Stay at Stove Dad

Creamy Mushroom Bruschetta: A Guest Post

I was recently interviewed by Paul Kidwell, a public relations consultant and freelance writer, for an article about men and cooking on the Good Men Project website. It was a pleasure to hear from Kidwell, who lives in Boston with his wife and son, a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Boston College. Kidwell told me that “he thinks about food – its preparation and consumption – about every two seconds, and is happiest when in the kitchen making a meal for his family.”

Naturally, I wanted to hear more, and he was kind enough to send me a beautiful guest post. I like it for two reasons. One, I love mushrooms; and two, my kids are still very young, and I can only imagine what it will be like when they are in college. It kind of makes me misty-eyed, frankly, but I’ll stop. Here’s his guest post.

Christmas Help

The emails started coming in early December; finding my In Box at the oddest hours of the morning. 2:17, 3:47, 4:12 was when my son, Songwen, who is a Boston College sophomore, decided to take a break from one of his many all-night study excursions in preparation for final exams and end-of-term papers to send me notes requesting that I make certain dishes during his semester break. The subject lines read like a menu from a restaurant specializing in warm, cozy comfort food asking for dishes such as lobster paella, beef stew, mushroom cassoulet, Tuscan white bean soup, and veal marsala.  I had to laugh when I thought of his classmates who were probably also sharing the same pre-dawn hours dreading upcoming tests of their own academic mettle, while my boy has visions of shimmering garlic, bubbling  stews, and simmering soups dance in his head. He is nothing if not my child when it comes to sharing my passion for cooking and eating good food; something I schooled him on at an early age. 

And this Christmas he will not only enjoy eating the meals, but also join me in the kitchen in their preparation; a greater gift I cannot imagine.

For his first meal I am planning on making Pasta Alla Carbonara, Tuscan white bean soup, roasted asparagus and creamy mushroom bruschetta. The first three are classic dishes and everyone has their own recipe. The bruschetta is a recent find from a feature in the Wall Street Journal. It comes from April Bloomfield, chef/owner of New York’s Spotted Pig.

Creamy Mushroom Bruschetta

• 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra as needed
• 1 pound mushrooms (chanterelle, maitake or king trumpet), sliced into ½-inch pieces
• Salt
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped (about 1 tablespoon)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 3 tablespoons roughly chopped flat leaf parsley
• 1/4 cup crème fraîche
• 2 tablespoons finely sliced chives
• 4 (¾-inch) slices rye bread

1. Set a large, heavy pan over medium heat. Add 3 tablespoons oil. Once very hot, add mushrooms and a pinch of salt. Sauté them, stirring from time to time, until browned and tender, about 6 minutes. Once mushrooms cook down, traces of their juices should streak the pan. If too dry, deglaze with splashes of water.

2. Stir in garlic, butter and parsley. Cook until garlic is golden, 3-4 minutes. Season to taste with salt. Remove pan from heat. Stir in crème fraîche and chives until evenly distributed.

3. Set another pan over medium-high heat. Once hot, add a slick of oil and lay in bread. Toast both sides until crisp and golden, 1-2 minutes per side.

4. Whisk together 2 tablespoons oil and lemon juice. Place arugula in large bowl and toss to lightly coat with dressing. Season with salt.

5. Spoon mushroom topping over toasts. Serve bruschetta with salad.

Late Autumn Sangria Recipe

In my item about Progressive Dinners, a month or so ago, I mentioned that I would post some of the great recipes for the food and drink that was served that night. In the holiday spirit, I present a recipe for Sangria, served by a dad who used to be a professional chef, so he knows what he is talking about. It's an autumnal recipe, and even though the temperature is dropping, trees are lighting, and carolers are out, it is still autumn. He does mentions glüwein, or mulled wine, in his intro, though, so I'll have to see if he has a recipe for that. It might be more appropriate for the coming months (and if you have a good glüwein recipe, be sure to let me know).

