Suppli for Risotto Milanese

A couple of years ago, a good friend posted a Milanese Risotto recipe, with a little teaser for a suppli, or way to reuse leftovers that make them a bit different. We’d never made it until a couple of weeks ago, because leftover risotto doesn’t have a very high survival rate around here. Finally, we had enough left over to do it, when we finally thought of it. It works like this.

Scoop a tbsp or slightly more cold risotto, shape it into a ball (or disc, like we did since we pan fried), and dip it into a whisked egg, then give it a roll in some breadcrumbs. Fry until crispy and golden-brown. I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to with them after that, as far as serving them goes – they didn’t really survive much past getting them out of the pan. These are just that good. I think I dipped a few into some reheated tomato sauce, much like one would with fried polenta sticks, and thought it was ok.

Hummus Frustration = Success.

Ok. I think we’ve posted about Hummus in the past, and how we’ve had trouble hitting on something we really like.

One of the first things you learn when wanting to make hummus, is that cookbooks and cooking shows always tell you not to use canned chickpeas. In the past, we have cooked our own, often dramatically long than supposedly necessary, and still ended up with texture and flavor we didn’t like. Out of frustration I grabbed a couple cans (15oz x 2) of chickpeas, drained and rinsed them. They went into the food processor, followed by about 2tbsp of tahini. Juice of 4 small lemons followed, as did salt and garlic powder. Light olive oil was added, probably about 1 cup in all.

When it was all said and done, this yielded a surprisingly good result, and the texture was much more like what we’ve gotten in local restaurants.

This makes me wonder if in fact a lot of the local places are cheating and using canned chickpeas. It may not be ‘right’ but this result was far, far more like what we’ve had and liked in various restaurants here.

So to recap:
2×15oz cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Olive Oil, approx 1 cup
Tahini, approx 2 tbsp
Lemon Juice, probably around 3/4 of a cup – 4 small lemons.
Salt, to taste, probably 3/4 tsp or so.
Garlic powder, to taste. Probably 1/2 tsp.

Process the chickpeas and most of the tahini, then about half of the lemon juice, and some salt and garlic powder. Drizzle in oil until the chickpeas soften and start to get creamy. Check seasoning before you add the rest of the oil/lemon juice/tahini, so you can control the texture and not end up with something too runny. Add the remaining in

On the whole, not perfect perhaps, but certainly nicer than we’d managed in the past.

We topped the hummus with sweet Hungarian paprika and Turkish red pepper.

EDIT: Note. This recipe needs some water added. Most of the restaurant hummus around here is a rather softer consistency than what this recipe made. Katie did some reading online, and found several recipes that called for some water. We have a bit less than half of the hummus left in the fridge, and I added about 1/4 cup of water to it and stirred it in. Bingo. We have a much softer, wetter, scoopable hummus, rather than the slightly gooey version prior to this.

In the future we’ll definitely want to start with at least a quarter cup of water while processing the chickpeas, and try to reduce the oil some. In truth, I suspect we’ll end up using half to 3/4 of a cup of water, and less oil overall for 30 oz of canned chickpeas.

EDIT 2:
I’ve made another two batches of hummus. The end result is this. Juice of three lemons, 1.5tbsp tahini, 2 cans of chickpeas, 3/4 of a cup of water, and 3 tbsp of olive oil. This makes a very tasty hummus with dramatically less oil.

Will I still make the original recipe? Oh yes… It is wonderful, but the oil amount is absolutely ridiculous. The revised recipe doesn’t lack for oil, since most of the time it’s going to be topped with paprika, turkish pepper, and olive oil anyway.

Weird labeling.

Now I generally will be the first person to say that KC Masterpiece is a symbol of all that sucks about Kansas City style BBQ, and will also generally be the first to point out that KC Masterpiece only wishes it were the dominant BBQ restaurant in KC. That instead has to go to Fiorella’s, Arthur Bryant’s, Gate’s or something like that. None of those sauces are nearly as sweet as KC Masterpiece, and generally have a nice shot of black pepper in them as well, particularly of a coarse grind. Some are even rather vinegary.

Anyway, I went to a visit a couple of good friends, to watch the KU/UNC basketball game. I took buffalo wings, and took the easy way out. Bottled sauce, plus frozen wings, thaw, marinate, grill. One of my friends doesn’t like buffalo wing sauce, but does like Honey BBQ, extra sweet.

So, off I go to Dillon’s (A Kansas subsidiary of Kroger) and grab a bottle of KC Masterpiece Honey BBQ sauce. I think. The front label and cap label say honey bbq. The back label says Hickory/Brown Sugar BBQ sauce. All of the bottles on the shelf are like this. Good job guys. Really. Maybe the contents of the bottle are supposed to be sort of like Bertie Bott’s jelly beans, and they just put both flavors in. Who knows. They did in fact have hickory brown sugar BBQ sauce bottles, all properly labeled. I grabbed one of the Honey BBQ anyway, and took it home. I’m not sure which sauce was actually in the bottle. I’m thinking it was hickory brown sugar, but can’t really tell. It was a 1lb 12oz bottle, and I used around half the bottle for 1.5lbs of the wings, and added about 1/2 a regular sized bear shaped bottle of honey to the sauce.

The wings all turned out well, the honey bbq ones had a distinct honey flavor and were well received.

The KU/UNC game turned out well for KU fans, despite KU’s midgame attempt to give UNC a free chance to get back in the game. Personally, I’m just happy basketball season is about over, so I can concentrate fully on Manchester United’s Premiership season and Champions League matches, as well as the beginning of the KC Wizards in the MLS.

