grains – Page 3 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Cauliflower Caper Risotto

Last night I threw together this risotto willy nilly, completely unsure if the random things I pulled out the refrigerator would really taste right together. And boy howdy did they! This risotto blew my mind with awesomeness. The cauliflower became soft and almost silky, the herbes de provence gave this a very Thanksgiving kind of flavor (thyme and fennel will do that), and the capers added a hit of delightful briny saltiness that elevated the whole dish. This was one of those rare kitchen triumphs, the kind that feel even more special because the whole endeavor began under a cloud of doubt. This risotto is one for the records.
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Scallops and Couscous

New England made a permanent impression on me, as evidenced by my linguistic and culinary relationship with scallops. Before moving to Boston, I had never eaten a scallop. I had no interest in scallops. As you can probably tell by the near complete lack of seafood recipes on this site, I’m not much of a fish eater, though I do continually vow to introduce it into my diet more often. And I thought scallops were some of the grossest of the gross in the aquatic world. They just looked like slimy blobs, and who wants to eat slimy blobs? Well, thanks to Boston’s seafood-heavy culture, and to Mr. X, I now want to eat slimy blobs, as long as those slimy blobs are scallops.

And yes, I cannot help myself from pronouncing this word as “scaw-lops,” in true New England fashion. And for this I blame one of my favorite library school professors, who had an old school Cantabrigian (as in, Massachusetts) accent, and liked to use scallops as an example in data modeling lessons, for reasons I will never really know.
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A new kind of Rice and Beans

This post is especially for my brother, Patrick, who is newly independent, and who loves cooking as much as I do.

I have been making and eating rice and beans for a long, long time. It’s probably the first thing I learned to cook. It is comfort food, it is day-before-the-paycheck food, with a little meat thrown it is day-after-the-paycheck food. It can be healthy or over the top and indulgent. I suspect it is the endless versatility of rice and beans that makes me love it so, and come back to it at least once a month.

For a long time I made rice and beans using packaged mixes, like Goya or Mahatma. And I’ll be honest, sometimes I still do. But making rice and beans from scratch is one of the least expensive, easiest dinners around, so the box mixes aren’t really worth it, unless you need the sodium fix. And it is great for college students. You can make a big pot for about $5 and it will last you all week. The rice and beans together make a complete protein, so you don’t need to splurge for meat. And you can add all kinds of vegetables to be sure you’re getting your greens.
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Garlicky Sauteed Kale and Chickpeas with Polenta

I am not very good at summertime cooking. When most normal people are throwing their fresh tomatoes and mountains of zucchini into cool and refreshing salads, I insist on standing in front of a hot stove before dinner. I will heat the oven to 550 degrees, and keep it on for over an hour, in the middle of August. I will labor over risotto, trying not to sweat into the stock. I don’t know what it is, but I just have to have a hot meal at the end of the day. It’s a strange compulsion, but there it is.

I am getting a little better at reducing the amount of heat I produce in the kitchen when it’s over 100 degrees outside of it. Last week roasted red pepper tacos turned into sauteed pepper tacos, and this week another recipe I’ve had in my to-be-tried pile was similarly reinvented to avoid using the oven. Garlic roasted garbanzos, you say? I say nay, but the stovetop might work just fine.
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Lobster Risotto

It is amazing how fast time is passing these days. I do believe I promised to share this lobster risotto a few days ago, but suddenly the weekend was over and I still hadn’t posted this recipe. Doh. My apologies.

I was dreaming of lobster risotto for a long time. Over a year, in fact. But cooking lobster always seemed so decadent, so difficult, so expensive…it was one of those things I just kept putting off. Which is silly, because it’s really none of those things, and lobster risotto is so wonderful, it’s worth boiling up a lobster just for this dish alone. Though if you’re lucky, you can have a lobster dinner one night, and lobster risotto with the leftovers the next.
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Black Bean and Wild Rice Soup

In my attempt to eat less meat and more plant life, I’ve been experimenting with vegetarian soups for the past month or so. I make a big pot of soup every Sunday and bring a bowl to work every day for lunch, and I’ve got my soup-making skills down now. I’ve become quite fond of lentils, and should probably start making my own vegetable stock because I’m going through the stuff like crazy. What I love about making soup is that you have so many opportunities to be creative. Once you have a basic formula down you can add and subtract and experiment, and make something completely new just by using different herbs and spices.

