Mother Lode

It's what the first forty-niners must've felt like, "I've hit the mother lode!" All right under my feet and free for the taking. At the first sighting a of a precious, precious morel, I squatted down, not to rise again until my thighs were on fire. Before I could drop that first mushroom into my bag, I spotted another, and another, and another…My pulse quickened, I became giddy with excitement. Suddenly I was afraid to move for fear of trampling them. They were all around me!


Our previous morel hunts had varying degrees of success. We'd find onesies and twosies, but never anything like this. This time we collected well over two pounds of morels in just a couple of hours. Seared Rib-Eye Steaks & Steamed Asparagus with Morel Cream Sauce seemed like the perfect way to celebrate our haul. We stopped at a local market for steaks, asparagus, and wine and discovered that they were charging forty dollars a pound for morels. Boy, did I feel rich!


The morels we ate that night hardly made a dent in our stash. Here's how we made another dent…


Morel Risotto
Printable Recipe

1 ¼ quarts chicken broth
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 ounces morel mushrooms, sliced into bite size pieces
1 shallot, minced
1 ¼ cups Arborio, Carnaroli, or Vialone Nano rice
¼ cup white wine
1 sprig thyme
2 tablespoons heavy cream, optional
¼ cup grated Parmegiano-Reggiano
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Bring the broth to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Heat a large, heavy sauté pan over medium-high heat until very hot but not smoking. Add the oil and butter and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Add the morels and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes, or until soft. Add the shallot and sauté for another 1 to 2 minutes, or until soft. Add the rice and stir until coated with the oil. Add the wine and simmer, stirring constantly, for 1 to 2 minutes, or until almost dry. Add enough hot broth to cover the rice by about half an inch, and simmer over medium heat, stirring almost constantly and adding more broth as necessary any time the rice looks dry, for 15 to 16 minutes, or until the rice is nearly cooked through. Stir in the cream, if desired, and simmer for another 2 to 3 minutes, or until the rice is cooked through. Discard the thyme sprig. Stir in the Parmegiano, season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve immediately.

Serves 4. Fresh morels only appear in the spring, so make the most of their fleeting season while you can. The trick to cooking perfect risotto is to stir constantly and add only the amount of broth that the rice can absorb by the time it is cooked through. You can add plenty of broth at the beginning, but to ensure that the risotto doesn’t end up soupy, add just a ladleful at a time toward the end of the cooking time. When the risotto is done, it should be creamy and the grains of rice should still retain some chew, much like al dente pasta.

Another Helping of Homemade Takeout

Here's the fried rice to go with the Hot & Sour Soup I told you about before.


Lapchong & Shiitake Fried Rice
Printable Recipe

8 dried shiitake mushrooms
3 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons canola oil
2 large eggs
4 ounces lapchong, diced
2/3 cup thawed frozen peas
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups cold cooked long grain white rice
½ cup sliced green onions
3 tablespoons soy sauce

Combine the shiitakes and 1 cup hot water in a small bowl and let soak for 10 to 12 minutes, or until rehydrated and pliable. Remove the shiitakes to a cutting board, trim off and discard the stems, and dice the caps.

Lightly beat the eggs in a small bowl. Heat a wok over high heat until very hot and smoking. Add 2 teaspoons of the oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the wok. Add the eggs and stir-fry for 30 seconds to a minute, or until scrambled. Remove the eggs to a plate. Add the remaining 3 tablespoons of oil to the wok and swirl to coat the bottom. Add the lapchong and stir-fry for 30 seconds to a minute, or until golden brown. Add the peas and carrot and stir-fry for 30 seconds to a minute, or until golden brown. Add the garlic and stir-fry for 30 seconds, or until fragrant. Add the rice, green onions, shiitakes, and eggs, and stir-fry for another 1 to 2 minutes, or until heated through. Add the soy sauce and stir-fry about 1 minute more, or until the rice is coated. Transfer to a platter and serve immediately.

