Cookbook Challenge #12: Bacon and Egg Risotto

Is there anything better than the smell of bacon frying on a Saturday morning? Why, yes - yes, there is – it’s bacon frying in butter on a Saturday morning as the start to this high-maintenance, unhealthy, utterly magnificent breakfast.

In my pre-quarantine life I often wished that I was cooking differently. Not cooking more, because I pretty much cook every day; and not cooking better, because even our weeknight easy stuff is pretty good. The variety of what we eat isn’t really an issue, because we all like to try new things. But cooking was often a very meh activity for me, something that I did and did well but didn’t get a huge amount of joy from. It was the thing that filled the time between cleaning up the kitchen and fighting with the rest of the family over who had to wash the pots and pans. It was shoved in before or after work, swim practice, karate, and all the other things that occupied our time, and it made me sad because food and cooking for people is a huge part of who I am. It hurt that I didn't like it all that much anymore. 

Now that the days are blending into each other and I’m longing for a little structure (yay, online school starts on Monday!) I find that I’m a little more immersed in the meals we eat. I have to think about the constraints of our fridge and pantry, instead of just thinking about what I can get on the table the fastest with the least amount of complaining from all parties involved. I get more help in the kitchen. I'm actually looking forward to being in the kitchen and making good use of what we have on hand. It's become fun again. 

The other thing I often wished was that I was blogging more. While I am occasionally accused of bragging – “You’re only cooking that so you can blog about it!” – um, okay. Maybe. But this is the One Thing I’m getting right during this pause in our lives. Certainly it’s not housecleaning or exercise or self-improvement or any of the other things that the Facebook world suggests I should be doing with my time.  So I’m going to unapologetically enjoy it, and occasionally make a meal that absolutely knocks it out of the damn park. Such as this breakfast risotto, which has Imaginary Mom just standing there in silent awe (she's been mercifully quiet during the quarantine).

I adore risotto, but it’s a bit of a princess and I don’t often have the time or patience. I adore breakfast, but I’m not a morning person. So this is really the least likely dish for me to make on a Saturday morning before I even finish my first cup of coffee. Nonetheless, here we are. Make this sometime for someone you love and want to treat, especially if that person is yourself.

Adapted very slightly from Simple: Effortless Food, Big Flavors by Diana Henry.

Bacon and Egg Risotto

3 cups chicken stock, warmed
1 tbsp butter
5 ½ oz bacon, chopped (this is the one and only time I’ll tell you not to go overboard on the bacon)
1 small onion, minced
¾ cup arborio rice
Pepper
2 tbsp chopped parsley
¼ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
2 eggs

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan and saute the bacon until golden all over. Stir in the onion and cook over medium heat until the onion is soft and pale gold. Add the rice, stir, and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the stock a ladle at a time, stirring (almost) continuously. Wait until the stock is completely absorbed before adding more; the whole process will take about 20 minutes. The rice should be creamy with just a little bit of bite in the center of each grain. Season with pepper, then stir in the parsley and half the Parmesan cheese.

Poach the eggs. Serve an egg on top of each serving of risotto, with more Parmesan on the side if you really think you need it. 

There's No Such Thing as Too Much Comfort: Carrot, Spinach, and Rice Stew

It snowed here in Michigan yesterday, which is not actually unusual for mid-April. We’re living in complicated times and I have some related thoughts regarding the quarantine and people’s reactions to it, but the takeaway I choose is this: Mother Nature has declared y’all aren’t planting shit right now, and it’s okay to let go of those ambitious garden plans and sit right down.

In fact, sit down with a stack of cookbooks and consider some aspirational cooking for the weeks ahead, then wander into the kitchen and make this deceptively simple, delicious, downright cozy soup with the odds and ends in your fridge. It was simple enough that I managed to make it while in the middle of canning some stock, with some help from my kids, and hearty enough with the addition of some leftover chicken that I didn’t have to make anything else to go with it or worry that John was going to disappear into his room with a 5-pound box of crackers afterwards. It’s light enough that I can see it being an almost-year-round lunchtime staple. In other words, everything I want a soup to be.

From The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman, who has my everlasting gratitude for snapping me out of the fancy-schmancy cooking of the late 90s and helping me become a really solid home cook.

