Have you ever tasted a really bad risotto? One that is mushy, overcooked and just terrible? Well, I have to confess that we managed to make such a risotto in our cooking club last friday.. Ofcourse I can also tell you that I did not personally cook this risotto and in fact a couple of us (including myself) were very sure that we should wait with the risotto… But that is just excuses right, since ultimately we were all responsible for the end result.

Filet of beef with tarragon sauce and juniper berries

We had an interesting menu this time with the main being wild duck with garlic risotto and red wine sauce. The entire menu was:

• Goose liver cappuccino
• Beef tartare with tarragon sauce and juniper berries
• Wild duck with mushroom risotto, red wine sauce and chanterelle puree (whatever happened to that puree by the way??)
• Spicesicecream with orange syrup and mango

Gooseliver cappucino with mushrooms on toast

Ofcourse the first item was immediately cause for discussion as goose liver is a controversial topic and a few people refuse to eat goose liver which is fine. I’m not a big fan of duck liver and/or goose liver but I did want to taste this cappuccino so I did eat it. I read this entire article the other day on goose liver and the fact that it can be sustainable and animal friendlier then it is currently produced but still… it remains a difficult one. I’m glad that a lot of the practices we have seen in the past have improved when it comes to animal cruelty and food production but there are still a couple out there, that really should be changed. In the end it is also for a large part down to the fact of what we are willing to eat and what we are not willing to eat. If no one buys it anymore, what’s the point of producing right?

Saskia, Mike, Tom. Winfried and myself were assigned to both the starter cappuccino as well as the main. The boys started on the starter while Saskia and I – for some reason – decided it would be a good thing to start to clean all the ducks… I had never used a wild duck before but there is a noticeable difference between a wild one and a tame duck. Usually when you buy duck breast it would be from a tame duck with a very thick fatlayer on the breast. Wild ducks don’t have such a layer unless it is shortly before winter.

Yep that is me not paying attention while Mathijs is showing us how to dissect the duck.. Ofcourse I had to ask him again later..

I also thought the taste of the wild duck was much ‘gamier’ then the tame one.. I definitely prefer the taste of the tame one to the wild one, but then again it could have been our preparation that was wrong. I just didn’t like the entire dish one bit… Bleh… And it was sooooo much work! We cleaned the ducks, removed the breasts from the karkasses as well as the legs. Then we started braising the legs slowly in duckfat, and the karkasses went into the stockpot. In the meantime we had to cook whole garlic cloves in milk for about ten minutes and then transfer to the oven to slowly roast to become soft and tender to go into the risotto. We chopped and we cleaned and we did lots of stuff and ended up with a shitty dish… O

Saskia looking so thrilled to clean the duck..lol

hahaha… Well we did learn a lot of stuff in the process but I was slightly disappointed by the outcome. The risotto had been on far too long. It takes only 20 minutes or so to make a risotto but we put it on before having the second course (of which I will give you the recipe below) and then it had to be kept warm in between meaning it was on the stove way too long. Then Winfried decided not cleaning the chanterelles was a good thing (…) so there was sand in them.. I didn’t like the taste of the duck and that was the end of our work..

Remco and Janis doing the filet of beef

For me the real winners were the filet of beef (see recipe below) and the dessert which was delicious (even though the spices in the icecream got sort of left out..lol and the composition split so it had to be reheated to come together again (which worked by the way) but was still very delicious! I might share that recipe some other day cause this post is already becoming very long.

All in all, we had a great time, lots of laughs and well not all food was as good as we hoped but that is what we’re there to learn right? (that and to drink wine and have fun…)

Beef tartare with tarragon sauce, horseradish and rocket

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Serves:	10
Prep time:	30 minutes
Cook time:	15 minutes
Total time:	45 minutes
Meal type:	Appetizer
Misc:	Serve Cold
Region:	Worldwide

Ingredients

• 600g Filet of beef
• 3 tablespoons Olive oil
• 1 bunch tarragon
• 1 piece sjalots
• 1 clove garlic
• white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon chicken fond
• olive oil
• 8g juniper berries
• 3g caraway seed
• 1 teaspoon horseradish (from a jar)
• rocket
• 2 slices dark rye bread
• butter
• seasalt
• pepper

Directions

Chop the filet of beef. Don't make it too fine, add a little bit of olive oil and leave in the fridge, covered until ready to use.

Remove the tarragon leaves from the stalks. Chop the shallot, put both into the magi mix and grind finely. Put in a bowl. Add the vinegar and chicken fond. Mix until well combined. Add the olive oil little by little until it starts to resemble a cream. Keep at room temperature until ready to serve.

Roast juniper berries and caraway seed in dry pan and ground once they cool down in a pestle and mortar.

Cut the second shallot into thin rings. Crumble the rye bread and bake until crispy in some butter.

For presentation: Use a big cold plate and either make a ring or square of your tartare. Divide rye bread, horseradish and shallot rings over the meat. Briefly drag the rocket through some olive oil and put 5 rocketleaves in a half circle around the meat. Drape some of the tarragoncream at the foot of your circle. Sprinkle some of the white spots on your plate with the juniper berry powder

Note

Delicious little dish which is great if you have a beautiful piece of beef. The horseradish here really adds to the dish so while you still have to use it sparingly (it's strong!!) it does bring out the flavors.

