During a recent cooking class with Phillis Carey, she began the introduction to this dish by saying that this is one of her very favorite dishes. And that she makes it very frequently for herself and has never tired of the combination of flavors. I scribbled notes on my recipe in a hurry there – I always listen closely when Phillis tells us it’s a favorite of hers because I’ve never not liked any of her favorites. And she mentioned that yes, making risotto is a bit of a nuisance, what with all that constant stirring for 30-35 minutes. But she assured us that we’d be glad when we tasted it. And indeed we were. We heard “mmmmm” all around the classroom. My mmmm included! I nearly licked the plate. For risotto. It was so gosh-darned delicious.

It’s a traditional risotto in how it’s made – nothing different about the preparation or the stirring, or keeping the chicken stock hot. It was the combination of the sausage, the leeks, the corn. And the prettiness of the added spinach. And the red of the tomatoes. Well, just all of it.

I made the dish a few nights later, as I said, with the identical ingredients (except I used pork Italian sausage) and my DH and I nearly licked the plate. Don’t skimp on the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Or the butter – that’s an important addition at the end. Do use fresh, baby spinach too. If you have some fresh basil, sprinkle a bit of that on top as you serve it.

So, how’d we like it? Well, I’d had it at the cooking class, so I knew I’d enjoy it. My DH was so busy eating it he couldn’t even look up to say anything. Meaning that he loved it. We both did. It did take about 45 minutes to make, but I didn’t have to stir it every second. I was close by to stir it around every 30 seconds or so and add more broth as I chopped up the tomatoes, cut the fresh corn off the cob. I made it last week for our friends in Colorado too, and they both thought it was delicious.

What I liked: I loved it all. The texture of the arborio rice – it came out perfectly. The sausage added some great taste, but wasn’t overwhelming. The color with the spinach and tomatoes. The cheese. Oh goodness yes, it was all good. And this is now going onto my “favorites” list if that’s any indication of how delicious it is!
What I didn’t like: well, I suppose the stirring gets a little tedious, but that’s it.

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We’re back home from our 8-day trip to Colorado. And I need to write up some posts just about the journey and the sights we saw, places we stayed, etc. Plus, I have several posts to write about some of the delicious food Sue fixed for us while we were there. Meanwhile, here’s a recipe I made before we left – and I took some of it along to give to Sue & Lynn, our gracious hosts in Denver.

It must have been a year ago that I purchased David Lebovitz’ book – a memoir of his life in Paris – called The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious – and Perplexing – City. I started reading it, got about half way through and somehow the book got put down somewhere – under something or filed in a book shelf somewhere – and I couldn’t find it. Then just recently it popped up in that unlikely place and I picked up where I’d left off. At the end of each chapter he inserts a recipe. Some of them I’d already read on his blog, and perhaps I’d read this one there too, but it didn’t galvanize me into action like it did this time.

A nut mix that’s baked with an elusive glaze. If I didn’t know what was in it because I made it, I’d never have suspected there was smoked paprika in it. Or unsweetened cocoa, either. Or cinnamon, for that matter! And because there’s not a lot of any of those spices, none of them overwhelms. But put together, the mixture is ever so delicious. There is some sugar (dark brown) and some maple syrup. And a touch of butter. And pretzels. In my mixture above, the pretzels I used were little short bite-sized logs rather than the twisted pretzels he called for in his recipe. And I used hazelnuts, cashews and macadamia nuts in my mixture (you can vary what you put into it). You combine half pretzels and half nuts.

The mixture gets tossed with all of the glaze ingredients and it’s roasted for about 15 minutes, cooled, then you do have to break the stuff apart (the sugar acts as a kind of glue/glaze – although it’s nowhere near that kind of sweet). In one recipe he said it will keep a week; in another he suggests 5 days. Anyway, use it up in a few days.

This would make a really nice hostess gift too – just attach a little note that suggests eating it soon. Likely this mixture would not freeze well with the sugar glaze on it. I haven’t tried it, but my instinct is no, don’t try. Just know this is one of those recipes you need to make and eat.