Autumn Sangria

Sangria is a great way to use bottles of wine that have been opened but not finished. A wise restaurant will use all of the opened by-the-glass bottles from the previous day to make a house sangria or similar punch e.g. glüwein, resulting in consistently fresh wines by-the glass (I hate it when I get served a glass of wine in a restaurant that was clearly opened days ago.) This is an autumn adaptation of the Spanish classic.

Many sangria recipes specify wine varietals, but due to the amount of sweeteners and adjuncts, I feel that this is irrelevant. The only exception is over-oaked wines, which I feel are inappropriate for all occasions.

The purpose of making sangria is to use the ingredients at ones disposal; including, but not limited to, the season and one's preferences. The following recipe is only a framework from which to work. The crucial ingredients after the wine are the sugar, orange juice, and citrus to provide a balance of acidity and sweetness.

 

Sangria

•       Approximately one 750 ml bottle of red wine (mixing in some white wine is fine too)
•       1 cup spiced simple syrup (see below)
•       1/2 cup orange juice
•       1/2 cup brandy
•       1/4 cup Triple Sec
•       2 juice oranges, cut into thin half slices
•       1 lemon, cut into thin half slices
•       1 red apple, halved, cored and cut into large dice
•       1 red pear, halved, cored and cut into large dice
•       1 cup sparkling apple cider (can substitute Sprite)

Combine all the ingredients, best if allowed to macerate overnight. Add the sparkling apple cider just before serving. Serve over ice.

Spiced Simple Syrup

•       2 cups water
•       1 cup sugar
•       1 cinnamon stick
•       ½ teaspoon whole cloves
•       1 teaspoon whole allspice
•       5 whole star anise
•       2 slices fresh ginger
•       Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

To make the spiced simple syrup

Place all of the ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer until reduced by half. Allow to cool and strain.

Who Does the Shopping?

I was contacted recently by a Chicago-based marketing agency named Upshot that has been studying the food-buying habits of men and women. They prepared this fascinating infographic, and I thought I'd share it with you (I'm not an Internet expert, so if the image isn't showing at a legible size, you can also download it here), and I'm interested to hear how it compares to your experiences. Who does the shopping in your house? The man or the woman?

The Return of the Cioppino

Once, a little over a decade ago, at a time when the Fulton Fish Market was planning its move from its long-term home in lower Manhattan to its current location in the Bronx, I was approached by a literary agent with a book idea: write a history of the market, with the help of a fishmonger who worked there. He put me in touch with a fishmonger, and we expanded the concept to include recipes from his fellow purveyors. We were going to make it a cookbook.

We had a few meetings, and I started to work on the book. Many sleepless nights ensued, when I would get out of bed at 3 a.m. to catch the tail end of the market, which runs while the rest of the world is in bed (or dance clubs, depending on your idea of fun).

Soon, though, it became apparent that the idea of making a cookbook with recipes from fishmongers was fatally flawed. Fishmongers, for the most part, don’t cook. There were plenty of suggestions to put Old Bay on things, but that hardly made a cookbook. I dropped the project.

The fishmonger did leave me with one of his recipes, though. Well it wasn’t really a recipe, but a suggestion for one. He liked to make a cioppino, or fish stew, that he declared got its name because it was a catch of the day kind of thing, made with what ever you could “chop up” and throw in it.

I’ve since learned that the Times (and Wikipedia) beg to differ. It’s some kind of San Francisco thing, according to them, in spite of its Italian-sounding name (it has roots in that country, apparently).

The cioppino came back into my life the other day, when I was visiting a friend, Paul Greenberg, and he made it for dinner. Greenberg, the author of “Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food,” knows his way around the kitchen and the fruits of the sea. Here’s how he prepared it:

"Four Fish" Cioppino

 

For the base:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 onions chopped
• herb bouquet in cheese cloth consisting of parsley, thyme, oregano, bay, white peppercorns
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1 cup chopped leaks (but I used scallions)
• 2 celery ribs (but I used cauliflower ribs)
• 3/4 lb mushrooms sliced (but I used 2 small potatoes cubed)
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 cup chopped tomatoes
• 4 cups Fumet (fish stock)

You fry all this up and douse it with wine, let the wine boil off and add the fumet.  Boil for about 15 mins then let sit for 30-60 mins (the longer the better)

For the seafood

The recipe I was working from calls for clams, scallops, mussels, shrimp and crabmeat.  All I had on hand was shrimp and striped bass.  I shelled the shrimp and boiled the shells in a metal strainer in the base to give it a little more flavor.  I poached the seafood in the base for abou5 3-5 minutes until a little underdone assuming it would cook more on the stove.