Serves 4. To cool cooked rice quickly and safely, spread it in a thin layer on a baking tray and refrigerate after the steam has come off of it. 1 ½ cups uncooked long grain white rice will yield about 6 cups cooked. Chinese lapchong sausage is available in Asian markets.

Mexican Rice

This is the requisite side dish for any Mexican meal. But it’s so yummy, I could eat it all by itself.

Mexican Rice
Printable Recipe

3 tablespoons canola oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon Mexican oregano
1 cup long grain white rice
1 ¾ cups chicken broth
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Heat a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat until very hot but not smoking. Add the oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Add the onion and sauté for 4 to 5 minutes, or until soft. Add the garlic and sauté for another 30 seconds, or until fragrant. Stir in the tomato paste, cumin, and Mexican oregano. Add the rice and stir until coated with the oil. Add the broth, season to taste with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook for 20 to 22 minutes, or until the rice is tender and all of the liquid has been absorbed. Transfer to a bowl and serve immediately.

Serves 4 as a side dish. Dried Mexican oregano, which has a unique floral character, can be found at some gourmet grocers and (usually for less than a dollar) at any Mexican market. If you can’t find it, just omit it from the recipe; don’t substitute common oregano.

Spanish Cravings

I’ve seriously been craving Spanish food lately. I think my wanderlust is flaring up again. Paella takes me away to the Mediterranean coast, if just for dinnertime.

Chicken & Seafood Paella
Printable Recipe

1 tablespoon sweet Spanish paprika
6 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
Kosher salt
3 ¼ ounces Spanish chorizo, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
1 14 ½-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
1 ¾ quarts chicken broth
Generous pinch saffron
2 cups paella, Bomba, or Calasparra rice
Freshly ground black pepper
½ pound mussels
1/3 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
½ cup thawed frozen peas

Combine the paprika, about a quarter of the garlic, and 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large zip top bag. Add the chicken and turn to coat. Season generously with salt. Seal the bag, letting out all the air. Marinate for at least 2 hours or up to overnight in the refrigerator.

Heat a paella pan over high heat until very hot but not smoking. Add the remaining ¼ cup of oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Add the chicken and cook without disturbing for 2 to 3 minutes, or until it releases from the pan and is crusty and brown. Using tongs, turn the chicken and continue to cook over high heat another 2 to 3 minutes, or until brown.*


The chicken should not be cooked through at this point. Remove the chicken to a plate.

Reduce the heat to medium-low, add the chorizo to the pan, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, or until rendered.


Remove the chorizo to another plate.

Increase the heat to medium, add the onion to the pan, and sauté for 6 to 7 minutes, or until soft. Add the remaining garlic and stir for a minute or so until fragrant. Add the tomatoes and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the mixture resembles a paste.


Meanwhile, combine the broth and saffron in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer.

Return the chorizo to the paella pan. Add the rice and stir until coated with the oil.


Add enough hot broth to cover the rice by about half an inch, season to taste with salt and pepper, and simmer over medium heat for about 15 minutes.


Add more broth as necessary, any time the rice looks dry but isn’t cooked through.


Arrange the chicken over the rice and simmer for another 6 to 7 minutes, or until the rice is nearly cooked through. Arrange the mussels and shrimp over the rice, scatter in the peas, and simmer, covered, for 6 to 7 minutes more, or until the rice, chicken, and seafood are all cooked through. Serve immediately.

Serves 4 to 6 people. Use a large, heavy sauté pan if you don’t have a paella pan. Do not stir the paella once the broth has been added. The trick to cooking perfect paella is to add only the amount of broth that the rice can absorb by the time it is cooked through. You can add plenty of broth at the beginning, but to ensure that the paella doesn’t end up soupy, add just a ladleful at a time toward the end of the cooking time. If you like, add a few clams to the paella along with the mussels. Purchase live mussels and/or clams the day you intend to cook them. When you bring them home, the shells may be open, especially if they’ve been stored on ice. Tap them gently and see that they close; discard any that do not close. To prepare them, scrub with a stiff-bristled brush and de-beard the mussels. Discard any mussels or clams that do not open once cooked. The smokey and earthy flavor of Spanish paprika makes it one of my favorite spices. Spanish chorizo, which is a cured sausage, saffron, Spanish paprika, and short grain paella rice are all available from La Tienda.

