Root Vegetable Barley Risotto

Posted on by
1

As I move on through my weird little life, I have come to realize that there are some rather shocking details in my relationship with food. Example: I just don’t like yellow curry. I’ve tried it. I’ve played with multiple applications. It just doesn’t work for me. Example two: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is without a doubt my favorite hangover food. Well, that or biscuits and gravy with a side of hash browns. But only if those biscuits, gravy, and hash browns are from Brails Restaurant in Eugene, Oregon. Otherwise I’d take the boxed macaroni, complete with its powdered fluorescent orange box-mate, any day of the week.

Food Blog October 2013-2732But a more pertinent example for us today is risotto. I like risotto. I like the creaminess, the cheesy finish, the number of vegetables you can load it with; I even like the endless stirring. It’s therapeutic in a lot of ways. The only thing, in fact, that I don’t like about risotto is the rice. I know; who AM I? But the rice too often gets sticky and gloppy, and if it’s not gloppy, it’s soupy but somehow still underdone, and frankly I’m over it. No, if I’m going to have something toasty and nutty but also somehow creamy and chewy, I’m going with barley.

The idea of risotto without the rice is something like ice cream without the cream: contradiction central. Here, though, the truth is in the technique: the slow, steady stirring that lets the grain release its starches and become a warm, comforting dish of welcome-to-fall-I’m-so-glad-you’re-here.

Food Blog October 2013-2721If we were going to have fall, I decided, we were going to need root vegetables. Discs and sticks and chunks of rutabagas, carrots, sweet potato, and parsnips, all gleaming with olive oil and garlic herb salt, roasted until caramelized and tender. I folded these into the barley just as it finished, then dolloped in sizable lumps of soft, creamy goat cheese, a scattering of toasted pecans, and, because if it’s worth doing it’s worth overdoing, some whole fried leaves of sage and rosemary.

Food Blog October 2013-2724Alterations apropos of the season might entail swapping out the sweet potato or carrot for hunks of pumpkin or butternut squash, and you can certainly use walnuts or even pine nuts if you don’t like pecans. But I wouldn’t skip the goat cheese. Its insistent tang is a needed foil for the mellow autumnal combination of root veggies and barley.

We ate this so fast our forks had whiplash. It is warm and hearty, certainly, and the clamor of different flavors settles together so nicely that you can’t help but keep going back for another taste. The sage and rosemary mellow as they fry, producing a toasty earthiness rather than the overwhelming pine-forest flavor you might expect.

Food Blog October 2013-2728

Root Vegetable Barley Risotto
Serves 4-6
3 medium carrots
3 medium parsnips
2 medium rutabagas
1 medium orange fleshed sweet potato
¼ cup olive oil
1-2 teaspoons salt (a nice garlic and herb salt works well here, if you have it)
½ teaspoon pepper
¼ cup chopped pecans
¼ cup butter
10 sage leaves
1-2 teaspoons whole rosemary leaves
Scant 1 cup chopped onion (from ½ a medium onion)
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup pearled barley
½ cup dry white wine
Additional salt and pepper, to taste
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth, warm but not boiling
8 oz. soft goat cheese

 

