Ok, padawan, I have much advice based on this post. Some of this I already said in the car on the way home, but since I don't entirely know what I did and didn't say, I'll respond in its entirety, as things occur to me. First off, kudos again for noticing which veggies are in season. A cook is only as good as his or her ingredients. I can work a fair amount of magic with inferior ingredients, but high-quality ingredients are the key in making other people think you've done magic, even if you haven't.
More often than not, when cooking veggies, I don't bother with a steamer. Possibly because I forget that I own two, one of which is actually designed to fit one of my pans. What I usually do to precook veggies for things like risotto is to bring a shallow amount of water to boil, add veggies, cover, and cook a couple minutes till they're bright green and still crisp. The veggies at the bottom of the pan are a touch more done than the ones at the bottom, but I've never had anyone notice the difference. A steamer is very, very low on the list of kitchen implements you need.
"Salad" just means "a bunch of stuff tossed together in a bowl." You should try to always have both fresh (if in season) and frozen spinach on hand, because there are few dishes that wouldn't be improved by a handful of spinach. Using frozen veggies in place of fresh is almost always fine (and better, if fresh are out of season); canned vegetables are, by and large, an abomination. In this case, I would serve the salad on a bed of raw baby spinach, mesclun mix, or romaine, rather than tossing the leaves with the rest of the salad. For vinegar substitutions, I would use whatever wine I was cooking with, plus a wee bit of lemon juice. I don't know all that much about beer, because I've never developed a taste for it. My instinct is that beer would work in place of the vinegar as well, particularly a dark beer replacing balsamic vinegar. Vinegar's function is to add a bit of an acidic bite - it's the pointy flavor. You might also try using a Dijon mustard instead of the lemon juice. Feta would be a good addition to this salad. When I read that you were thinking it would be better with garbanzo beans, I realized I hadn't thought of that, and that it was exactly right. This is why I have a small army of cans of beans. They are cheapest at Trader Joe's (it is much, much cheaper to buy them dried, but that requires planning ahead). One thing to watch out for when buying cans of beans is that some brands add "spices" and sugar. Yuck. I have two such cans that are unlikely to get eaten until the zombies come, because it didn't occur to me that anyone would do such a thing.
The broth for the risotto: it is important that the broth be hot when you pour it into the rice. It is not important how it comes to be so. There is absolutely nothing wrong with nuking it, if that's what's easiest in terms of the tools you have on hand. The advantage to doing it on the stovetop is that you can set it on a burner on low heat and ignore it while you prepare everything else, and keep it warm. The disadvantage is you're getting another pan dirty. I don't tend to keep boxes of broth on hand (though I probably should keep some in the rotation for food storage purposes), because they take up valuable cupboard space. I use bouillion cubes, and boil a kettle of water. I add the cubes with the first cup of water, and get it thoroughly broken up and stirred in, and just keep adding hot water from the kettle until it's enough. I don't remember when I last measured the water for risotto. It's really easy to eyeball how much is good once you get a sense of what risotto is supposed to look and feel like.
Continued, because I was a few hundred characters over the limit:
When I make risotto, I use either the ginormous black pot or the 3-quart non-stick saucepan, depending on how much I'm making. I also occasionally use the largest of my non-stick frying pans (which I really need to replace soon) if I'm making a small enough amount, just because it is nice to have the larger cooking surface area so it cooks faster. If you don't have a ladle, a one-cup measure is a good substitute. If you don't have measuring cups, a coffee cup also works just fine.
Risotto is one of those dishes that once you've learned the basic formula, you can substitute at will with similar types of ingredients. You need: arborio rice, wine or beer (optional), broth, veggies and/or meats, and cheese (negotiable). You assemble in that order. The rarebit risotto has a much higher cheese-to-rice ratio than is generally desirable in a risotto, because that's what rarebit is: cheese and beer drowning a piece of bread.
I feel like I'm forgetting something, but that is what I can think of for now.
All excellent advice, thank you. I was about to use something very close to your method for cooking the broccoli, then got nervous and added more water.
Oooh, now I'm excited to try more salads. Wine, lemon juice, feta, beds of spinach... Mmmmmm. I'm very curious whether the beer would have worked; I believe I'll grab more vegetables and try that with the Fat Tire I still have on hand.