*Searing the chicken in this manner adds tons of flavor to the finished dish. For everything you ever wanted to know about searing, plus dozens of fabulous searing recipes, look for my book Seared to Perfection in stores in the fall of 2010.

Bibimbap

I am in a state of deep depression. My favorite Korean restaurant has closed for good. It’s been a couple of months since I learned the terrible news, and I still can’t quite come to terms with it. It was a humble, tiny place hidden away in the back of a Korean market.

They served home-style food loaded with spicy chiles. We liked everything on the menu, especially the bibimbap. Bibimbap, as fun to say as it is to eat, is a dish of sticky rice topped with a variety of colorful vegetables, egg, and seasoned meat. My absolute favorite was the dolsot bibimbap, which arrived to the table in a super-hot stone bowl and would continue to sizzle for many minutes. The heat of the bowl was so intense that it would crisp the bottom layer of rice and cook the runny yolk of the sunny-side-up egg. Many layers of clothing would be stripped off during the course of a meal. They served the bibimbap with an endless variety of side dishes, including kimchee, of course, and a bowl of mild broth.

Bibimbap withdrawal is a terrible thing, but it led to the creation of the following recipe.

Dolsot Bibimbap
Printable Recipe

¼ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons sugar
3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon grated ginger
¼ cup sliced green onions
1 ¼ pounds thinly sliced boneless beef short ribs, julienned
Freshly ground black pepper
3 cups sticky rice
Kosher salt
4 dried shiitake mushrooms
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
4 eggs
3 tablespoons dark sesame oil
1 medium zucchini, cut in half lengthwise, thinly sliced on a bias, and blanched
1 carrot, julienned and blanched
8 ounces mung bean sprouts, blanched
8 ounces spinach, bok choy, choy sum, or other similar leafy greens, coarsely chopped and blanched
½ cup shredded nori
Gochujang, for serving

Heat 4 Korean stone bowls in a 425ºF oven.

Combine the soy sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger, and green onions in a medium bowl. Add the beef and stir to coat. Season to taste with pepper and marinate for about half an hour.

Combine the rice, 1 quart water, and a generous pinch of salt in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook without disturbing for 19 to 21 minutes, or until the rice is tender and all of the liquid has been absorbed.

Combine the shiitakes and ½ cup hot water in a small bowl and let soak for 10 to 12 minutes, or until rehydrated and pliable. Remove the shiitakes to a cutting board, trim off and discard the stems, and thinly slice the caps.

Heat a wok over high heat until very hot but not smoking. Add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the wok. Add half of the beef mixture and stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes, or until just cooked through. Transfer to a plate. Cook the remaining beef in the same manner. Stir in the sesame seeds.

Cook the eggs sunny side up with the remaining tablespoon of vegetable oil in a nonstick pan.

Carefully transfer the stone bowls from the oven to trivets. Using a heatproof brush, coat each bowl with 2 teaspoons of the sesame oil. Immediately divide the rice among the bowls. Arrange the zucchini, carrot, bean sprouts, greens, shiitakes, beef mixture, and eggs decoratively atop the rice. Drizzle with the remaining teaspoon of sesame oil, top with the nori, and serve immediately. Pass a small bowl of gochujang on the side.

Serves 4. Of course bibimbap can be served in regular rice bowls—although the rice won’t have the golden crunchy crust, it will still be tasty and delicious. (Do not coat regular rice bowls with sesame oil.) Any thinly sliced beef steak can be substituted for the short ribs. Gochujang is fermented sweet chile paste. Stone bowls with matching trivets, thinly sliced boneless beef short ribs, and gochujang are all available in Korean markets.