Notes: This is adapted from adapted from Rick Moonen's "Fish without a Doubt." Details are on page 317 of the book, and I have to say if a fish expert like Greenberg has Moonen's volume on his shelf, you should too. And if I was going to mess with Moonen's recipe as much as Greenberg did, I'd have no qualms about substituting chicken stock for the fumet. Here's how the final dish looked:

 

 

Grandma's Applesauce: A Guest Post

Once, when I was a boy, I wrote a report for school about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and I’ve been fascinated by the span ever since. Now that I live in the borough, I’ve had many chances to cross it, and I still marvel at it. Just the other day, I had an opportunity to talk with Clifford W. Zink, an historian whose latest book, “The Roebling Legacy,” traces the history of the family that built the bridge.

 “The Roebling Legacy” is a marvelous book, full of details about the family’s technological innovations and many pictures of their various accomplishments beyond the Borough of Kings. Clifford will be at the PowerHouse Arena, a bookstore near the bridge, on next Tuesday, November 29, at 7 p.m. to talk about his book.

In the meantime,  Clifford, who lives in New Jersey and who cooks for his wife and two teenage children, was kind enough to share his grandmother’s recipe for applesauce. It seems like just the kind of thing to make and serve for Thanksgiving, though it might be a bit late in the week to whip up a batch. In that case, it’s the kind of thing to occupy the weekend following the holiday, when everyone is still around and looking for something to do.

Grandma's Applesauce

Grandma thoroughly spoiled my bother and I while we were growing up.  She had emigrated from Germany to Manhattan in 1906 at the age of 18, and went shopping every day for fresh foods.  Her soups, chicken paprikas, and wiener schnitzel were delicious all year round, but summers were special when she made her crepes with berries and her open-topped peach cake with a soft crust.  In the fall she woke us up for school with the aroma of her apple fritters frying on the stove, and after school her thin crust apple pies were beautiful to behold and scrumptious to eat.  When Mom asked her years later for her recipes, Grandma replied, "What recipes?  You just put in a little of this and a little of that, and you taste it and you know when it's right." 

My kids love applesauce I make based on Grandma's, and the here's the first go at writing it down:

Start with a dozen or more fresh, uncoated apples, about 3/4s of them golden delicious and the rest slightly tart macintosh or winesap.  You can mix in other varieties but try to keep the 3-1 sweet-to-tart ratio.  

Peel, core and cube the apples, and place them in a deep pot.  Add about 3/4 of an inch of fresh apple cider (a little more if you're using more apples), cover the pot and cook on low to medium heat.  Check every few minutes to make sure that the cider is lightly bubbling without boiling away.  If the cider gets too low, add just enough to keep about 3/4 of an inch in the bottom of the pot, and keep the pot covered.  After about 30 minutes or so, depending on the amount and mix of apples, crush the apple cubes repeatedly with a potato masher or similar instrument.  If the mix is a bit dry, you can add just a little cider.  Keep crushing until you get to a consistency you like, and then it's ready to eat, warm, plain, on ice cream or yogurt.  And eating it cold later on brings out other delicious flavors.  

No sugar or honey, please, just taste the natural sweetness of the apples and cider.  I used to add some raisins, and a touch of cinnamon, and you can, too, but now I like to taste just the serendipitous sweetness of mixing different types of apples.  As Grandma said, "You know when it's right."