What I liked about it: it was easy to make. I liked that I could vary the nuts and make it something a bit unusual. (He didn’t recommend walnuts in this mixture, fyi.) We ate them for about a week, with no noticeable change in flavor. We loved the flavor – the crispy sweet glaze that doesn’t overwhelm.

What I didn’t like: I do keep a supply of different nuts on hand in our garage refrigerator; but if I didn’t, I’d have had to make a trip to the market for nuts. I don’t stock pretzels in my house at all, so a trip to the store was needed for those. Therefore, it’s not exactly something you could whip together at the last minute. And hopefully you’ll have it all eaten up before it gets stale since its shelf life is short.

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A year ago: Grilled Pound Cake with Balsamic Peaches
Three years ago: Cauliflower Tabbouleh (a real unusual salad – maybe not to everyone’s taste)
Four years ago: Grilled Sweet Potato Salad (a favorite)

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When we get home from our trip I’ll write a full post about this special place. It’s in Colorado Springs. Photo was taken with my iPad camera function. Somehow I left home without the camera to USB cord so I can’t transfer any photos from my camera to my iPad. My iPhone 3G doesn’t take the best pictures. And I can’t do much photo editing either. The iPad is the greatest for travel though. It fits in my just slightly larger purse. More soon.

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Photo taken with my iPad. From the B and B where we stayed in Cripple Creek, an old town deep in the Rockies. This was the view from our room.

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Road trip the last two days. This picture was taken of Twin Lakes. Beautiful sunny day, about 80 degrees.

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Well. Where to start here  . . . the other day I asked my DH if, when he visited Costco, would he please look for any summer fruit. I’m weary of apples and pears. I’m eager for plums to come in since I want to make that New York Times’ #1 requested recipe – a Purple Plum Torte. But plums certainly aren’t in season yet. When he returned he had a big tray of peaches. As hard as rocks, but about 13 or 14 of them. Anxious as he was, he ate one the next day. It was not sweet at all and he could hardly get it down. He thought we’d end up with the entire tray of unripe fruit. But I just let that box sit out on the kitchen counter, the base cradling each individual peach, for about 4 days or so. And sure enough, all the peaches ripened beautifully.  And, as you know with such things, every single one of them ripened the same day. So, I needed to do something with them. We ate a couple, a gave two of them to a friend, but I still had about 9 of them. I used 8 (just a little over 3 pounds) for this dessert.

Over the years I’ve been somewhat unsuccessful with peach cobblers or crisps. I’m finicky when it comes to what I like. One day a few weeks ago we visited a new restaurant in our town and after a nice dinner, we ordered their fruit crisp. My usual question to the waiter is: “Is is really sweet?” Usually they say yes, or fairly so, or something similar, but I try it anyway. And am usually disappointed because most restaurants load them up with too much sugar for my palette. Last summer I recall that I made a peach cobbler – I think it was The Pioneer Woman’s version with a delicious maple syrup enhanced whipped cream. It was good, but still didn’t meet with my dream of a perfect peach crisp.

You see, I like a really crispy crust. What I really want is my mother’s Crisp Apple Pudding but made with peaches. I’ve tried using that recipe, but because peaches have so much fluid in them, it always ends up soggy and never crispy enough. The flour-based topping in that recipe just ends up like gum on top of the peaches. Sigh.

Therefore, this time around, I was on a detective mission. First I went to my resource – Eat Your Books, that website where I have all my cookbooks listed and I just put in my search request and it tells me which cookbooks I own contain a recipe. Well, the list was long – I think there were about 35 versions of Peach Crisp including a few in my barbecue cookbooks, books I’d probably not have looked in for peach recipes! Pulling cookbooks off the shelves, I looked at them. Eliminated all of them made with oatmeal. Not my thing. Didn’t want to mix peaches and blueberries or rhubarb, although there were plenty of those too. America’s Test Kitchen had more than one recipe, but I went to my bookshelf and pulled off the TV Show cookbook I have and read the blurb. The test kitchen chefs had determined a variety of different things about peach crisp – that using all brown sugar was overpowering. Using all white sugar lacked character. So they used half and half. That keeping the topping chilled until just before sprinkling it on top helped make the topping crunchy. That sounded good to me. And although they noted that most peach crisps gave off a lot of watery juice, they preferred the juice without adding cornstarch or flour to the peaches.

