all in the crunch

The buds on my forsythia bush are starting to peek out, a sure sign of a change in season. Still, there is a long way to go before any local garden will be producing something to eat. Indoor amusements are getting me through these cold days.

With so little color in the landscape, these beets I had prepped for roasting beguiled me with their ruby striations. I grabbed my camera to capture their heart-shaped beauty, perfect for a valentine's day meal, if your loved one happens to be into beets. 

These golden beets, just pulled from the oven, retain their glow. It got my pulse racing a bit admiring these lusty root vegetables. So so pretty, but not my most favorite vegetable to eat, alas.

Sharing dinner this weekend with good friends at the cozy East Village restaurant Sorella, we were urged to sample the Broccoli Frito, a restaurant specialty our friends could not recommend more urgently. Sold! I am thrilled to try any dish so warmly recommended. 

The broccoli is doused in a hot pepper aoili and smothered with grated Grana Padano, the queen of Italian hard grating cheeses. The flavor of the dish was to die for, nutty, cheesy, with a fantastic spicy bite, but the killer tada! was the amazing crunchy texture that defied reason. The broccoli did not have a thick crust like tempura, and the vegetable itself was perfectly tender, but the resounding crunch, as if biting into a hard crouton, was somehow engineered into this little offering. I dissected a piece of the broccoli on the plate, searching for a clue, until our waiter graciously revealed that the chef uses rice flour to create the crunch. huh? cool!

So I am thinking, this could be done at home, no? I ransacked my cupboards today for rice flour, and found a bag of brown rice flour. Would the brown rice make a difference? I found other flour options while searching and thought, why not try them all and see if I can figure something out.

The flour contenders were: the brown rice flour, cornstarch, a gluten free flour blend, crushed rice chips and tapioca flour.

I mixed a bit of water into each flour to create a loose batter the consistency of infants baby cereal. 

 The gluten free flour from Bob's Red Mill is a blend of chickpea flour, potato starch, tapioca flour and fava bean flour.

Each flour absorbed the water differently so I had to adjust the liquid as I whisked the batters smooth.   A pinch of salt and a spoonful of grated cheese finished each batter off.

Next I cranked up my deep frier and prepped the broccoli. Oh this was going to be fun! Each piece of broccoli was dipped into a batter and fried for barely a minute. Out they came and the taste testing began. 

The brown rice batter had a soft crunch and a nice, mildly nutty flavor. Next up, the cornstarch batter came out with about the same level of crunchiness. The gluten free flour batter was the most "batter-like" and in fact tasted great, but it was a different experience than Sorella's crunchy masterpiece. The rice chips were a waste of time and the tapioca had such a non-flavor that it actually detracted from the flavor of the broccoli. I discarded the last two batters and tried the first three options again. 

I never got close to the astounding crunch offered at Sorella, but the brown rice batter had a pleasing flavor and is worth experimenting with further. The cornstarch batter is my old deep frying stand-by and there were no surprises here. The cornstarch does the job without interfering with the flavor of the food. The gluten-free blend was a nice option if you are going for a more obvious batter-like consistency and I will certainly use it when the occasion arises.

When the broccoli comes out of the frier smother it with more grated cheese. 

A deep frier can become an amazingly entertaining toy on a winter's afternoon. The conclusion of my trials is that broccoli tastes really good fried no matter what you put on it! I am fascinated to continue to uncover the mystery of the super crunchy broccoli and all suggestions are welcome.

Can't Beet This

Amanda
If you are enamoured by wine, and have a love of food, I highly recommend entering the wine industry. One of the many perks of the trade is being involved with, and attending, a myriad of food and wine events. Not to mention tasting upwards of 5-10 wines daily, sometimes in the company of the new-on-the-scene, or world-renowned winemaker. Definitely makes for an interesting, exciting career!


The other day I was thrilled to be invited to a luncheon featuring the wines from Stephan Asseo and L'Aventure. These wines would make any California wine lover's palate jump for joy. The wines are superb, (definitely not cheap), and are always very well received by the experts. And, they are very limited in production.


We dined at Chez Catherine in Westfield, NJ - a very quaint, pretty, classic French Bistro owned by Didier Jouvenet since 1979. A five course meal was prepared for our table of eight, each course paired with a different wine. Michael Young, marketing director for L'Aventure, talked about the wines as we sipped, ate, and indulged.

Michael making a toast. All of the glasses in front of the empty seat to his right are mine :)

The highlight of my meal was the Baby Beet Risotto with Ricotta Salata. It was so mouthwatering-ly delicious, and so, so pretty! The Risotto was paired with the L'Aventure Optimus, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Petit Verdot. This is a big, juicy wine full of spice - but it worked with the dish. Probably because of the cheese content of the risotto, rendering it creamy and flavorful. The Risotto was definitely able to stand up to this wonderfully concentrated, fruit-forward wine.


Deb - last summer you shared a recipe for Risotto with Tomato and Fennel with us. To date, this is one of my favorite recipes of all time. It was incredible. Do you think you could give us your own take on the Risotto I have written about? I would love to re-create it!