And here it is... the terrible dish from hell..

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Risotto with chicken, peas and mushrooms

Aha! That was sort of my reaction when I read about the Daring Cooks challenge for this month. The challenge consisted of two parts; first making your own chicken stock from scratch and two, making your own risotto with that stock. Now to be honest; making risotto is not really a challenge as I have done that a zillion times. Just love the stuff…

Making my own stock however was still on the todo list so a perfect challenge at the perfect time! But let’s first start with the necessary lines

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

Naked chicken...

The instructions on the recipe called for using one whole chicken and some chicken bones… Since we normally only eat chicken filets, I didn’t have any leftover bones or carcass of any chicken lying around and neither do we have a butcher nearby so I just used one whole chicken and a couple of chicken legs instead. It worked fine, but I will use leftover bones next time when I make myself a whole chicken (soon to come!)

The chicken first had to be brought to a boil so you could get rid of some of the scum that comes out of the poor animal… I was actually glad I have such a huge souppan. I think I got it from my parents ages ago when I first started living on my own (what where they thinking? It’s large enough to feed an entire crowd..lol) It easily fit the chicken and the legs and after it was brought to a boil and cleaned of a bit, the veggies and spices where added. I was convinced I had cinnamon sticks lying around but I couldn’t find them anywhere so I left those out. Too bad really as I love cinnamon, but not enough apparently to run back to the store. I did brown the onions so that the stock would have a little bit of color.

The whole pot happily bubbled away for about 1,5 hour at which point I had to remove the chicken who was already falling apart. We let it cool of and then plucked all the meat from the bones. Loads of chicken!

The stock we ended up with after about three hours in total of cooking time, was quite substantial too. I didn’t really measure but let’s just say I have a couple of liter of chickenstock in the freezer right now!

So making the stock was pretty straightforward and I love the fact that you can really throw in any kind of leftovers you want. I did find the taste a little bit bland but that is probably due to my lack of adding a few things. Didn’t have the cinnamon and then forgot the allspice… Tsss… I pretty much stuck to the recipe for the stock but I will season it differently for next time. Where I bought a couple of ingredients this time I will not do that next time, but will purely work with leftover stuff. That is the whole point afterall of making stock I think. It’s just perfect for leftovers and bones. But I now know that it is essentially incredibly easy to do, so that is good to know.

So then came the fun part of making the risotto which was the next day. I figured I should use some of the chicken at least in the risotto, so I did that. I don’t particularly like cooked chicken, so I baked them until the were a bit brown and crispy and had a lovely taste.

I had peas in the freezer so I used those, added some mushrooms, put some crumpled baconbits on top as well as parmesan and voila… Beautiful meal! I have to say that the risotto in the photos might look a bit dry but that is because we ate most of it and then I shot the leftovers the day after! So I did reheat it but with risotto that tends to mean that it becomes a bit dryer than it should be. Still very tasty though. Plus I didn’t have any leftover bacon so they photos did without. But adding the bacon is really lovely as it gives a nice crunch to the total.

Due to the fact that the stock was a bit bland I used part of a chicken stock cube to season it a bit as well as some other things I threw in (and can’t remember) but overall delicious meal!

Here are the recipes!

Chicken Stock

Ingredients:
1 large chicken 2-3 pounds about 1 kg
chicken bones 2-3 pounds 1 kg
2 onions, roughly diced

See that huge bowl of stock on the kitchen counter? And don't look at the mess!!

1 medium leek – white part only, roughly diced
2 sticks celery, roughly diced
2 cloves garlic, halved
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp. white peppercorns ( Any type of whole peppercorn will do)
2 bay leaves (fresh or dried, it doesn’t matter.)
peel of 1/2 lemon
1/4 tsp. allspice

Directions:

1. Wash the chicken and bones and places in a 5 Litre pot, cover completely with water and bring to a boil
2. Skim away any scum as it comes to the surface
3. Add the vegetables and bring back to a boil
4. Add the rest remaining ingredients and simmer very gently, uncovered for 1.5 hours
5. Carefully lift out the chicken, set aside. The chicken meat can be removed from the chicken, shredded off and used for other things like soup!
6. Simmer the stock gently for another hour. At , at the end you should have around 2 Liters
7. Carefully ladle the liquid into a fine sieve, the less the bones and vegetables are disturbed in this process the clearer the stock will be. 
The stock is now ready for use. Freeze what you don’t need for later use.

Risotto Base

Ingredients:
olive oil 2 fluid oz 60 ml
1 small onion, quatered
rice 14 oz 400g
Any type of risotto rice will do. I use Arborio but the recipe itself says Vialone Nano. Another to look for is Carnaroli.
white wine 2 fl oz 60 ml
chicken or vegetable stock , simmering 2 pints 1 L

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a pan and add onion. Fry for a few minutes to flavour the oil then discard. (We diced ours and left it in as we like onion).
2. Add the rice and stir for a few minutes to coat each grain of rice with oil and toast slightly.
3. Add the wine and let it bubble away until evaporated.
4. Add enough stock to cover the rice by a finger’s width (about an inch or two). Don’t actually stick your finger in, it will be hot. Just eye it off.
5. Cook on medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon from time to time, until most of the stock has been absorbed.
6. Repeat Step 5 making sure to leave aside approximately 100 ml. of stock for the final step. .
7. Repeat, save 100ml for the final stage.
8. Once you are at this point, the base is made. You now get to add your own variation.

