Pressure Cooker Risotto

It all started back in October.

I asked for one of these for my birthday.

Instead, I got one of these.

Hmm. One makes cooking quicker and easier. The other makes cooking longer and harder.

After much grumbling subtle prompting, I finally got my pressure cooker for Hannukah. (And I have actually enjoyed my pasta machine, but that's a topic for another post.)

I mainly wanted the pressure cooker to cook dal, because the dal I love most, toor dal, can take forever to cook. I had great visions of my aunt Kamal in Mumbai, cooking her dal (or umpti as it's known) and her veggies (or bhajis) in stainless steel dishes stacked inside her pressure cooker. (But that, too, is a topic for another post.) Somehow I believed that with a pressure cooker I could turn out the same sort of deliciousness that Kamal does.

Since I got the pressure cooker, I have made dal in it a few times. But I knew it had to be good for other things as well. Then I remembered that I'd read somewhere about cooking risotto in the pressure cooker.

So tonight I tried it.

And you know what?

I'm hooked!

It's not just that the whole process is so much faster and easier—which it is. It's that the rice comes out just the way I like it—tender but with an al dente middle. When I cook it the regular way, it always comes out gummy.

For years I bemoaned the fact that I could never get a decent risotto outside of restaurants in Italy. Even in the homes of Italian friends it was never as good. What I now realize is that most restaurants must use a pressure cooker to make their risotto. It's the exact texture I've been searching for.

I know, I know, there are plenty of detractors out there who will claim that pressure cooker risotto isn't the real, authentic thing.

But you know what?

I don't care.

It's delicious, and that's all that counts.

Pressure Cooker Risotto

I used this recipe, but mainly as a proportion and cooking time guide. I changed it up because I was trying to use up some things in my fridge.

Here's what I did:

I washed and chopped two slightly old leeks and sauteed them in some bacon drippings. (I tricked the Vegetarian again. But hey, gotta try to get some B12 in her somehow.)

Then I added 1 and 1/2 cups of arborio rice and stirred til it was coated with the fat.

Next I added a half cup of red wine and let that simmer until it was almost all gone.

Then I added 3 and 1/4 cups of liquid, which was one 16oz container of chicken broth and about a cup of water.

I closed the lid and brought the pressure up to high.

I turned down the heat and  cooked it for 4 minutes on high pressure.

Then I used the quick release valve on the cooker to bring down the pressure.

When the pressure came down, I opened the lid and tasted the rice. It was done, so I added in half a cup of parmesan and a tablespoon of butter, stirred vigorously, put the top back on and left it for two minutes. If your rice isn't done after the pressure comes down, add a little hot water and cook it until it is.

Rakott Krumpli, aka Hungarian Potato Cassserole

Everyone has their Proustian associations. Smells, tastes, the sight of something—these can all transport us back to the innocent days of our youth.

I have plenty of these associations, but for me there's something else that does it as well, something I was reminded of when I awoke to the sound of people speaking Hungarian at my uncle's on Sunday morning.

The sound of people older than me conversing in Hungarian takes me right back to my childhood, probably because a good portion of that childhood was spent sitting around while a bunch of adults talked in Hungarian. It's as comforting as a steamy bowl of cauliflower soup on a cold day.

But unfortunately, being sort of an adult now, my Proustian moment on Sunday was tinged with sadness. For children, the future is endless, but for us sort of adults, endings are visible everywhere. And what I realized on Sunday was that there is a limited amount of time left in which I would ever be able to awaken to the sound of Hungarian. My grandmother and her seven sisters are all gone, and while the next generation (my mother and uncles) will not be gone anytime soon, it's a wise bet to assume they will all precede me. Plus, they don't speak in Hungarian so much among themselves. It's only with the older generation (some of whom had come over for brunch on Sunday) that it really comes out. And in my generation, none of the cousins speak Hungarian. So at some point Hungarian won't be a part of our family gatherings anymore.

What does this have to do with food, you might ask? Well, one other Proustian benefit of waking to the sound of Hungarian on Sunday morning is getting to eat Rakott Krumpli, the quintessential Hungarian brunch casserole.

I have to confess that I forgot to take pictures of the beautiful one my mother baked, so I took the pic here off of this site. And if you're wondering why I couldn't just make it again and take a pic, let me assure you that rakott krumpli, no matter how delicious, is a dish best eaten only once every few months.

Rakott Krumpli
Ingredients:
whole peeled boiled potatoes cooked in plenty of salted water (if it's a main dish, count on about 1 per person)
hard-boiled eggs (about 1 egg per potato)
keilbasa or ham or other type of smoked/cured sausage that can be sliced (can be omitted to make the dish vegetarian)
well-salted white sauce (about two tablespoons per potato)
sour cream (about one tablespoon per potato)
bread crumbs
butter
Method:
Choose a baking dish that will hold the potatoes in about 3 layers. Mix sour cream and white sauce together. Slice potatoes and make a layer in a buttered casserole dish. Slice hard boiled eggs and kielbasa and scatter half of them on top. Drizzle with a quarter of sauce. repeat a second time, then end with third layer of potato. Pour remaining half of sauce over. Cover top with bread crumbs and dot with butter. Bake at 350 for about 30 to 40 minutes, or until bread crumbs are browned and casserole is bubbling.