Progressive Dinner Report: 1 Story, Many Mouthfuls

I've received some great responses to my call for stories about progressive dinners. My favorite thus far comes from Rebecca Christiansen, who shared the following tale. I like it best because it is full of mouthwatering food, and it addresses my idea of Progressive Dinners for Progress. Here's Rebecca's story:

My friends and I hosted a four-course progressive dinner last December. They handled the main courses because each and every one of them fancies themselves a "Top Chef." But I know my limits, so I did dessert. 

We had chopped liver and pumpernickel rounds, the fresh kind and if you don't understand chopped liver as an appetizer I will just assure you it’s a Jewish thing. When it’s freshly made, it’s so insanely delicious. The woman also made her own pretzel sticks and cheese sticks and a really good Fontina cheese fondue with some gruyere overtones. The bread we dipped was homemade challah that had been lightly toasted because she (the appetizer queen) had a phobia about mushy bread and when you use egg bread in fondue you come dangerously close, know what I mean? 

The main course was at my brother's house, and he fancies himself the maker of the world's finest pot roast. This time he did a variation where everyone was given a ramekin and the pot roast was topped with piped rows of garlic mashed potatoes and feta cheese (mixed together) and broiled. When you broke through the potato crust the scent was breathtaking. My husband took mine and finished it. The ramekins were filled with fresh roasted parsnip, onion, carrots, and really good brisket that was so tender it was melt in your mouth time. The side dish with the pot roast was a squash gratin, and it was so good. 

Then we went to my best friend's house for a seafood course of fish stew full of cod, halibut, and scallops, as well as onions, potatoes, and carrots and some yellow corn from my friend’s stash...she gets it from a farm and fast-freezes it so we can eat it all winter long. (Yellow corn is real corn and not the weird hybrid white corn that tastes just like sugar!!) 

The stew was served in a freshly made sourdough bowl (13 different sourdough bowls!!). It might have been very cliché, but it easy to chew on. The broth had some saffron in it, so it was golden, and made a very pretty contrast with the bread. 

The dessert was at my house and it included three-decker brownies. That is a brownie base, a caramel layer, and then a sugar coated pecan crust.  I served this with a Philadelphia Cream Cheese ice cream. Yes, you read that right—it’s creamy but has more of a tang than just regular vanilla bean ice cream, and hence is less boring.  On top of everything, I offered a Callebaut chocolate fudge sauce. It was on the side, and my friends started putting spoonfuls of the fudge sauce in their coffee.

After all this food I didn't eat for a week!!  Well except for the macaroons I sent everyone home with --- I ate about ten of those the next morning because nothing is as good as a homemade macaroon.

Oh, and with reference to your political spectrum idea: I am the only conservative in my group - including my brother. They are all dyed-in-the-wool liberals and we talk about issues, never get name-callish and we love each other dearly.  My husband - he died in July - was the complete liberal hippie. He served in Vietnam for two tours, and then denounced any act of war from then on.  He loved me regardless of my political beliefs. Thanks for the opportunity to recall this evening. It went six hours and I was sooo full!!!.

A Dastardly Halloween Guest Post

My friend Michael McKinley is a father, a cook, and a crime novelist (check out his latest, “The Penalty Killing”), and, in honor of today's holiday, he sent me the following meditation on food and its various uses.

Dining with the Dead: A Ragout of Thoughts on Murder and Food

As we’re now in a week that celebrates the dead through Hallowe’en and All Souls and Saints Days, I got to thinking about food and the dead. I’m not talking about eating your way into the grave or a fatal attack of anaphylaxis, but rather the deliberate use of food as an instrument of killing. It’s a question that interests me, because I write crime novels.

I have not yet fictionally killed anyone with food, but I suspect that I will, one day, because killing with food is much more diabolical than other murders for one reason: food is the first thing that mom gives you, after giving you life. You could say that food is a motherhood issue, and as such, sacred. Of course, women have long used food to dispatch enemies—the Victorians made a cultural industry out of the female poisoner – but the idea of using food to kill, or to set up a killing, is one that plays on the bred-in-the-womb trust we have toward those who feed us.

Eating is primal, and we have an equally primal sense that mealtime should be safe, a place where the person feeding you has only your well-being at heart. Which, of course, is exactly why using food, or the idea of it, to commit murder is so bloody sinister.

