Paella Pretender

Ever since I got that great Spanish chorizo for Margy's empanadas, I've been looking for ways to slip the remainder of the sausage into our meals. A bastardized paella had been taking shape in my mind for weeks.

Tonight I gave it a shot. I cooked Arborio rice with chorizo, tiny pork spare ribs from the Asian market, shrimp, clams, peas, shrimp stock (didn't have any chicken stock), aromatics, saffron, and herbs. I definitely wouldn't call it paella, but I would call it dinner. The only bummer was the clams, which were rubbery, but at least they lent the dish a bit of briny sea essence, so they weren't a total washout. The highlights were the smoky, spicy chorizo and the tiny ribs, which were short on meat but long on porkaliciousness.

I should probably backtrack and attempt a traditional paella -- with that great crust on the bottom and all -- but for now this was a fun start. It was a little runny when compared to the real deal, so I'll just call it Spanish risotto and leave it at that.

The Risotto Life

Whenever someone asks if I have a specialty in the kitchen, I scratch my head and say I guess it's risotto.

If my risotto is any good -- I hate to brag, but it is -- this is because I've paid my dues. I didn't just buy a bag of Arborio rice one day and instantly know how to tame that wild beast. No, no. I had to work at it; I had to domesticate the stuff, show it who's boss. Because, as I've said before, my early efforts had me stirring frantically for what seemed like hours.

But maybe the person who coined the phrase "practice makes perfect" was a cook, since all it really takes to get a dish right is a little familiarity. You can't immerse yourself properly in the details until you've gained some perspective on the general concept and readied yourself to dive deeper. Make risotto ten times, in a reasonably condensed period (so you're able to retain the lessons you learned during the previous run), and I bet you'll have a real handle on the process by No. 5 and will feel like a master by the time you're done.

It's easy.

There are only two kinds of people who should not make risotto:

* Those who are wholly, utterly, hopelessly devoid of patience
* Those who think store-bought broths and stocks are acceptable flavoring agents

I should probably add "Those who do not drink" to the list, since the risottatore's most trusty companion during the stirring process is a bottomless glass of wine -- hey, you've opened a bottle anyway; risotto itself demands a hearty drink of vino in order to cooperate with your spoon -- but that would be coarse of me. Do it dry if you must.

Now, I don't consider myself to have a specialty within my specialty -- that is, I prefer to switch it up. My most common choices are risotto alla pescatore, or "fisherman's" risotto, which I make with shrimp stock, and mushroom risotto, which I make with chicken stock. But the basic process is virtually the same for whatever kind you choose:

You gently cook a soffrito (always onion, sometimes along with other goodies, like leeks, celery, shallots, and anchovies) in butter and olive oil, add the rice and let it toast for a couple minutes, hit it with a splash of wine (see above), begin stirring, add hot stock, keep stirring, add more stock, do more stirring, and then, maybe 20 or 25 minutes down the line, you have the ultimate creamy, steaming, savory, delicious substance in front of you, begging to be devoured. (Some might call it the ideal comfort food, but I hate that term. I find all tasty food -- not just mushy stuff that doesn't require chewing -- to be comforting.) Near the end of the process, you might add precooked or quick-cook ingredients, like sautéed mushrooms. You may also add some cream and/or a bunch of grated Parmesan. I never work from a recipe, but if anybody wants one, I could whip something up.

Tonight it was morel mushroom risotto with leeks and pancetta (and cream and Parmesan at the end). Mmm! For my band's last Secret Santa, Enzo (Sant'Enzo) had given me a nice bag of dried morels from a specialty shop in NYC. I got comfy with them by using just a few in our spinach and mushroom empanadas, but this time I didn't hold back. I did also dispatch the last of the baby bellas that were in the fridge, but the morels dominated, with their pleasantly spongy texture and smoky, nutty flavor. The shrooms and the pancetta really brought out the best in each other. And since the morels had to be reconstituted before being cooked, I got to add their flavorful soaking liquid to the risotto.