Carrot, Spinach, and Rice Stew

½ lb carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4 -inch dice
¾ cup long-grain rice
Salt and pepper to taste
1 lb fresh spinach, thick stems removed, roughly chopped
1 tsp minced garlic, optional
2 tbsp butter, optional

Combine the carrots with 6 cups of water in a saucepan and turn the heat to high. Bring to a boil, then stir in the rice and a large pinch of salt.

When the mixture returns to the boil add the spinach, then adjust the heart so that it simmers gently.

Cook, stirring occasionally, until the rice and carrots are very tender and the mixture takes on the consistency of a thick stew, about 30 minutes.

Stir in the garlic or butter and cook for another 5 minutes. Or forget about that part altogether and add some chopped chicken left over from last week’s curry and a little bit of cumin instead.

Adjust the seasonings as needed, adding a little water if it needs to be thinned.

“Slaves to the Fat” – A Love Letter to the Deep Fryer

I’d like to start by saying that we do, in fact, eat a very healthy diet. We love main dish salads. There are always fruits and vegetables on hand. My kids have never eaten a Twinkie in all their lives. We cook from ingredients on the regular, fast food has never been a thing, etc etc etc.

Something about the kids hitting puberty made us revert to buying chips and snack foods, and thus we stepped upon the slippery slope. At some point we dusted off the deep fryer we got (unrequested, btw) for our wedding. And – not gonna lie – homemade fried stuff is really damn excellent. We started with the occasional, relatively innocuous fried chicken; how bad can it be if you have it twice a year?! And then I found those excellent shrimp and sweet potato fritters. Well, and David’s fish tacos. And there’s always falafel, of course.

As we were washing dishes tonight, my daughter said, “I love it when we’re slaves to the fat. You know, when we stand around the deep fryer as a family and eat all the stuff as it comes out.” And I know that she was talking about a really epic night last year when we discovered onion bahji (we ended up being too full for actual dinner) and the funnel cake night recently and tonight’s apple fritters…. And I know that my cholesterol is high and my family doctor is going to be really unhappy when she runs my bloodwork again…. And I can’t actually disagree with Anna. While I wish it was something healthier, there really *does* seem to be something particularly comforting about the shared experience of watching the food cook and laughing as we burn our fingers and tongues, standing shoulder-to-shoulder and singing bits of whatever music Alexa has inflicted on us. Hot pot comes close; fondue might be a close second; but lordy do we love our deep fryer.

**

We don’t normally celebrate Easter, not being Christians. When we were first married we tried to make both families happy, but once the kids came along it was an orgy of chocolate and sugar and ham and trying to keep fancy clothes clean, and we were exhausted at trying to celebrate all the things in all the ways when it wasn’t a holiday that held personal meaning. For years we skipped town and went to hotels with waterparks or visited people with no expectations of us; it was delightful. The year I was studying for a wine test, we invited my study group over for grilled lamb and a truly stupendous amount of wine and called it Fake Easter – still one of my favorite non-holidays ever. With this being a quarantine year, nobody expected anything and I really hadn’t even planned a meal.

In the way of such things, we had a lovely day. We slept in much later than usual. We had a long, laughter-filled video call with friends from Canada that we haven’t seen IRL in years. We lounged on the couch and read good books. Pam did a drive-by with a few bottles of wine I wasn’t expecting (and am enjoying very much, thank you). Anna and I cooked dinner together. David and I went for a walk and met some great new neighbors. And then we came home and made these, which were so, so delicious and bad for us and a completely perfect way to end our lovely non-holiday full of unexpected goodness.

If I’m learning anything from this time of enforced quiet, it is to appreciate the little bits of grace that populate our days. I think we overlook or rush through them much of the time, and I’m hoping that a silver lining to all of this is the ability to stop and recognize the homey beauty that comes to us in the ordinary course of our days.

Adapted from A Real American Breakfast by Cheryl AltersJamison and Bill Jamison. I was so happy to find this at our local used bookstore; I really like trying new breakfasts at restaurants and this has enough new ideas for a lifetime worth of Christmas breakfast experiments. I halved the original recipe based on how queasy we all felt after shoveling in twice as much of this as we should have.

Slaves to the Fat Apple Fritters  

2 medium apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch wedges (alternately, chop them coarsely – we tried both ways)
3 tbsp applejack, brandy, rum, white wine, or rose
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
1 egg, separated
1 tablespoon nut or vegetable oil (we used pistachio)
½ cup flour (we used a cup-for-cup GF blend from Namaste Foods)
Generous pinch salt
Vegetable oil for deep-frying
Confectioners’ sugar and/or a mixture of cinnamon sugar (I suggest both)

Put the apples in a shallow dish. Sprinkle with the applejack and sugar, toss to combine, cover, and let sit 30 minutes.