Black bean soup has always been one of my favorites. When I was in college I was addicted to Progresso’s Hearty Black Bean soup and probably ate it at least once a week. When I realized that I was four weeks into my soup experiment and hadn’t made black bean soup yet, I knew I had to rectify the situation, so I came up with this: Black Bean and Wild Rice Soup.
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Grandpa’s Seven Layer Dinner

Alright, no hatin’ people. I know that picture up there looks like a bowl of mush, but I am here to urge you to look past the mush to the delicious, comforting treat that is Seven Layer Dinner.

My brother got married last weekend (yay! Andy and Lisa! yay!), and some wonderful person gave them a slow cooker. When they opened it, my brother immediately exclaimed, “Yeah! Seven Layer Dinner,” and I remembered my Grandpa’s Seven Layer Dinner for the first time in years. Seven Layer Dinner is quintessentially Midwestern and perfect for cold, yucky days when you need something warm and comforting at the end of a long day. After we got back to Boston, I immediately emailed the grandparents for the recipe.
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A Combs Family Favorite: Tamale Pie, or 1960s Southwest Style

These days there is no shortage of places to find new recipes. On the interwebs alone you’ve got food blogs, recipe forums, and an endless array of culinary websites like epicurious and Eating Well. Food magazines seem to multiply every time I go to the newstand, and new cookbooks are published almost daily, not just from the big name publishing houses but by individuals using print-on-demand services like lulu.com to sell their own culinary expertise. All of this recipe abundance makes me think about my tattered blue folder stuffed with scraps of paper and print outs and index cards. It makes me think of the way people acquired recipes in the decades before cheap printing and the internet: from other people.

I suppose you could say that finding a recipe on a blog is still getting it from another person, and it’s true that the food blogging community is tight-knit. I feel like I know the writers whose blogs I read regularly, just by reading their words and seeing pictures of their kitchens and exchanging the occasional email or comment. There is a big element of the personal in food blogs, and of friendliness, but it’s still not quite the same as tasting someone’s spinach cheese bites at a party and telling them you simply have to have the recipe, or yet again pulling out the stained index card on which your Grandma wrote her Russian Tea Cake recipe.
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Everything Summer Risotto

I think it’s pretty much official that risotto is my go-to dish whenever I’m cooking celebratory meals for others. It’s easy and impressive, and I can talk and sip wine during the endless stirring process. So when I had the chance to steal the kitchen away from my little brother and make dinner for the family, risotto was a sure bet. Of course, I didn’t steal the kitchen entirely away from my brother, and with both of us throwing ideas and ingredients around, this risotto ended up a surprisingly delicious hodge-podge of deliciousness: bacon, mushrooms, leeks, green beans, manchego cheese, basil, parsley, chives, and homemade chicken stock flavored with fresh thyme and oregano. Served with a big Caesar salad (with Patrick’s homemade balsamic Caesar dressing) and goat cheese crostini, this was a perfect, summery dinner to share with my family on my first night home.

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Rosemary Risotto with Grilled Chicken and Green Beans

Risotto is pretty high up there on the all-time favorite things list. So much so that I will stand in front of a hot stove for 45 minutes one one of the HOTTEST DAYS EVER just to have it. Yes, my friends, I am clearly crazy. Yesterday was unbearably hot and muggy (what is with these weather patterns?), but even extreme discomfort could not stop me from a lengthy, stove-front cooking project last night. And after that I baked bread! Lunatic. However, it was totally worth it because this was some absolutely delicious risotto.

Everyone seemed to like the risotto so much when I put cumin in the stock, and I got to thinking of all the other numerous ways you could flavor risotto. One of the first things that occurred to me was rosemary. Rosemary can be awfully strong, and using it to flavor the stock, rather than cooking it directly into the risotto, gave the risotto a more subtle flavor. It might just be one of my best ideas yet (well, after the Mexican pizza, anyway).

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