  • First, preheat the oven to 400F and line two cookie sheets with aluminum foil. Place the cookie sheets in the oven while it preheats.
  • Peel the root vegetables (except the onion) and cut them into discs, slices, or chunks of approximately the same size, no thicker than about ½ inch. Place them in a bowl and toss with the olive oil, salt, and pepper.
  • Spread the vegetable chunks evenly in a single layer on the preheated trays, then return trays to the oven and roast for 45-60 minutes, tossing halfway through, until vegetables are fork tender and nicely caramelized. Set aside until risotto is ready.
  • While the roots are roasting, warm the broth in a medium pot. You want it at a bare simmer at most. No more, or too much will evaporate while you wait to add it to your risotto. (It shouldn’t be cold either – this will increase the risotto’s cooking time.)
  • In a large saucepan, toast the pecans over medium-low heat until they begin to take on a caramel aroma and look lightly browned. Be careful with them; they will burn easily. Don’t take your eyes away too long. When they are toasty, remove them from the pan and set aside.
  • In the same pan, melt the butter over medium heat, then add the sage and rosemary leaves. Be careful; sometimes they will spit a bit when they touch the hot fat. Fry them for about 45 seconds, agitating the pan a little to turn them around in the butter, until they have darkened just a bit. Remove them, reserving the butter in the pan, and drain them on a paper towel. They will crisp up as they cool.
  • Again in the same pan (see how economical we are being for whoever washes the dishes in your house?!), add the chopped onion and garlic. Sweat the onions and garlic for 5-8 minutes, until the onion is translucent and the garlic smells just the way it is supposed to. You know what I mean.
  • With soft, tender onions, turn the heat up to medium high and add the barley. Stir briskly for 1-2 minutes until the barley is fully coated in butter and has toasted a touch.
  • Deglaze the pan with the white wine, stirring vigorously to detach any browned bits from the bottom of your pan (but be careful not to be too vigorous, lest you ignite your wine). Continue stirring slowly until the wine is almost completely absorbed into the barley.
  • When the pan is nearly dry, add about a cup of the broth and stir to incorporate. Let it simmer, stirring frequently, until the broth is almost absorbed. The first time you add broth, this will take 10-15 minutes. The amount of time it takes for the barley to absorb the broth will increase as you add more liquid.
  • Repeat this process, adding broth and stirring, until the barley is tender but chewy and you have added all of the broth. This will take about 45 minutes.
  • When the barley has almost absorbed the last of the broth (it will be slightly soupy, but don’t worry), add the roasted root vegetables and season to taste with salt and pepper.
  • To serve, scoop some risotto into a shallow bowl, dollop on a good portion of goat cheese, sprinkle with pecans, and top with a few fried herb leaves.

Israeli Couscous Salad

Posted on by
4

I don’t like restraint. It’s the same complaint I have about being a grown-up (also, restraint, complaint? They were clearly meant to go together!): the liberties are great, but the requirements to limit and be responsible for myself sometimes seem unfair. Ice cream for dinner because I want to? Yes I can! Work still starts at 7:45 on Monday morning? Oh. Right. Responsibility.

Food Blog October 2013-2656This tenuous relationship with restraint (and adulthood) contributes to the way I cook. Though what I try to bring here are dishes that I’ve tinkered with and scaled back or spruced up appropriately, that doesn’t reflect the me-in-the-kitchen reality most often produces. This “real” me is spattered with flour, knocking over bottled spices as she reaches for, most often, embarrassingly, the garlic powder (because honestly?  Mincing up garlic on a weeknight after I’ve spent all day grading papers is sometimes beyond my capacities). I’m constantly in the line of fire of spurts of olive oil that spring out of my too-hot pan, and consistently grateful for the lovely canine I live with who willingly volunteers to “mop” the floor after dinner has been served. It’s a disaster zone, if I’m honest, which is why there are so rarely photos of me here to go along with the food.

Food Blog October 2013-2650And when it comes to the food, I must admit to occasionally overdoing it. I’ve made salads with so much in them it was hard to find the lettuce. My stir-fry sauce has probably a dozen ingredients. My pizza crusts don’t always crisp up because there are too many toppings crammed, well, atop them. Rarely is my final choice an unadorned one, but a basic that I’ve dressed up because I can’t help myself. Even in the words I use to tell you, I’m forever prattling on.

Food Blog October 2013-2648Sometimes, though, the minimalist in me steps in. She clears the counter with a glance. She demands simplicity, clarity, balance. She puts away the crumbled feta and the dried cherries and the dreams of fried sage. And she is usually right.

This simple Israeli couscous salad was born of a vision of combining raita and tabbouleh, though bizarrely with none of the most important ingredients for either. But that’s me. I’ve stripped away the parsley and the yogurt and the tomatoes and the bulgur wheat, and wound up with a collection of flavors and textures I’m totally in love with. And it’s so simple. Israeli couscous. Cucumber. Green onions. Mint. Pine nuts. Olive oil and lemon juice to dress. That’s it.

Food Blog October 2013-2641Israeli couscous, if you’ve never had it, is like a savory pile of tapioca balls, squashy and chewy and appealingly gummy. It makes a nice replacement for the bulgur wheat in tabbouleh, though it needs significantly less acid. Here, paired with the waterlogged freshness of cucumber and the creamy-crunch of pine nuts, it’s near perfect. And the mint. Guys, if you aren’t fans of mint in savory dishes, or if the last time you had it was as the leading flavor in that almost glowing green jelly spooned over a trembling haunch of lamb, you have to give it another chance. I already knew its herbal punch went well with cucumber, but I was surprised and delighted by how well it complements the pine nuts.