Their combination involved pulsing flour, sugar, spices and butter in the food processor (briefly), then adding in some nuts (they used pecans, I wanted walnuts). They felt that combination made the best chemistry for a crisp top. And they added a small amount of sugar to the peaches, but also some lemon zest and lemon juice (that was different). All sounded good on paper. So I put it to the test. It was very easy to make. Just be sure to peel the fruit – I didn’t, a mistake – when baked the peel is kind of stringy, unappetizing  and hard to cut, even though the peaches were almost fuzz-less.

I did have to make this in a larger baking dish – they suggested a 9-inch pie plate. Well, there was no way it would fit! Three pounds of fruit nearly overflowed the pie plate without the topping. And since I doubled the topping, I really did need a bigger dish. But, it was fantastic. I think I may start a new thing here on my blog – at the bottom of each posting, before the pdfs and the recipe, I’m going to tell you in straight talk what I liked and didn’t like about it. So here goes:

What I liked: it had the perfect balance of sweet and tart for me! The contrast of the tart fruit (because it had lemon juice on it, and very little sugar) and the topping (which was sweet with the brown and white sugar combo) was delicious. The chewy nuts added a great texture boost to me. I pulsed them a bit too long (a caution) so they were smaller than expected. Loved the crunchy topping – I actually doubled the topping and I should have baked it a little longer at the higher temp because of that since the center didn’t quite get crunchy enough, which was my fault. Next time I’ll make sure about that.

What I didn’t like: the next day, after being refrigerated, the topping was soggy. All the juice was absorbed into the topping. Alas, there’s not much to be done about that. But it tasted great for breakfast with a bit of milk and fat-free half and half poured over the top). When I served it for dessert the first night, there was a lot of juice in the baking dish – it seemed like too much, but it tasted wonderful – syrupy and tart with the lemon juice. If you really don’t like the juiciness, add about a tablespoon or so of flour or cornstarch to the raw peaches. Maybe the best advice is to make this and eat it all up the first day!

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A year ago: GF Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
Two years ago: Celery, Date, Walnut and Pecorino Salad
Four years ago: Apricot Ice Cream

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Hopefully I’ll have some photos up in a day or two. As this is posted we’ve just arrived in Colorado, where we’re visiting with our friends Sue and Lynn who moved there last year.

I’m taking my new iPad with me, and I hope I’ll be able to upload photos and write a bit while we’re there. My trusty camera will be with me everywhere, so I’ll have some scenery to show you.

Years ago, I lived in Denver. It’s a beautiful city. Our friends live in Morrison, a foothills suburb SW of Denver, in the pine trees.

So, stay tuned for some travel photos.

A year ago: Mini-Appetizer Wontons (from Trader Joe’s)

Four  years ago: Chicken with Artichokes & Olives

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A week or so ago I attended a cooking class all about summer salads. And oh, was this one fantastic. On hot summer nights (we haven’t had any of those yet) this would make a great dinner. The only thing you have to cook are the shrimp (it can be grilled if you want) and the Andouille (a little harder to grill, but it could be done) so you don’t have to have any heat in the kitchen.

As usual, Phillis Carey had a very, VERY long title to the recipe: Cajun Chopped Salad with Andouille Sausage, Shrimp, Red Beans, Three Peppers, Toasted Pecans and Creole Mustard Dressing. I shortened up the title, but there you have it in her original form. Phillis wants to make sure she lures you into the recipe by including almost all the ingredients in the name!

The dressing – to me – was what made this salad. It was a little bit tart (vinegar) and a little bit sweet (honey) and piquant (Creole mustard and Cajun seasoning). Mixed all together, it’s wonderful! She did tell us that the dressing doesn’t keep – not that it spoils – but it loses its zip after about 6 hours, so don’t make a huge batch of this, thinking you can keep it around for awhile. Phillis did explain a bit about Creole mustard – it’s a vinegar-based mustard. Regular Dijon mustard (which you can use in this, but it won’t taste the same) is a wine based mustard, so the flavors are very different. It just so happened that the cooking store where this class was held had a new bottled Creole mustard that Phillis and others were raving about. Of course I had to buy it. It’s by Dulcet Cuisine, and this one is simply Creole Mustard. The mustard is available at Whole Foods if you have one near you. It’s also exported to Canada and Britain.