Whisk the egg yolk with the oil until it’s light yellow in color, then stir in 1/3 cup of water. Stir the flour and salt together, then add the yolk mixture and stir to combine. Drain off the liquid from the apples and add that as well.

Beat the egg white until stiff but not dry and fold into the flour mixture.

Heat at least 1 inch of oil (if you’re using a pan instead of a deep fryer) to 350.

If you’re using wedges, blot them lightly with a paper towel so they’re not too wet and the batter adheres. Dip the apples into the batter and fry in batches until golden brown and crisp, about 3 minutes. If you’re using apple pieces, stir them into the batter then drop the batter by tablespoons into the hot oil. Don’t make them too big or the inside will be undercooked when the outside is on the border of being too crispy.

Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar and/or cinnamon sugar. It might be tempting to think that this is gilding the lily, but I assure you that it’s an important step and you shouldn’t skip it. You’re already eating something deep-fried so there’s no use skimping now, is there? Eat while hot, ideally standing shoulder-to-shoulder over the deep fryer. This would also be excellent with vanilla ice cream.  

Cookbook Challenge #11: Red Lentil Soup with Caramelized Onions

For about 2 weeks of every year, I care enough about my yard to get out there and do something about it. The rest of the year, it’s a chunk of dirt and weeds and expectations that wears me down and makes me sad. Don’t get me wrong – I’d love it if my yard was lush and beautifully maintained, so I could sit on my deck with a cool drink in the evening and see beauty all around me. Not, however, if that means I have to do the work.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m really an indoor kitty. While I’ll happily camp and kayak and Do Actual Outdoor Things, given a choice between a good book on my couch or a good book on my desk, I choose the couch distressingly often (and my weird attachment to our house doesn’t mean that I’m all that excited about doing indoor projects either. I’m very on-brand.). Our yard has fallen into a sad cycle of half-hearted effort and neglect and disappointment, and the only way to break that cycle is to win the lottery so I can afford to pay someone to do it for me.

Meantime, I get excited enough about the yard every April that I recruit the kids to help clean up the leaves and dead weeds and assorted detritus, and I page wistfully through gardening catalogs and websites and fantasize that this is a hobby I would enjoy. I appreciate the whole cycle-of-life chill Zen vibe that really devout gardeners talk about. And when my back and legs are sore and my clothes are filthy and I’ve realized that sunshine does not necessarily equal warmth in a Michigan April, I come back inside and make this soup for my family as a reward for their labors.

Two of our favorite comfort foods are dal and mjadara, which in addition to being delicious and filling and easy to make have the added benefit of containing ingredients that we have in the pantry 99% of the time. (This is clearly a big damn deal in the middle of a quarantine.) Hence, this marvelous soup that is a perfect cross between the two. It lent itself to substitutions from the pantry, and cooked all by itself with almost no attention from me.

From The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean by Paula Wolfert, one of the more aspirational cookbooks I own. I cook from it so rarely that doing so qualified this for the official NoP Cookbook Challenge count; the stories in it are so interesting that I can't bear to part with it, and I keep promising myself that I'll tackle it in more depth at some point (see the chapter titled "Fifty Varieties of Kibbeh" and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about). 

Red Lentil Soup with Caramelized Onions from Aleppo

1 cup red lentils
¼ cup fine-grain bulgur (or quinoa, if that’s what you have in your cupboard)
¼ cup short-grain rice (or medium-grain brown rice, if that’s what you have in your cupboard)
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tbsp ground cumin
2-3 large onions (about 1 ½ lbs), halved and thinly sliced
½ cup olive oil
1 tbsp ground coriander
Pinch of cayenne

Rinse the lentils, rice (brown rice), and bulgur (quinoa). Place in a deep saucepan with 6 cups of water, the salt, and the cumin. Bring to a boil and skim any foam that floats to the surface, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer about 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large heavy skillet. Cook the onions over medium-high heat until they soften, then reduce the heat and cook until deep brown but not burned. Conveniently, this will take almost exactly the same amount of time as the soup.