We ate this as a side dish for some tandoori-spiced grilled chicken and Bittman chutney one night, and then, in testament to its simple goodness, it conveniently acquiesced to be my lunch for several days in a row later that week.

You could, if you wish, add ¼ – ¼ cup halved cherry tomatoes, or shredded grilled chicken, or even a few tablespoons of yogurt for creaminess, and I think it would be stellar. But I, in an uncharacteristic display, decided not to. Restraint. For once. And I think I’m glad.

Food Blog October 2013-2652

Israeli Couscous Salad
Serves 4-6 as a side dish, 2-3 as a main salad
1 cup Israeli couscous (sometimes also called pearl or pearled couscous)
1 ¼ cups water
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon black pepper
¼ cup toasted pine nuts
¼ cup sliced green onions, whites and green tops
1 cup seeded, diced cucumber
¼ cup chopped fresh mint
  • Bring the 1 ¼ cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the couscous and cook over medium-high heat until the water has absorbed and the couscous pearls are like little tapioca balls. Don’t overdo it – you want a touch of resistance to remain. These are, after all, a form of pasta.
  • When the couscous is done, drain any extra water that remains and toss with the lemon juice and the olive oil. Season with the salt and pepper to taste. Let cool to room temperature.
  • Add the pine nuts, cucumber, green onions, and mint to the room temperature couscous and serve immediately.

Sweet Potato Apple Oatmeal Bread

Posted on by
3

I seem to be increasingly fond of dishes with long titles. There’s nothing particularly extravagant about this quickbread (though I must admit, the prep work involved makes it not all that quick), but the title is lengthy because it does have a lot going on.  Harvest color from a baked, mashed sweet potato, juicy chunks of apple, a hearty, wholesome boost from the oats, plus a hefty dose of brown butter, buttermilk, cinnamon, and a streusel topping crammed with walnuts and dried apple rings. But I didn’t want to overload you, so sweet potato apple oatmeal bread it is.

Food Blog October 2013-2708This bread turned out to be a lovely little response to October’s Twelve Loaves theme: root vegetables. Upon first reading this mandate, I was a little concerned. I’ve already done loaded potato biscuits. Carrot cake is, eponymously, not bread. Beets and rutabegas and parsnips and all those other decidedly savory tubers I’d welcome in a roasting pan or in a latke just don’t seem like a good fit in bread, yeasted or otherwise.

Food Blog October 2013-2701Los Angeles has recently decided that, since it’s almost the middle of October now, Fall might be okay. It might be acceptable to hover below 80 degrees during the day,* and nights could, possibly, occasionally, fall to the chilly (hah!) mid-50s. This has put me in mind of all the harvest flavors I love which, predictably, takes me to Thanksgiving. Once there, it’s only a tiny hop to the humble sweet potato.

Food Blog October 2013-2687Sweet potatoes are true root vegetables. Unlike taro or ginger, which are technically modified stems, or even the grand old potato itself, which is a tuber but not a “true” root (I know, I was shocked too!), sweet potatoes are the root of the plant.

Food Blog October 2013-2680Food Blog October 2013-2685Food Blog October 2013-2682Thankfully, they are also delicious. I love their mellow, starchy sweetness in savory and sweet applications, but I’d never tried incorporating them into bread before. I knew almost immediately I wanted a quickbread rather than a yeasted loaf, and from there it only remained to pair a few flavors. Apples seemed like a nice match for sweet potato: big, fresh Honeycrisps have been showing up at our Farmers’ Market lately, and their juicy tartness would be a good foil for the dependable mellow of my main player. Oatmeal would bulk up the bread a little, giving it strength to support the onslaught of apple and sweet potato I had in mind. I found an oatmeal quickbread recipe that sounded promising on Flour Child, but things really cemented when I read Irvin’s post on Spiced Brown Butter Apple Walnut bread on his blog Eat the Love.