Do soak the red onions for a few minutes in water and vinegar. The shrimp is marinated briefly in a bit of the dressing, and you do have to cook up the Andouille a bit. But everything else is just some chopping and mixing. Hopefully you already have some toasted pecans – if you don’t and it’s too hot in the kitchen – just use them right out of the package. You’ll get all kinds of flavors jumping in your mouth as you eat this – the sweet and tart from the dressing – the flavor of the shrimp, and the little chopped bits of Andouille too. It’s got lots of veggies in it, so you’ll get your protein and veggies all in one plate. And carbs too since there are some beans included. A complete meal.

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Two years ago: Lamb Eggplant Shepherd’s Pie
Three years ago: Curried Chicken Sandwiches
Four years ago: Roasted Apricot Almond Cake

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As usual, brown food lacks a bit of vitality in a photograph. Suffice to say these are delicious. Different, a bit. But brown. These happen to be fingerling potatoes (Trader Joe’s has this cute little bag of potatoes that are just enough for a dinner for 4). The potatoes are cut in half lengthwise, then simmered or steamed in a mixture of chicken broth, fresh garlic, a little squirt of olive oil, some thyme or rosemary and most importantly, some lemon zest. Once cooked through you can remove the potatoes and reduce-down the broth (actually my pan cooked dry and I had to add some water, so perhaps I simmered them on too-high heat). I sprinkled in some salt, but then decided it needed just a tiny bit of richness, so I added in a little pat of butter. Perfect.

The recipe came from Dorie Greenspan, in her most recent cookbook Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours. There is nothing complicated about these potatoes – Dorie suggests the recipe works best with baby potatoes – they’re just simmered in a flavorful broth. I sprinkled on some freshly ground black pepper. You could add some minced parsley to give it some prettiness. Serve immediately if you can.

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A year ago: Mimi’s Buttermilk Spice Muffins
Two years ago: Madeira Onions
Three years ago: Pork Tenderloin with Mango Sambal
Four years ago: Pesto Pea Salad (Spinach)

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When I served this to my hubby the other night, he announced that it was the best chicken breast dish I’d ever made. Well, I don’t know that I’d quite go that far, but it was really, really good. It had just plain good chicken taste, it had texture from the bread crumb and Parmesan crust, and it had this tart citrusy butter drizzle on top with some tarragon thrown in. The recipe came from my new favorite cookbook (are you getting tired of hearing about this cookbook yet?), The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century? I’ve been slowly reading my way through the cookbook – I mean, it’s over 1000 pages long, so it’s going to take awhile. I hadn’t gotten to the chicken chapter yet. But according to the index there aren’t all that many recipes for boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The original recipe appeared in the New York Times in 1987 – a Pierre Franey recipe from a column called “60 Minute Gourmet.”

First I pounded the chicken breasts to an even thickness. I’ve learned over the years, that I have to do that, so the chicken cooks evenly. That part isn’t in the recipe, but I added it in. Otherwise I stuck to the recipe exactly. Oops, well, I used some home made garlic croutons (crushed up) as the breading instead of the fresh bread suggested in the recipe. The chicken gets dipped in flour, then in a seasoned egg mixture, then in the combination of grated Parm and the bread crumbs. The pieces are sautéed in oil, only a few minutes per side (the chicken tenders required little more than a flash in the pan). Once removed you add a tablespoon or two of butter and some freshly chopped tarragon and drizzle that over the top. Done. Absolutely wonderful.

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A year ago: A photo of my citrus press – my favorite universal one
Two years ago: Grilled Lamb Chops with Herb Rub
Three  years ago: Flank Steak with Orange Marinade
Four years ago: A real favorite – Roasted Poblano Asiago Soup

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