Stir the coriander and cayenne into the soup. Pour the entire contents of the skillet into the soup, stir, and serve.

Death By Pulled Pork

I suspect we’re all learning a great deal about ourselves during this quarantine. I, for one, have unequivocally realized that time is not actually the limiting factor in my life; given sufficient time, no outside obligations, etc. etc. my house will *still* not be clean. I will never be caught up on the laundry. I’m not going to learn Italian or open an Etsy shop or get into the best shape of my life.

For a while there, I tried to rationalize this and spent a bunch of time making lists and staring moodily out the window. Then I put it in the same mental space as the fact that everyone on the Internet is funnier and more creative than I am and got the hell over it. I’m counting my days in small victories (I showered! I went outdoors! I didn’t kill my kids!) and treating myself a little more gently these days. We are living in a strange and terrible time and all that extra kindness and gratitude we’re finding for others needs to be dispensed to our own selves as well.

That being said, we’re eating like rock stars lately. I’m very displeased at the number of dishes I’m washing but dinners have, for the most part, been pretty great. Or maybe they’ve just felt great (aside from the dishwashing) because we’re planning everything out in advance – a side effect of bi-weekly grocery store trips and limited fridge space – and anticipation is just a big part of enjoyment. Maybe it’s because Anna is jumping in and helping so often; cooking with other people is something I’ve grown to love. Maybe it’s because we’re not in a hurry to get dinner going in between work and homework and practice, and can take the time to enjoy the process for its own sake just as much as we’re enjoying the food on the table. Maybe it’s the uncertainty that surrounds us making us slow down just a bit and pay attention to the flavors, also knowing that we’ve seen shortages lately that we never have before, and that plenty is no longer a given (certainly we feel this way about toilet paper).

Of course there are days that I tell everyone to eat a frozen pizza or fend for themselves. We’ve broken our ironclad rule about not eating in front of the television more times than I care to admit, and eating dinner together every night feels like a less significant unifying element when we are together literally 24/7.  On nights when I can’t face the kitchen (or the laundry or Duolingo or wearing pants, for that matter) it’s nice to know there’s something a little better than Cheerios to fall back on, and this particular recipe has kept us in lunches and late-night snacks for the better part of a week.

Last year we did a wine tour on the Leelanau Peninsula with friends. It was the first time that we’ve ever gone away without the kids, and we certainly made a celebration of it (turns out that when you’re an adult you can have Negronis and beef jerky for dinner and nobody will yell at you). On Saturday we went for a leisurely dinner at Martha’s Leelanau Table in Sutton’s Bay. There were a number of cookbooks and knick-knacks on shelves in the main dining room including the fantastically-named Death by Burrito, a Mexican street food cookbook written by a chef based out of London. I was delighted that David remembered my fascination with this particular cookbook and bought it for me for Christmas, and equally delighted that I could have pulled pork without having to excavate the smoker from the shed.

The recipe here is as written, though I doubled it based on the amount of pork we had. I was honestly a little skeptical going in, as David already makes some of the best pulled pork I’ve ever had, complete with a mustard-and-vinegar sauce to die for. This is an entirely different take, the sauce rich and tangy and just a little bit sweet, and believe me it gets even better after the first day. We had this the first night on masa sliders with a cabbage slaw and pickled onions and Cojita cheese. It’s gone into flour tortillas on its own for a late-night snack, over a bowl of rice with radishes, and on top of chips for some killer nachos. I had fully intended to freeze half of this for later but we keep picking away at it. I guess that means I’ll have to make it again. Darn.

Adapted very slightly From Death by Burrito: The Cookbook.Mexican Street Food to Die For by Shay Ola, because I didn’t want to make pork cracklings.

Death by Pulled Pork 

1 lb 5 oz pork shoulder
1 cup Dr Pepper
2 chipotles in adobo or 2 tsp paste
1 small onion, sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
¾ cup brown sugar

Put all the ingredients except the pork into a roasting pan and mix well. Add the pork, fat side up, and season with salt and pepper. Cover the pan tightly with foil and bake at 275 for 5-6 hours.

When the meat falls apart at the touch of a fork, pull it out of the oven. Shred the meat with 2 forks and set aside.

Pour the liquid into a saucepan and let it cool a bit. Skim the fat from the top, blend with an immersion blender, and reduce the liquid by half over medium heat.

Stir the meat into the sauce and let stand for the longest 10 minutes of your life before serving.