Food Blog October 2013-2688So, sweet potato, baked rather than steamed or boiled to cut down on moisture, an excessive mound of apples, left in sizable chunks that, when you start to mix them in will seem like far too many, rolled oats to bake into a breakfast-worthy slice, and the usual players – brown sugar and cinnamon and just enough salt – get topped off by a streusel you will want to eat not just on this bread, but on everything.  Walnut pieces, more oats, cinnamon for flavor and flour for texture, enough butter to hold things together, and the crowning touch: roughly chopped dried apples that, when baked, dehydrate even more into crispy, gloriously tart-sweet candy. I’m already imagining it on oatmeal, or pancakes, or baked on its own into a take on granola.

Food Blog October 2013-2699This is a moist loaf, and hearty, but not particularly dense. It can’t quite support its own weight, which means slices collapse easily on themselves because they are groaning under the quantity and size of the apples. It is also not terrifically sweet. I was aiming for a breakfast or a mid-morning snack kind of loaf. If you want something more dessert-like, or if you just have a determined sweet-tooth, try increasing the quantity of brown sugar by a few tablespoons.

 

* This morning’s meteorological news, however, may have made a liar out of me.

Food Blog October 2013-2707

Sweet potato apple oatmeal bread
Adapted from Flour Child and Eat the Love
makes one large loaf
For bread:
1 ½ cups flour
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup butter (8 tablespoons or 1 stick)
½ cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
½ cup brown sugar
1 cup baked, mashed sweet potato (from one medium)
2 apples, peeled, cored, and cut into generous ½ inch pieces (I used Granny Smiths)
For streusel:
2 tablespoons oats
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup roughly chopped walnuts
¼ cup roughly chopped dried apple rings
2 tablespoons softened or melted butter

 

  • If you have not already baked your sweet potato, preheat your oven to 400F, pierce the flesh of the sweet potato a few times with a knife or the tines of a fork, and bake until the potato is evenly soft – anywhere from 35-60 minutes, depending on the size of the root.  When done, remove from the oven and cool completely before halving lengthwise and mashing the flesh. Discard the skin (or just eat it – it’s sweet and soft and good for you!).
  • Turn the oven down to 350F (or, if you haven’t just baked a sweet potato, preheat it to 350F) and butter, grease, or spray a loaf pan.  Set aside.
  • Begin by browning the butter. Melt your ½ cup of butter in a small pot over medium-low heat. As it melts, it will foam and sizzle a bit and some scummy stuff will appear on the surface. That’s okay. Water is evaporating and leaving us with a more concentrated product. After a while, little brown bits will begin to form on the bottom. This is what we want, but watch carefully – it takes a matter of seconds for butter to go from perfectly brown to burned. When the brown bits are nice and toasty, turn off the heat and set aside to cool.
  • While the butter cools, it’s a good time to make your streusel so you’re prepared later. In a small bowl, combine all streusel ingredients except the butter and whisk lightly together with a fork. Add butter and toss with the fork again or with your fingers until the mixture begins to stick together in clumps. Set aside.
  • Now, back to the bread. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. I like to use a whisk for this – it aerates the flour and evenly disperses the leavening agents.
  • In a large bowl (or the bowl of your standing mixer), combine the buttermilk, eggs, brown sugar, and mashed sweet potato. Add the brown butter and beat until a soupy, homogenous mixture is formed.
  • Add the dry ingredients to this wet mixture in two batches, beating just enough to combine after each. Once the flour mixture is incorporated and you have a thick, stiff batter, fold in the apples using a stiff spatula. It will seem like there are too many for the quantity of batter, but don’t worry. It will all work out.
  • Scrape the batter, which might seem more like just battered apple cubes, into the loaf pan.  Tap it once or twice on the counter to release air bubbles and help it settle a bit.
  • Pack on the streusel.
  • Bake in a preheated 350F oven for 1 hour and 30 minutes, or until the topping is deeply bronzed and a toothpick or knife inserted in the center of the bread comes out with just a few moist crumbs. Since the size and juiciness of your apple chunks may vary, check for doneness the first time after an hour, so you can gauge how much more time you might need.
  • If your bread is not done yet but outlier edges of dried apple or walnut threaten to burn, treat this like you’d treat a pie crust: tent the offending areas loosely with aluminum foil to keep them from getting too dark.
  • Cool completely before attempting to slice or remove from loaf pan.  Trust me.