Sorry the photo isn’t better – I brightened it up as much as I could. It’s orzo. And corn, and dark greens, loaded with flavor – I mean LOADED. Yes, it has cream in it too. No wonder it’s so good!
Someone asked me just this week why, if I’ve cooked for so many years, do I still go to cooking classes. Surely (they thought) I would know everything there was to know about cooking anything. Perhaps I do know a lot about technique (but not as much as a professional chef, someone who’s gone to culinary school – I’m just a good home cook). But I never tire of finding new ways to cook things. Not methods, but food combos. Like this one – corn added in, plus the greens. I wouldn’t have thought to add cream to orzo, either. But why not? So I go to classes (usually with my dear friend Cherrie who also loves to cook like I do) to learn something new. And we always – always – learn something. I can count on one hand the number of classes I’ve been to over the years where I didn’t want to cook at least one of the items demonstrated. Just recently we went to a class and I knew I’d never make a single one of the dishes. That set of recipes went into the trash. But that’s very, very rare.
All that said, let’s get to this recipe, which was a real winner. It was a Tarla Fallgatter class, and we met in the home of a lovely friend who lives in Laguna Beach and has about a 210° hilltop view of the Pacific Ocean. It was a gorgeous day, but the ambient light in her stone-lined Tuscan-style kitchen was not the best for taking close-up food photos! I’ll be making this orzo one of these days, so I’ll take a better picture.
If you glance at the ingredient list below you’ll see “Mediterranean” herbs. Tarla called for “Mediterranean Spices” which she buys (labeled as such) at a local ethnic market. It’s sold in a little tiny box (about 1 inch square) and she uses it up within a month or so and buys more. She’s buying most of her herbs and spices this way instead of the big jars that end up aging on our pantry shelves. I don’t actually know what is in that boxed combination, but I didn’t think this dish would work so well with the spices from Morocco, for instance (saffron, cumin, lemon, cinnamon) so I interpreted the combination as more Southern European (France, Italy, Spain), which meant herbs not spices. If all you have is thyme, that’s fine. Go easy on the rosemary since it’s so potent. Italian herb mixes would be fine with this too. It only calls for 2 teaspoons of it, anyway.
The fresh corn, cut off the cob, is tossed with the spices and roasted for about 10 minutes in the oven, then you cook the orzo as you would with any pasta, except barely under-done, and combine everything in a big sauté pan, adding the bitter greens along the way, and the cheese as the very last thing. This dish tastes much like risotto – but it’s pasta instead of rice. And yes, there is cream in it. You might be able to use less cream – next time I’d try using half a cup and using more chicken broth instead. It might be just fine!
What I liked: well, once I realized there was cream in it, what can I say? It’s delicious. Creamy for sure, but I loved the flavor combo with the corn, spinach and arugula. All things I love. The Parmesan cheese adds a lot of flavor too – there’s not all that much in it (just sufficient)!
What I didn’t like: gee, nothing. It was scrumptious. Tarla’s original recipe had called for kale, but when she’d served it, most people weren’t so crazy about the kale, so she changed the recipe to include spinach and arugula. Similar, but less chewy probably.
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Creamy Orzo with Corn, Spinach and Arugula
Recipe By: Tarla Fallgatter, caterer and cooking instructor
Serving Size: 6
2 cups fresh corn — cut off the cobs
2 teaspoons Mediterranean herbs — (like thyme, oregano, basil, sage, bay leaf)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup orzo — (a rice-shaped pasta)
2 tablespoons garlic — peeled, minced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups spinach leaves — (baby spinach if possible)
2 cups arugula — coarsely chopped
2/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese — or Pecorino Romano, grated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons chicken broth — only add if the orzo is too dry at the end
1. Preheat oven to 400°. Toss the corn with the Mediterranean herbs and olive oil. Place in a glass dish and roast in oven until golden, about 10 minutes.
2. Bring water to boil, add salt, stir, then add orzo. Cook until it’s almost tender. Drain and set aside.
3. In a large saute pan, add garlic and butter and cook for about a minute, then add all the greens. Cook greens until they’re wilted.
4. Stir in the cream, orzo and corn mixture and simmer until heated through. If the mixture is too dry, add in a few tsp. of chicken broth, or up to 2 T until it’s the right soupy consistency (like risotto). Turn off the heat and stir in the grated cheese. Serve hot.
Per Serving: 311 Calories; 20g Fat (56.5% calories from fat); 7g Protein; 28g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 49mg Cholesterol; 108mg Sodium.
Toffeeapple
said on October 9th, 2012:
I doubt that it would taste as good here, we just don’t get the right variety of Corn. I know what it tastes like in the Carolinas and it is not as good locally which is such a shame. I might just try the recipe though since I love Orzo and Spinach and what we call Rocket – your Arugula.
Hmm. You can’t get corn like ours? How odd. I’ve never noticed anytime I’ve been to the U.K. Can you get it frozen? Or is it all some different type? Even our canned corn would work, although not as crunchy as corn cut right off the cob . . . carolyn t