Mindylynns Kitchen

August 3, 2010

Mushroom spinach risotto

Filed under: Food,Rice,Side dish — Mindy M. @ 8:00 pm

To be honest I’ve only had risotto a couple of times in a restaraunt, so I only have a vague idea of how the results taste and feel when they are properly cooked, but this is how I get to what I consider to be a yummy risotto.

1 1/2 handfuls (per person) of a short grain rice  (calrose will work in a pinch though)
white wine
half and half
butter
handful (per person) of baby spinach
3-5 (per person) button mushrooms or baby bellas sliced
tablespoon (per person) minced onion
olive oil
salt
pepper

Boil a pot of water and add spinach.
In a frying pan saute onion and rice  in olive oil on high for about 3 minutes.
ladle some of the spinach cooking water over rice (enough that the rice is soupy but not so much that the rice is floating)
stir until all the liquid is completely absorbed
Keep adding the water and stirring until the rice isn’t crunchy anymore, but not soft.
Remove spinach (after 3 minutes) from water and chop, add to rice along with the sliced mushrooms.
Alternate stirring in ladle fulls the cooking water, half and half and white wine.
The risotto is done when the texture is similar to al dente pasta (soft but with a little bit of texture, not crunchy at all but also not smushy) there should be enough liquid in the rice for it to slide around the pan on its own, but not so thick that it’s a solid sticky mess
season with salt and pepper
finish with a good parmasean.

Enjoy pipping hot.

Milk braised pork shoulder

Filed under: Food,Pork,Proteins — Mindy M. @ 7:45 pm

I’m always on the look out for simple (read easy) recipes that are delicious. Of course for me there are also other deciding factors in whether or not I’ll try a recipe…for one I really really prefer to cook from scratch and 2 I really really don’t like a lot of ingredients, it’s too darn expensive when there’s a lot of ingredients. As part of my economizing this month I’ve decided to try a new approach…focusing on one cuisine in a shopping period. This week is Italian. So I broke out my wiliams sonoma italian essentials cook book and found Pork loin braised in milk. Pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Here is my adaptation (read non measured thrown together version) of this unkown (in america) classic.

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