Project: Cooking – Ribollita, Chinese lettuce thing, rice balls…

I have been on a bit of a cooking kick lately. Stark’s enthusiasm for the kitchen is contagious and as I’ve successfully completed smaller tasks, my confidence to try bigger and better things has been growing. Stark and I have been trying to cooking big dinners on Sundays, enough to feed us for at least part of the week. Also, with the holidays coming, there has been more of a need to dig some of those more ambitious recipes out of the cookbook. First up was ribollita.

It has been my great goal to make ribollita for about… well, three years. I kept saying I was going to do it and then never put in the effort, despite looking up recipes numerous times. Well, I finally gave in and got ‘er done. I used a modified version of Lidia Bastianich’s recipe, from her book Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen. I’m sure if you’ve known me for more than five minutes, you’ll know how much I fangirl Lidia, so I thought it best to go with her version of the Tuscan stew. Also, the woman isn’t totally irrational and toned down a lot of the “And then, since you are an Italian housewife who lives in the kitchen, make sure and stand over the stove and stir the pot for twelve hours and then don’t eat it for three days” aspects of this dish. When I spend a few hours cooking, I better get to eat the end product immediately!

Have a lot of veggies and cans of beans to get rid of? Ribollita will take care of it. It uses a lot of leafy greens, as well as potato and onion and such. A lot:

Cutting the veggies up into smaller strips probably takes the most effort, the rest is just stirring and waiting.

After adding that mountain of veggies to the pot, we quickly realized that we were running out of space. There wasn’t even enough space to shove in the stale bread!!

We had to split the stew into two pots! Note to self: Buy bigger pot.

This stew ended up being really yummy. You were, in fact, able to eat it right out of the pot (we kinda skipped out on that twice boiled thing):

But the leftovers were even better! Instead of yet another microwaved dinner, we put the stew into French onion crocks, added some chopped onion and cheese on top, and shoved it into the oven. This was fantastic!

General comments – the soup is really hearty. Even the French onion crocks servings were too large for me! I loved the bread, but I think next time I will want to add more beans. It’s also rich, yet bland in the way of much Tuscan food (hello, unsalted bread, what the hell is up with that?), I wish there was a way of adding to the flavor, but I’m not sure how I could do that without adding some sort of meat (sausage?), and obviously that isn’t going to happen in the Stark/Manta household. Perhaps some rosemary or sage or something? I think that might be committing some sort of Italian blasphemy… but as my ancestors were all from the dirty South, I don’t have to fear any ghostly revenge.

In other cooking adventures, there was also my first (non store bought mix) baking adventure. It involved a lot of crying over the phone to Stark at work. But, banana bread! It was yummy!

I also found a package of vegetarian ground chicken at the grocery store months ago, had an idea for a dish, then shoved the chicken right into the freezer and forgot about it. The idea was to recreate a Chinese dish that I hadn’t had in years. It was ground meat of some sort, flavored with peanuts, wrapped in lettuce leaves, with hoisin sauce for dipping. I, of course, couldn’t remember what it was called, so I ended up Googling “Chinese lettuce wrap.” At which point I discovered that this dish was very popular with P.F. Chang’s and other horrible American chains. I almost lost hope, but then went with the recipe I found on About.com that didn’t mention P.F. Chang’s. Stark messed around with the sauce to make it vegetarian and we used a few different veggies and way more ginger. It came out really well and it looked pretty, too!

I told my mother about the dish and she remembered that it was called Yuk Sung (spelling?). This brought up more recipes on Googling, and none of them mentioned P.F. Chang’s, thank goodness. I guess calling a Chinese dish “lettuce wraps” brings you down to their level. Next time I will definitely remember to buy iceberg lettuce. It works better for wrapping than romaine.

Finally, I made stuffed artichokes and rice balls for Thanksgiving. There are no photos of the rice balls because the were so good that we ate them all before I remembered to get out the camera. No joke. These were amazing. The only photo I have is the lunch I made from a zucchini, the leftover filling and cheese from the rice balls and the leftover breadcrumbs from the stuffed artichoke. Yum!

I got this recipe from my friend D. and I don’t know where she got it from. I got rid of the mushrooms and the meat. I could have added peas, but I HATE peas, so I didn’t. Otherwise, I stuck to the recipe. I thought maybe the filling was a bit of a waste of energy, since it ended up only being onion, garlic, and tomato, but Stark really liked it, so I guess I will keep making it that way. A lot of work, but soooooo worth it. I only wish there were more.

3/4 cup dried porcini mushrooms
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups beef stock
1 (16-ounce) can peeled San Marzano tomatoes and their juices, crushed by hand
3 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon butter
1 2/3 cups Vialone, Avorio or Arborio rice
2 eggs
2/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 onion, chopped
2 ounces prosciutto, finely chopped
7 ounces ground beef
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
5 ounces mozzarella, cut into 1/4-inch dice
3/4 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
1 liter extra virgin olive oil

Soak the mushrooms in 1/2 cup water for 2 hours. Drain the mushrooms, reserving the mushroom water, and chop finely. Dissolve the tomato paste in the mushroom water and set aside.

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, combine the beef stock, crushed tomatoes and 3 tablespoons butter, mix well and bring to a boil. Add the rice, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the rice is done, stirring occasionally. Turn the rice mixture out into a serving bowl and gradually stir in the eggs and Parmigiano. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, in a 12 to 14-inch saute pan, melt the remaining tablespoon of butter over low heat. Add the onion and prosciutto and cook over high heat 3 minutes. Add the ground beef and cook until well browned. Add the mushrooms, mushroom water-tomato paste mixture, and salt and pepper to taste, and keep at a simmer. With a spoon, make egg-shaped portions of the rice, and make an indentation in the center of each one. Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each ball of rice, along with a few cubes of the cheese. Roll each ball in the bread crumbs so that it is completely coated, and set aside.

In a large, heavy bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over high heat until it is almost smoking in batches, fry the balls in the hot oil until they are golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and allow to drain on paper towels while seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve with tomato sauce, if desired.