Add as much chile paste as you like, stir it all together, and dig in.

Worthy

Last summer, we went to France. We ate our way through Paris, Lyon, the Camargue, and then western Provence. The final stop of our whirlwind tour was Chateauneuf du Pape. Our luggage was already too heavy with “souvenirs”, but we found room for a bottle of Domaine des Pères de L’Église Le Calice de Saint Pierre Heritage 2004. Bold and luscious, it tasted of blueberries and black currants.

When we got home, we put the bottle in the wine rack, and there it waited patiently for a special occasion. Until one day my husband said, “All I want for my birthday is a meal worthy of that wine.” A challenge.

The wine would be perfect with duck breasts. He didn’t want duck breasts. What about duck confit? He didn’t want duck confit. The negotiations continued for several weeks until two things were settled. The main course would be lamb, and we would have a salad with chicken gizzard confit, like the one we had in Arles. And there was a demand for a real dessert, birthday cake alone would not do.

How, how to fill out the menu? I agonized over this many days. I wanted it to be special, and I wanted it to be a surprise.

Finally it was time to open the wine.

For the first course, I put together a cheese plate. I selected Tomme de Savoie, Fleur d’Aunis, Lagioule, and Le Chevrot. After an exhaustive search, I managed to find an authentic saucisson sec, the dry cured pork sausage that’s ubiquitous in France, but frustratingly rare here, and his absolute favorite when we were traveling. Some niçoise and picholine olives, red grapes, and a baguette rounded it out.

Then came the aforementioned salad, rich and delicious.


For the main course, I marinated lamb ribs chops in olive oil, garlic, and herbes de Provence and grilled them medium-rare. For a side dish, I threw some hot Camargue red rice together with a bit of garlic, a couple of herbs from the garden, a drizzle of olive oil from Provence, and, because it was there, a spoonful of melted duck fat from the gizzard confit.


I made chocolate pot de crème for dessert.

The weather was beautiful, so we ate in the herb garden. The meal lasted for hours. In between courses we massaged our bellies. For that one evening, we were back in the French countryside, and everything was divine, worthy. Especially the rice, it was nutty and flavorful and crunchy. Of the entire meal, the rice was the best part.

The rice was the best part!

The rice was almost an afterthought! We went all the way to the Camargue and didn’t even bring any rice back with us. The windswept Camargue, with its marshes and flamingoes and swans and white horses and wild black bulls is famous for its rice and its sea salt. (In fact, Fleur de Sel de Camargue is one of my favorites, and we went all the way there just so I could see where it comes from.) But by the time we got there, I had already picked up two crêpe pans, two blini pans, a copper sugar pot, and forty tartlet molds, and guess who was carrying it all? I certainly couldn’t ask him to add a bag of rice to that load. It was only by chance that, several months after our trip, I stumbled upon a small bag of Camargue red rice at a discount store. I picked it up, figuring I better not miss my chance a second time.

Since that worthy birthday dinner, I’ve spread the word about the Camargue red rice. A few have managed to acquire some, and now they want my recipe.


Camargue Red Rice with Garlic & Herbs
Printable Recipe

1 cup Camargue red rice
2 quarts water
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, preferably from Provence
2 tablespoons rendered duck fat, melted
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon minced fresh thyme
2 tablespoons minced Italian parsley
Fleur de Sel de Camargue
Freshly ground black pepper

Combine the rice, water, and a generous pinch of kosher salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the rice is tender. Drain. Stir in the oil, duck fat, garlic, thyme, and parsley. Season to taste with fleur de sel and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and serve immediately.

Serves 4 as a side dish. Look for Camargue red rice online. If you cannot find Camargue red rice, use any other variety of red rice that’s available. If you don’t have any duck fat, find some. If you can’t find some, look harder, you’ll be glad you did. If you still can’t find some, I suppose you can use unsalted butter.