One of most gruesome foodie murders in fiction actually uses food to take revenge against mom. In Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare’s dramatic anticipation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the title character is a Roman general whose pride and honor leads to a stage littered with dismembered bodies. When Titus kills the two surviving sons of Tamora, Queen of the Goths, in revenge for their rape of his daughter (he has already killed her other son), he holds a banquet. When a character inquires why the two lads aren’t at the feast, Titus, dressed as a chef, exclaims:

Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point.

Then he kills Tamora. Some host.

Michael has promised to write up a longer list of the use of food as a weapon in literature, and you can check that out here. In the meantime, here’s his recipe for Dead Easy Fried Chicken. According to him, “It’s sublime, and idiot proof. And so simple you think I'm missing stuff. It is also an aphrodisiac.”

Dead Easy Fried Chicken

Take your favourite pieces of chicken-- bone in or boneless, doesn't matter --and lay them out on a sheet of wax paper.

Roll them in seasoned salt and pepper-- liberally, but not so much that their skins are totally covered or you'll die of salt poisoning!

Roll them in flour so that their skins are totally covered!

Fry them in 2 cups of vegetable oil (Canola works very well) until they turn golden brown (a bit longer for bone-in).

Place on paper towel and pat dry, then serve with potato salad, coleslaw, and cold lager. If making for a beloved, expect to be most gratefully rewarded.

 

Empyt-Nest Soup: A Guest Post

As I mentioned last week, things have been a bit crazed around the house. Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. Do you know what it’s like trying to find a pediatric dentist in Brooklyn the night before Rosh Hashanah? Don’t even ask why we needed a pediatric dentist at midnight—just know that everything is more or less fine.

 

And they improved markedly yesterday, when I received this guest post from a remarkable writer, scientist, father, and cook, Saverio Monachino, the cousin of my brother-in-law, John Rando. I met Saverio last Thanksgiving, and we’ve stayed in touch since then. Here, he reflects on what it means to have your children go off to college, something that’s very far from my mind at the moment. 

 

 

Recently, there has been so much going on in the world—the Arab Spring, the U.S. bond rating downgrade, debt crisis here there and abroad—but the most important issue for my wife, Rachel, and I struck much closer to home: both of our children would out of the house and be off to college this fall.

 

Our eldest daughter is entering her third year at university, and our empty-nest disease really began its insidious encroachment when our son was accepted at the college of his choice, earlier this year. The syndrome made its presence felt whenever Rachel and I were alone together.  At those times we would look at each other and, without needing to share a single word, know exactly what was on each others’ mind—Why do parents only get their children for 18 years when the rest of the whole world gets them for so much longer?  

 

It is said that the stronger the bond between parent and child become… well we were bracing for the worst.  Our daughter had been out of the house two years and so we thought it would help ease us into the situation, but as the days grew closer to our son’s departure, the storm clouds became more menacing.

 

What most people don’t realize is this; the English language has issues too.  ‘Empty nest’ does not mean the place one calls home is empty.  All you have to do is look up from your dinner plate to see a person across the table.  The trick is to reengage all those processes by which you lived before the storks flew by.  It is easier said than done.  Apparently our children must have taken an on-line course or something because they both had a good handle on the developing situation.  On our last meal together, before we had to drive them off (three hours from home… in opposite directions), they gave us a care package. 

 

Where did the care package come from?  Well, all summer long I was interrogated by one or the other of my children. 

 

“What are you guys going to do together when we’re gone?”  One or the other would ask.

“Together… well let’s see.  Oh I know; she can help cut the grass.”

“No, dad I mean fun stuff.  You and mom have to find some fun activities to share.”

“Well football season is almost here and...”

 

The package they put together contained flip flops, because, they said, “we want you to go to the beach together, just the two of you.” It also had a movie for us to use on a ‘date night’ and there was a deck of cards with a caveat thrown in: “NO Solitaire!” There was also a home spa treatment, which I do hope was just for the wife. 