Obviously this is Chris, rather than Katie the KU student posting this.

If I can remember to do it, I’ll post up some photos of the bottle.

Panzanella

Panzanella is essentially an Italian tomato and bread salad. I grew up eating panzanella at Savute’s in Wichita, before the person who made it passed away and took the recipe with him.

Anyway, Panzanella is, according to one of my cookbooks, a method, not a recipe, and from discussing it with a couple of friends, this seems to be the case in practice as well as theory.

We used 5 tomatos, chopped in about 1 inch pieces (for 4 people, with some left over). Add to the tomatos a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, and around 1/3 of a cup of balsamic vinegar (the cheap stuff, not the 50 year old stuff, obviously), a little salt and ground black pepper, and probably about 10 leaves of basil, chopped. Mix the ingredients together and let sit refrigerated for at least several hours. Oregano would work nicely instead of the basil, indeed, I think that was probably what the Panzanella I grew up with used.

Many panzanella recipes call for using stale bread, rehydrated either by the dressing from the tomatos, or by an elaborate process of soaking the bread in water, squeezing it out, crumbling it, etc.

What we did instead, was to slice about 1″ thick slices of French/Italian bread, drop it in a bowl, cover with about 1/2 cup of the tomato salad and a few tablespoons of the dressing, grate a little parmigiano over it, and serve.

Turkish Hummus

Katie and I really like hummus. What we don’t like is hummus that has a sort of bitter funky flavour to it that a lot of places seem to have. Cafe Istanbul in Wichita has probably the best hummus we’ve ever had. They serve it with olive oil on top, as well as Turkish red pepper (maras biber) and Turkish paprika. I think the big issue with respect to bitterness is the amount of tahini used, as well as the type of olive oil used. You want an oil that is very neutral and mild.

Turkish Hummus

Ingredients
1lb bag of chickpeas/garbanzo beans
2 cloves of garlic
Juice of 3 small-ish lemons, or around half a cup (to taste).
1/4 cup of tahini plus a little more, again, to taste.
salt to taste – probably around 2tsp.
Approximately 1 cup olive oil.

Prepare the chickpeas acorrding to the directions on the bag. We did the quick soak method, then cooked them normally.
Load the chickpeas and garlic into a food processor and puree into paste. Add the lemon juice, then slowly drizzle in the tahini and salt, then the olive oil.

You should check the flavour at least a couple of times while you’re putting the tahini in, to make sure the taste of the tahini isn’t becoming too strong. Then put in the olive oil, and check it every so often to make sure that the hummus isn’t too thick or too thin.

We made the hummus while the chickpeas were still hot, and it had a more or less ok texture, with about 1/4cup of olive oil. We refrigerated it and this morning checked it and it was too solid, and we probably added something like 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of oil, which thinned it out and smoothed the texture as well. When you serve it, top it with the turkish pepper and paprika.

Its really very nice, I strongly recommend it. It is time consuming though. In a hurry, Giada’s cannellini bean dip is a good substitute. If you have time though, this beats the pants off of store bought hummus. Keep in mind however, that this doesn’t have cumin, pine nuts, or anything like that, so it’ll be different than what seems typical for a Lebanese hummus – at least what is popular in a few other Wichita restaurants.

Italian Mountain Recipe 1: Panada

This is the first of a mini-series about the tastes and textures of the part of Italy that is dearest to me, the region from the Brenta mountain range to the spectacular Dolomites of the South Tyrol.

The Panada is essentially bread soup. It is the perfect way to use stale bread–we never throw it away. It can be made in several different ways, but I’ll give here my favorite type.

Ingredients for 2 people:

• Two portions of stale bread–the equivalent of 6-7 slices from a loaf
• A scoop of butter
• Anything you want to throw in–my favorite is mushrooms. Leftovers OK (e.g. yesterday’s chicken breast, cut into small chunks).
• 3 cups of good broth–veg, chicken or beef
• Grated cheese (any kind–Fontina works marvelously)
• Salt & pepper

Cut the bread (or saw it, depending on how hard it is) into big chunks while the butter melts in a casserole. When the butter is melted, add about 80% of the bread + any other ingredient you want to heat up, and stir for about 5 minutes until the bread absorbs the butter and gets a little blonde. Next, add the broth, the salt and the pepper, cover and let simmer for at least 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In the meantime, take the rest of the bread–which you haven’t cooked–and cut it into small crouton-size bites.

Get a nice ladle and pour the Panada into soup-bowls. Cover each portion with croutons and then with grated cheese. The double texture of the soaken, warm bread and the crispy and cooler croutons are going to make an interesting contrast to the mouth.

Note: If desired, once the whole has cooked (minus the croutons), it can be put in a blender and pureed, then returned to the casserole for two minutes, then served. While the taste remains the same, this “cucina povera” dish suddenly takes on the appearance of a something you’d find in a nouveau cuisine restaurant, especially if topped with a couple whole leaves of sage or basil.

Enjoy!

Barbaresco

Review: Giada’s fried polenta

I’m not sure how this one slipped through the cracks, but it did. Katie and I made this last weekend, and it was amazing. As Giada says, the fried polenta sticks are much nicer than french fries, and when accompanied by a nice tomato sauce they are even better. We actually used a ready made polenta, sliced it into rounds, cut the rounds in half, and proceeded as instructed. Wow.

Giada’s Fried Polenta.