I went for a loose texture. I know there is debate on this issue, but I'm pretty easygoing here, and my moods shift. One night I'll make it a little soupy, the next a little tighter. It's like I feel about pizza -- make me a good pie and I don't care how thin or thick it is. It just has to be good. There are so many lousy pizzas, and lousy risottos, out there that I'm not about to moan and groan about one being yummy but not the way I like it. I like it yummy.

Thanks to the morels, and to dicing the pancetta a little larger than usual so it could really be savored (and thanks to the leeks, and the cream, and the cheese...), this risotto leaped onto my personal top ten, and I told Margy so. But I don't think she heard me.

It Begins

Our neighborhood farmers' market finally opened, and what a glorious morning it was. I celebrated by using our local bounty in a seafood risotto and accompanying salad.

I started the risotto with fresh summer onions and garlic scapes from the market. (Garlic scapes are the curly green tops of the garlic plant, and they have a delicious mellow flavor -- and a very short season, in mid-to-late June; luckily they keep for a long time in the fridge.) I opened a dozen littleneck clams over high heat in my risotto pot, removed the meat, tossed the shells, and saved the precious juice. I quickly sautéed some shrimp and squid (tentacles only -- my fish guy gave me a discount because I didn't want any bodies!) in butter and olive oil, with awesome young garlic from the market, and set it aside with the clams. Then I began the "loving" stirring of the risotto, ladling in more shrimp stock or clam juice each time the rice absorbed the previous addition.

I've said it before, and I'll surely say it again -- making risotto is not difficult. It just takes a commitment of time and, far more importantly, love. Love the transformative process, love the rice, love the idea of the amazing dinner you're about to have, and you'll be fine. Oh, and use a bit of heat; don't keep the flame too low, or I'm afraid all that love will go unrequited.

At the end, when the rice was almost done, I added the seafood to reheat. Then, off the stove, a splash of cream, and a garnish of parsley from our little garden and some thinly sliced onion tops.

Summer is here.

Dear Sweet Risotto

With time and practice, my kitchen repertoire is expanding. But risotto will always be my first love. (Margy, if you're reading this, no offense.)

When I first started cooking, in high school, I made two things for my hungry but nongourmet friends: stir-fries and "red sauce." (The secret ingredient of the latter was pepperoni.) So risotto wasn't the dish that got me going. But when I first made it, in college, for my girlfriend (Margy) and my friend Jake (who became a chef), it's what got me hooked. I liked stirring. Constant, relentless, unstoppable stirring. Did I have anything better to do? I didn't even mind so much when the stirring went far beyond the printed guidelines and stretched into hours rather than minutes. I had an important and delicious chemical reaction happening right under my nose and I was going to see it through.

I only had to make risotto this way for a few more years (I called it "fifty-minute rice") before I learned my heat was too low. My Italian friend Giuliana taught me this by example. She also taught me by example that you don't have to never, ever, at any cost, stop stirring. She'd be doing three or four other things -- making a salad, combing her toddler Silvia's hair, running out back to the cantina for another bottle of her father-in-law's homemade wine -- while she had risotto on the stove, and she just couldn't be that vigilant. I would say she stirred frequently bordering on often, and still her simple zucchini risotto was wonderful, better than what you'll find in most restaurants.

Not that it's easy to get decent risotto in a restaurant, but we'll save that topic for later.

The dish does represent a commitment of time and effort, and if you're going to fight that, you're going to lose. But it's not that much time and not that much effort, and it's more than worth it to have a hot plate of creamy, oozing, plump, savory rice in front of you, rich with the flavor of homemade stock. You realize you have to make your own stock too, right? Hello?

Actually, Giuliana didn't. She used some sort of Italian bouillon cube. That woman had the Midas touch. For me, though, risotto is a Sunday-night dish, and it's time to go all the way, because you are pumping each grain of rice full of whatever liquid you're using, and if your liquid is Campbell's broth, your dinner will remind you of that over and over. (Unless you're Giuliana.)

Tonight's shitake risotto came up almost by accident. Basically, I had some shitakes and a dream. And a freezer that held A) chicken stock, and B) pancetta. It was so obvious I almost missed it...