 

Most importantly, it included a homemade cookbook that my daughter, a vegetarian, had put together from recipes on the Internet. She called it, “Food From Around the World… For Every Day of the Week,” because, “You need to spend time together.  Explore new things you both like and rediscover old.”

 

We love to travel and embrace regional idiosyncrasies (we have lived in Houston Texas and Montreal Quebec and it doesn’t get more diverse than that) and, we have relatives who live throughout Europe and Australia as well as friends in various parts of the globe, so this gift was perfect.

 

Saverio wanted to share the recipe for Mediterranean Monday, a Greek Lentil Soup. After tasting the soup, it immediately brought back memories of his mother’s lentil soup, and since she was from Sicily he gave it a new name.

 

Mediterranean Lentil soup

 

• 1 cup red lentils (any lentils will work in a pinch)
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 1 pinch safflower spice (or Saffron if you cannot find safflower)
• ½ cup chopped white onion (though a Vidalia onion will work too, if it is a true Vidalia gown in Vidalia Georgia)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon cumin (of course more can be added to taste)
• ½ cup of very thin noodles (angel hair works)
• 1 lemon, juiced

 

 

In a 4-quart pot add 5 cups of water.  Add the salt, olive oil, safflower, chopped onion and the lentils.

 

Keep the pot under high heat until the water boils then reduce to medium heat. 

 

After 15 to 20 minutes the lentils should start to get soft (mushy?).  How will you know when they change from hard to ‘ready for the next ingredient’?   Good question.   I remember my mother cooking in the kitchen and she would monitor the progress of the dish by tasting it. 

 

Once the lentils are no longer hard, add the cumin and the noodles.

 

This next part is very, very difficult.  Cook for five minutes, or until the noodles are done.  You will know they are ready if you taste it… again.  (When I was young I was always amazed at how my mother and grandmother would spend so much time in the kitchen and yet when dinner was served they were never hungry.)*

Add the lemon juice for a little extra zest, again… to your own taste. 

 

 

*One qualification, the word ‘done’ can take on slightly different meanings so perhaps ‘done to taste’ should be used instead.

 

Note: Because this recipe came from our care package, it calls for two cooks.  The cooks are labeled e.g. cook 1 and cook 2. Using this method, Cook #1 begins to share events from his day… the more details the better the results, while water boils for the lentils. Then, at the end, once the table is set and the food served, Cook #2 talks about her day while Cook #1 eats.  Believe me, it works best this way.

 

Après le Déluge: Mushroom Risotto

It has been raining so much these days in NYC that I think we’ll soon have mushrooms growing on the sidewalks and in the subways, and this idea reminded me of a guest post that my friend Michael Dorf, a father of two boys and one girl and the owner of the fantastic club City Winery, sent me last year about his risotto. I was too busy with “Man with a Pan” to run it, but things are quieter now.

Mushroom risotto is one of my favorite foods, though I don’t often have the chance to make it these days. Nina, my eldest, has become deathly afraid of mushrooms, and her younger sister has not been immune to Nina’s fears. This, despite the fact that one of the earliest things Nina ever said was “Quak o Van" (a.k.a Coq au Vin), but that’s another story. Here’s Michael’s take on mushroom risotto.

What I like about mushroom risotto, and frankly risotto in general with a million variations, is that it is a meal that requires total focus for a period of time and really requires tuning out the rest of the world.  And since there is constant stirring with one hand and chopping with the other, it appears as you are really busy, which means at dinner parties, it is fair game to not be that involved in conversation and it allows for some personal time which is rare.  Those 60 minutes or so of time I value highly, for I live a frenetic life, busy, always feeling like a worker ant in my life, back in the day at the Knitting Factory or currently at City Winery building something, dealing with artists, staff, investors, what have you and not having time to myself.  So, I relish the hour of focused stirring and spacing out, sipping wine, while it appears I am slaving over the stove.