The Baby Beet Risotto with Ricotta Salata (and finished with a touch of Parmesan Foam)

I'm fine with omitting the Parmesan foam! Deb, how would I go about tackling this?

Deborah

Hmmm... "enamoured by wine and have a love of food" that sounds like me! What would I be doing in the wine indusrty? Do they need more tasters? :-)

Your beet risotto dish looks lovely. The color alone gives it a festive air, perfect for a formal Spring lunch or dinner. Truth be told, beets have never been high on my list of things I like to eat. It wasn't until I went to culinary school that I learned to appreciate their role in a vegetarian diet. Obviously the color can't be beat (ha!), but that inky red juice can wreak havoc during kitchen prep on hands, clothes and countertops and overwhelm a dish that may not have wanted to be red in the first place. 

No, I didn't cut myself! Just some of the mess of beets.

I am still not a beet lover and am only interested in them if they are well roasted with a serious caramelization going on, which somehow tames the cloying sweetness of your average beet. That's right, I don't like beets. 

If they are cut small beets and carrots take about 35 minutes in a 400 degree oven to roast.

Sooooooo, if I were to make this dish I would approach it a little differently and start by cubing up a beet  and roasting it, then make the risotto and stir in the roasted beets at the end. Rather than a homogenous pink it would be more of a white risotto with dramatic flecks of red. I decided to experiment a little further rather than just shooting my mouth off- so here I go:

Two Beet Risottos

With the first risotto I attempted to recreate (or at least approximate) the dish Amanda sampled at her tasting (did you say there were openings in the wine business, Amanda?) I boiled the beet till tender, then chopped it up fine and added it to the risotto early in the cooking process. I used the water I boiled the beets in as the liquid for the rice to further dramatize the color of the dish. The scarlet-pinky color in Amanda's photo reminded me of classic Borscht so for fun I added a shot of vodka to the saute pan and finished the dish with sour cream. I never achieved the exact color I was after (darn those beets) and I believe I would have to add more sour cream to get there.

My borscht-style risotto never quite got as pink as the one Amanda sampled at her tasting.

With the second risotto I allowed myself to play with the idea of a beet risotto that would appeal to the non-beet lover. In addition to the roasted beets I included some roasted carrots to add some additional color. Near the end of cooking I added some chopped swiss chard for yet another color.

Rustic kitchen style beet risotto. 

The results:

Both dishes tasted very good. The "borscht" style risotto was very rich from the sour cream and had a pronounced BEET taste. The second risotto- the more country kitchen version, was great too, with more variety of flavor and a lot less sweet. I begged my teenage daughter (who does not like beets) to try each one for me and she balked. I begged further and got her to try a tiny bite of each. She instantly liked the rustic version better and asked me if she could finish it. Yeah, sure!

Borscht Style Beet Risotto

1 beet peeled and quartered

3 cups of salted water 

3 Tbs. Butter
2 Tbs. extra virgin Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 teas. salt
1 cup arborio rice
1 /4 cup vodka
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup grated romano or parmesan cheese

Place beets in a sauce pan with the salted water and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes, until beets are tender. Remove beets with a slotted spoon and set aside to cool. Reserve the cooking liquid and keep it on a low simmer. When the beets are cool enough to handle chop them finely.
Heat the butter and the olive oil in large sauce pan. When butter is warm and melted add the onions and 1/2 teas. salt. Sweat the onions a few minutes until they are soft and translucent. Add the rice and stir in pan until all grains are coated and begin to look a little clear. Add the finely chopped beets and cook another minute. Pour in the vodka and let the pan simmer until the liquid is absorbed. Begin to slowly add the simmering beet water by the ladleful, allowing the liquid to absorb into the rice before adding the next ladleful. When the rice becomes creamy  and bit al dente, but cooked through, add the sour cream and grated cheese, stirring to combine.
Serves four

Rustic Style Beet Risotto
1 beet peeled and cut into small cubes
1 carrot peeled and cut into small cubes
1 Tbs. olive oil
1/2 teas. salt
3 Tbs. Butter
2 Tbs. extra virgin Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 teas. salt
1 cup arborio rice
3 cups simmering salted water or vegetable stock
1/2 cup swiss chard, chopped
1/2 cup grated romano or parmesan cheese

Pre heat oven to 400 degrees. Toss beets and carrot with the olive oil and salt and roast in the hot oven for 35-40 minutes until tender. When cooked, set aside to cool. Once cool enough to handle, roughly chop the roasted vegetables into even smaller cubes and set aside.
Heat the butter and the olive oil in large sauce pan. When butter is warm and melted add the onions and salt. Sweat the vegetables a few minutes until they are soft and translucent. Add rice and stir in pan until all grains are coated and begin to look a little clear. Begin to slowly add the simmering water or stock by the ladleful, allowing the liquid to absorb into the rice before adding the next ladleful. the rice is done. When the rice is creamy and a bit al dente but cooked through stir in the swiss chard and allow to cook for 2-3 minutes. Add more hot water as necessary. WHen the chard is wilted, stir in the roasted beets and carrots stirring to combine. Add the cheese and adjust seasoning.
Serves four