It did occur to me while making the risotto that I could probably do this again with whatever ingredients I desired, nearly with my eyes closed. It is really simple. Good to know about the cheese.
It also works just fine to use a whole pan of boiling water, but you need to watch it more carefully. Broccoli goes surprisingly quickly from crisp to mushy. If you're really on top of things (in a way that I almost never am), you can reserve the water from cooking the veggies, and use it as the water for your broth.
More often than not, when cooking veggies, I don't bother with a steamer. Possibly because I forget that I own two, one of which is actually designed to fit one of my pans. What I usually do to precook veggies for things like risotto is to bring a shallow amount of water to boil, add veggies, cover, and cook a couple minutes till they're bright green and still crisp. The veggies at the bottom of the pan are a touch more done than the ones at the bottom, but I've never had anyone notice the difference. A steamer is very, very low on the list of kitchen implements you need.
"Salad" just means "a bunch of stuff tossed together in a bowl." You should try to always have both fresh (if in season) and frozen spinach on hand, because there are few dishes that wouldn't be improved by a handful of spinach. Using frozen veggies in place of fresh is almost always fine (and better, if fresh are out of season); canned vegetables are, by and large, an abomination. In this case, I would serve the salad on a bed of raw baby spinach, mesclun mix, or romaine, rather than tossing the leaves with the rest of the salad. For vinegar substitutions, I would use whatever wine I was cooking with, plus a wee bit of lemon juice. I don't know all that much about beer, because I've never developed a taste for it. My instinct is that beer would work in place of the vinegar as well, particularly a dark beer replacing balsamic vinegar. Vinegar's function is to add a bit of an acidic bite - it's the pointy flavor. You might also try using a Dijon mustard instead of the lemon juice. Feta would be a good addition to this salad. When I read that you were thinking it would be better with garbanzo beans, I realized I hadn't thought of that, and that it was exactly right. This is why I have a small army of cans of beans. They are cheapest at Trader Joe's (it is much, much cheaper to buy them dried, but that requires planning ahead). One thing to watch out for when buying cans of beans is that some brands add "spices" and sugar. Yuck. I have two such cans that are unlikely to get eaten until the zombies come, because it didn't occur to me that anyone would do such a thing.
The broth for the risotto: it is important that the broth be hot when you pour it into the rice. It is not important how it comes to be so. There is absolutely nothing wrong with nuking it, if that's what's easiest in terms of the tools you have on hand. The advantage to doing it on the stovetop is that you can set it on a burner on low heat and ignore it while you prepare everything else, and keep it warm. The disadvantage is you're getting another pan dirty. I don't tend to keep boxes of broth on hand (though I probably should keep some in the rotation for food storage purposes), because they take up valuable cupboard space. I use bouillion cubes, and boil a kettle of water. I add the cubes with the first cup of water, and get it thoroughly broken up and stirred in, and just keep adding hot water from the kettle until it's enough. I don't remember when I last measured the water for risotto. It's really easy to eyeball how much is good once you get a sense of what risotto is supposed to look and feel like.
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When I make risotto, I use either the ginormous black pot or the 3-quart non-stick saucepan, depending on how much I'm making. I also occasionally use the largest of my non-stick frying pans (which I really need to replace soon) if I'm making a small enough amount, just because it is nice to have the larger cooking surface area so it cooks faster. If you don't have a ladle, a one-cup measure is a good substitute. If you don't have measuring cups, a coffee cup also works just fine.
Risotto is one of those dishes that once you've learned the basic formula, you can substitute at will with similar types of ingredients. You need: arborio rice, wine or beer (optional), broth, veggies and/or meats, and cheese (negotiable). You assemble in that order. The rarebit risotto has a much higher cheese-to-rice ratio than is generally desirable in a risotto, because that's what rarebit is: cheese and beer drowning a piece of bread.
I feel like I'm forgetting something, but that is what I can think of for now.
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Oooh, now I'm excited to try more salads. Wine, lemon juice, feta, beds of spinach... Mmmmmm. I'm very curious whether the beer would have worked; I believe I'll grab more vegetables and try that with the Fat Tire I still have on hand.
It did occur to me while making the risotto that I could probably do this again with whatever ingredients I desired, nearly with my eyes closed. It is really simple. Good to know about the cheese.
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