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Mushroom risotto

Ok, I am so terribly behind on the Cooking Italy schedule that it’s kind of a miracle that I made the risotto that is scheduled for december 14th ahead of schedule… But then again; I didn’t exactly follow the recipe that Marcella gave, so not sure if this counts as having finished the recipe.. lol… I was planning on using porcini, as I really do like porcini, but for some reason my supermarket was out of the porcini and I had set my mind on making risotto, after first thinking I was going to make Olga’s pasta (which I will be making soon!) and then thinking to follow Lisa’s suggestion of another pasta to in the end decide to make risotto… So far for making up your mind before going to the store!!

Not being able to use the porcini I settled for using another dried mushroom which they did have in the store and that was cantharelles. It wasn’t very long ago that I tried my first cantharelle fresh and so I had never tried the dried version before and can’t say that I liked it either. My guess is that the mushrooms were rather old; they even smelled ‘dusty’!! I had them soaked in hot water for 15 minutes and then they had to be cooked for 10 minutes. Cantharelles are known to be difficult to clean and these ones were even harder to clean judging by the mouthful of sand Tom had to swallow later on.. Oops.. I did rinse them when still dry and cleaned them again once cooked. I did not use the soaking liquid which I do like to do when using porcini, but it just didn’t smell very good, so I skipped that part.

Instead of sticking to the ingredients in the recipe I added some peas in for color and taste. Plus I added fresh chestnut mushrooms as well. Which was a good thing after all since the dried ones where not that tasty. For the broth I used forest mushroom cubes as I had tried that before with risotto and really liked the mushroomy flavor that comes out of them. They are only around at this time of year, as it’s not a common flavor for making stock.

I do make risotto very often and this was not the best of them due to the – not so tasty – chantarelles, but it was still a decent meal. As was Tom’s remark when taking a second helping; ‘ for a vegetarian meal it’s quite tasty’.. I can see how this would work really well with porcini and I might even throw in a few crispy baked pancetta bits.

I hope to make another of Marcella’s dishes for tomorrow! I have been meaning to make the amatriciana pasta now for a while, but every time something was missing and now I seem to have all the ingredients!

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Fennel risotto

What is it with people and fennel? I think it is one of those vegetables that you either love or hate. It has a very distinct flavour ofcourse so if you do not like anis you will probably not like fennel, but I happen to love it. In moderation that is, as I do think it’s definitely a vegetable that does not go together with everything!

For dinner tonight I made this lovely fennel risotto with prawns and smoked salmon on top. It was light and very delicious. And filling too (which is important if you’re on a diet or you’ll be forever hungry…:) )

That striped thing in the background of the photo above is our gardenchair as it has been hot today and we have been eating outside. Unfortunately we have a garden that is facing North-East so in the evening there is no sunshine in the garden. Having said that I am mostly happy with the way our garden is positioned. A south facing garden is fantastic in spring and in the evening, but during the day it’s impossibly hot. We do have sunshine the entire day but there is always a spot where you can find some shade during the day. It’s just the evening part that is a bit annoying at times, especially when you want to throw a barbecue. Evenings can be chilly and not having sunshine after 6 pm means it will be cooler sooner. Anyway, we can’t have it all!

Garden

Our garden is very green and usually filled with birds, but because it is so green it also looks like a complete jungle every once in a while, so last week it was major “chopping up the garden-day”. After removing loads of bushes this was the end result. Still not finished, but it’s looking a little less like a jungle. As you can see it’s a very small garden…!

The overhanging bit on the left we could not remove as there are birds nesting there right now and I did not want to disturb the young and happy family. I was a little worried that due to the hacking during the day they would be too stressed but all is well with the family. I can see the nest if I look under the greenery and mother and father are constantly supplying fresh worms to the ever hungry youngsters… They will probably be flying out soon, so better keep the cats in check! (not that they are interested….. Simply too old to run after little bird!)

Here is the recipe for the fennel risotto!

250 gr risotto (arborio) rice

6-7 ml vegetable stock

2 fennel bulbs

fresh dille

200 gr shrimps

100 gr smoked salmon

1 shallot

olive oil

Cut the shallot into small pieces, remove the fingers from the fennel, remove the stalky bit at the bottom and cut into fine pieces.

In a large frying pan, add oliveoil and fry the onions untill just tender. Add the rice and stir untill the grains are covered in oil.

Add some of the stock and the fennel. While stirring occasionally keep adding stock as soon as the pan starts getting dry. The total process will be around 20 minutes but check regularly to see if the risotto is ok. It should be moist!

Add the dille and half of the shrimps once the rice is done and warm through a little bit. Add the remaining shrimps and the smoked salmon as garnish on top once done.

Delicious and simple meal!

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