in the knife work
2. Combine all the ingredients together in a large bowl
3. Lightly salt the mixture, this will cause the vegetables to release some liquid which will serve as the sauce
4. Adjust the consistency with the oil, and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper

I made this just last night and combined it with some blackened shrimp for shrimp tacos. You can give it an Asian taste but subbing sesame oil for the extra virgin olive. Also adding grated ginger, toasted sesame seeds and rice wine vinegar. The Asian slaw would go great in spring rolls!

You can easily switch red cabbage for the green, or use a combination of both.

Another bonus of this dish, it is super cheap to make. Cabbage is one of the cheapest vegetables in the market!