The actual cooking is really simple.  I start with a good chicken stock, which can be a standalone meal if you’re sick. I use a whole chicken, so I have lots of fat in the liquid, along with carrots, celery, bay leaf, tons of salt and pepper.  It is best to start this a few hours before, so that the chicken has fully disintegrated in the pot.  This should be the kind of soup your mom would make when you were sick.  Then strain it to get the bones and big chunks out and you have an amazing broth to use.

Then I take my biggest pan and fill it with olive oil and finely chopped Garlic.  I get that nice and hot and pour in a lot of Arborio rice. This is measured by eye, as the amount of liquid (the chicken soup) is some ratio of the rice, which I would say is either small, medium, big, and really big.  

Quickly, I get all the rice covered in the olive oil and in several seconds it is cooking hard, turn it all over and within a minute, before it would turn brown, pour in about a glass or little more of a white acidic wine--dry chardonnay is the best.  I really try and use a white burgundy and depending on how wealthy I am feeling, I gravitate towards a Montrachet.  However, you don’t want to use much for cooking, rather save it for drinking during the cooking. Just pour enough in the pan to cover all the rice. Then, you have the rest the bottle to consume during the next 45 minutes of cooking.  

The wine makes a great sound when poured in the hot pan and if there is an audience, it is impressive, and it cooks off very quickly.  This adds a subtle flavor, as is really the first liquid getting into the dry rice.  Very quickly, ten seconds or so later, take a cup of the broth and pour over the rice and using a large wooden spoon to mix and make sure to scrape every rice piece into the overall mixture.  I use a big coffee cup with handle to get a lot of liquid quickly, but a proper large soup ladle could work. 

Constant stirring is the key for the next 25 to 35 minutes, where you wait for the liquid to absorb into the rice and just as it looks like the rice will start to burn, you pour in another cup or two of broth.  You keep doing this maybe 10 times or so, depending on how absorbed the rice is. You can make this for 4 to 25 people pretty easy, and the constant stirring and focus on this is key.  30 seconds spent talking to someone about their kids and you’re screwed; it will cause the rice and stick to the bottom, start to burn, and put a burnt flavor into the entire dish, a real bummer if you used a grand cru Montrachet...  When the rice has absorbed all the liquid it can, it is ready, with a slightly silky texture.  Taste to confirm it is cooked a much as you like.

In another pan, about midway through the cooking of the rice, you start to sauté the vegetables. I use lots of garlic, salt and pepper, as this will add a nice flavor into the big starch pile next door.  I love putting a lot of veggies in as it can serve as your vegetable dish. Mushrooms are my favorite based on what looked freshest at the market, followed by yellow and red peppers, just because they look nice.  But zucchini, peas, spinach, all work well; there are a million directions to take this. 

The sautéed veggies are started while the risotto is cooking, so that it stays hot when the time comes to mix it all together.  When cooking purely for adults, you can use fewer veggies to make it more elegant, but that is not my reputation.  When cooking for the family, I take the chance to sneak the veggies in, and usually use fewer mushroom and more corn, peas, and zucchini.

The plating and delivery is key for both the presentation and flavoring.  The rice is easily scooped into a nice round pile in the middle of plate.  Then I sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the pile, allowing some to fall on the plate which looks like a light sprinkle and something that a restaurant would do.  Then I dust chopped parsley on top.  I think it is a critical flavor to add to the mix, but usually the kids don't like the "green leafy thing,” so I leave it off theirs. 

For years, we sang the "Rice Aroni, the San Francisco treat" song when giving it to the kids, and they loved it from the time they could eat solids.  As they turned six, they got a little more picky, but would eat it depending on the veggies, and then after nine or ten, they got back into eating all versions of the theme.  Another nice thing is that this lasts for a few days in the fridge and can be heated and eaten later; thus, I always cook too much. 

Real Men Cook and Garden: A Guest Post

I'm off for a bit of a vacation (and I'm not sure about Internet access when I get there), but before I go I want to talk gardening. My new apartment has Eastern and Southern exposure, and friend of mine recently told me that I could grow anything there. He suggested taking out the dining-room table and putting in raised beds, but he's such an avid gardener that he once commandeered a shared patio in his Manhattan building and put in enough plants to start a small farm, if not a hip new restaurant devoted to greens.