Big Pot O' Sauce

The only thing that keeps me from making gigantic pots of pasta sauce every few months is a lack of freezer space.

I think I might hate my tiny freezer almost more than my tiny kitchen. I mean, in some ways I love my tiny kitchen because it's incredibly energy efficient—I can get from stove to sink without moving a step.

However there's nothing to love about my freezer. It's just too small for all the things I want to put in it.

But sometimes you have to find a way, because some incredible bounty falls into your lap, like, say, a bushel of luscious ripe plum tomatoes.

Of course, that was not my incredible bounty. Tomato season is over around here.

Instead, I wound up one sunday morning with this:

Which is an incredible piece of beef shin from my local farmer's market. I love beef shin—it's a great, versatile piece of meat—but I don't like to buy it in a supermarket anymore. I feel the same way about any part with marrow or any 5th quarter cut (like oxtail). For these cuts, I definitely want to get something from a grass-raised, hormone-free cow. I haven't really pondered the logic of it; it's just the way I feel.

Anyway, I stopped at the beef stall and inquired, as I always do, if they had any soup bones. The answer, up til that point, had always been no. But this week, to my surprise, the guy pulled a package out of the cooler. "This was supposed to be osso buco, but it didn't work, so we're selling it as soup meat," he said.

Imagine my delight when I saw the giant meaty slice of shin in front of me, selling for the price of soup bones.

Of course I bought it, visions of long simmered pasta sauce forming in my head.

I took it home and salted and peppered it. Look at it. Isn't it lovely?

Then I browned it in some olive oil:

After that I added a couple of diced onions and carrots, about a cup of red wine, some sprigs of thyme and rosemary, 3 cloves of smashed garlic, and a pinch of crushed red pepper. After those softened, I added two cartons of pomi strained tomatoes (One of my favorite packaged tomato products— I learned about passato di pomodoro when I lived in Rome), a large can of tomato paste, and about about a quart of water.

Several hours of bubbling later, I ended up with this:

I took the shin meat out, shredded it, moistened it with some of the sauce, and served it over homemade pasta for dinner. The rest I ladled into pint containers and jammed into my overflowing freezer.

Did I mention how much I hate my freezer?

If you're obsessive about fat, you could refrigerate the sauce overnight and skim the fat off before freezing it, but I didn't find the sauce too greasy. Of course, I'm definitely not obsessive about fat.

Best of all, because this sauce has no visible meat, I can even get the Vegetarian to eat it. She's only 7, so what does she know?

At least I'm giving her fodder for later therapy. "And then my mother would feed me pasta sauce that had been cooked with meat, even though she knew I was a vegetarian!"

I figure I won't be able to get away with this kind of thing for much longer.

Enjoy!

Post Thanksgiving Pot Pie

It's been exactly a week since TG.

I'm doing my one leftovers post and then I'm done.

On to Christmas cookies.

Since we didn't host the TG meal, we didn't have as many leftovers as in other years.

So I only made one leftover dish.

But it's one of my favorite dishes of all time: turkey potpie.

Potpie is one of those things that you wish you could eat a lot more often than you know you should.

I've always loved it. When I was a kid, I used to get the frozen ones as a dinnertime treat every once in a while. I loved the way the crust turned mushy in the aluminum pan.

I would probably hate those frozen ones now, but they were delicious in my youth.

But on to my potpie.

Most recipes call for you to make a roux in a saucepan, add broth, milk or cream, vegetables and turkey, and then dump into a pie or casserole dish and top with pastry.

But being lazy busy I wondered why the whole thing couldn't just be done in one ovenproof pan, like my trusty cast-iron skillet.

So I tried it out. I was the guinea pig. And I'm here to say that it makes no sense to use (and have to wash) two pots for potpie, when one works fabulously.

Here's what I did:

1) I added about 2 tablespoons butter to my cast-iron skillet over low heat. When it melted, I added about two tablespoons flour to the pan and whisked it around a bit, to cook the flour. This made the roux.

2) I took the leftover gravy I had and added it to the pan, whisking it in with roux until there were no lumps.

3) I took the leftover cream from my pies and whisked that in, too. At this point, my liquid looked good, but if I had needed more I would have added some milk. Or, if the gravy was overpowering things, I would have added some water.

4) I threw in the leftover TG baked onions—diced, some diced carrots, frozen peas, and diced leftover turkey. If I'd had mushrooms, I would have thrown them in, too. But I didn't.

5) I rolled out a pie crust to the width of my pan (a 9-incher) and placed it on top of the filling, tucking the edges down into the filling. I actually used the leftover scraps from all the pies I made for TG, but any piecrust, even a storebought one, would do. You can also use frozen puff pastry, but that seems more trouble than it's worth, and I personally don't like puff pastry on my pot pie. (I don't like puff pastry much in general, but that's another story.)

6) I baked the whole thing in the oven at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

And voila! One pot turkey potpie!