I opted to start small. I bought a little spearmint plant the other day, and it's been doing okay, though the leaves are going black on the plant. Is that supposed to happen? Isn't it practically a weed? Shouldn't it survive on its own?

When I was a child, we had a little garden in the back corner of our quarter-acre suburban lot. One summer my mother tried growing zucchini, and she suceeded—in a big way. That thing grew like a weed! We had zuchini bread, zucchini sides, zucchini tea, zucchini-everything for about six weeks.

I don't know if I'll ever get that proficient, but gardening can lead to a great way of life, as this guest post by Jamie Robertson shows. He's the main cook in his household. He lives with his wife and daughter in the beautiful interior of British Columbia Canada. He was fortunate to have been taught how to cook in his teens and is now passing on that knowledge to his daughter Hannah. He is thrilled to be able to work with his wife Kia in their two companies as the vice-president of Today I Ate A Rainbow (healthy eating tools for kids) and president of their web design firm Cutting Edge Concepts. Here is his story:

I think one of my favorite things about cooking is the ability to take raw produce and make it into something delicious. Not to say that raw produce isn't delicious in its own right, but taking fresh items and cooking them until they all blend into a delicious sauce or dish is a beautiful thing. I'm glad that my parents taught me how to cook when I was a teenager as it has served me well.  I am now teaching my daughter all the things I've learned and I'm sure one day she will be grateful that she learned how to prepare healthy meals for herself!  Equal to my love of cooking is my interest in organic gardening.

Last year we did some container gardening on our deck it got us hooked.  This year we've built three organic raised bed gardens.  We're growing tomatoes, zucchini, onions, lettuce, kale, cucumbers and strawberries. Once the garden is in full swing, I'll be able to go into the back yard with my 8 year old daughter and pick the veggies that we need for the evening meal. I think it's very important to teach our kids where their food comes from! It's sad that there are kids that believe that produce just comes from a supermarket. This illusion creates a huge disconnect between the earth and our mouths. By growing a garden as a family, we are able to keep our fingers connected to the earth and be proud of the food we have grown.

One of our favorite meals is pasta with a homemade tomato and zucchini sauce. We were able to get a couple of small, yellow and green zucchinis from our own garden as well as some sweet basil and oregano, we bought the rest of the ingredients at our local farmers market. While at the farmer's market we picked out a sweet white onion, some tasty garlic, roma tomatoes, and another zucchini.

This is the recipe that I have created for our homemade pasta sauce. The sauce is extremely simple and carries a ton of flavor. There's no need to add any extra sweeteners because the zucchini gets so sweet when it's cooked! I like to use a stainless steel pan with a thick bottom for nice even cooking. Here's the recipe - I hope you enjoy it!

Tomato-and-Zucchini Pasta Sauce

• 1/2 large white onion - finely diced
• 3 or 4 cloves garlic - finely chopped
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 or 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 leaves of sweet basil - finely chopped
• 1/2 tablespoon oregano - finely chopped
• sprig of parsley - finely copped
• 6 large roma tomatos - diced
• 2 medium zucchini (green or yellow or both!)
• 1 cup of organic chicken stock (or organic chicken bouillon)

1. Heat up a 12 inch sauce pan on medium heat on the stovetop and then add the olive oil.
2. Once the oil gets hot, drop in the diced onions. Cook until translucent or lightly browned and then add the garlic.
3. Stir in the basil, oregano and parsley as well as a pinch of salt to start to draw out the liquid from the onions
4. Stir in the zucchini and lightly cook them for 2 minutes
5. Add the roma tomatoes and stir well
6. Reduce the heat to medium low and cover stirring occasionally
7. Let the tomatoes and zucchini reduce until the tomatoes are no longer in chunks
8. Add the chicken stock
9. Add salt and pepper to taste
10. Reduce the heat to simmer and leave uncovered to thicken the sauce for about 20 to 30 minutes

We put ours on a bed of Kamut pasta with a side of fresh Romaine lettuce in a tasty Caesar salad.