Traditional Prawn and Pea Risotto

April 19, 2016 by Aurel Pop in Main Dish

Aurel here. It’s been a while. Sorry about that. The past few weeks were dedicated to my trip to Chile. I recharged my batteries, cleared my mind, and now I’m back– fresh, happy, and ready to cook. I also have a lot of stories to share with you: stories about my new friends, the beautiful places I visited, and the delicious food I ate.

My stay in Viña del Mar with my new friend Juan Pablo inspired me to make this dish. I talked briefly in my past blog post about how excited I was to meet Juan Pablo and his family. Our mutual friend Camilla introduced us via Facebook, and we exchanged a few messages before my trip. The time I spent at Juan Pablo’s family was special. It was certainly one of the highlights of my trip mostly because it was something I haven’t experienced before: it was made to feel like I was home. I felt welcomed from the moment I entered his house and the connection with Juan Pablo and his family was instant, as if we knew each other forever.

I arrived on a Sunday, just in time for Sunday lunch. Sundays are when Juan Pablo’s family gets together. Every single week, his parents, grandmother, siblings, uncles, and family friends have a big lunch together. The lunch started with Veronika and Lucho, Juan Pablo’s parents, welcoming me with a piscola -- which is pisco (a traditional Chilean booze) with Coca-Cola and a few slices of lemon—followed by Chilean red wine. These much-needed libations helped me feel more confident about my limited Spanish and allowed me to cobble together sentences that everyone somehow understood.

For lunch Veronika prepared fresh cheese empanadas dipped in powdered sugar. I thought it was a bit odd, but once I took my first bite, I couldn’t stop stuffing my face with them. After the empanadas, we had a traditional Chilean corn pie called Pastel de Choclo, which served as our main dish. Then came the dessert: Pavlova. Pavlova is a meringue-based dessert topped with berries. The Pavlova was followed by coffee and yet another dessert: grape pie. The family tradition is to drink whiskey or tequila after finishing all the food, and I was happy to comply. I happened to have a small bottle with me, and we shared that as well. It was amazing; everyone was present and content eating, drinking, and sharing stories. It was one of those moments that reminded me how much I miss my family and our gatherings. Somehow Chilean hospitality suddenly felt so familiar.

The next few days that I spent in the Bahamonde house were as great as the first. We had lunch together almost every day. Veronika prepares home-cooked meals most days of the week. Sometimes it was something simple like fish with a side dish of potatoes, and other times she prepared more complex dishes like risotto. Veronika likes to experiment with ethnic cuisines. Our shared passion for good food served us well. She allowed me to help in her kitchen, and I was able to introduce her to my Hungarian beef stew (marhaporkolt).

Veronika’s risotto was impressive. It was perfect: creamy and flavorful with a nice bite to the rice. When Juan Pablo and I sat down to eat, I realized Veronika served me twice as much food as Juan Pablo. My portion was huge! When I asked Juan Pablo if increased portions for guests was a Chilean tradition, he told me, “No, that’s just my mom. She thinks you eat more because you’re macizo.” After a quick google translate search I found out what macizo meant: meaty or massive. “Not fat,” Veronika said, “but in good shape.” I didn’t complain. I ate the entire plate of risotto, relishing the fact that I am a macizo!

Enjoy!

TRADITIONAL PRAWN AND PEA RISOTTO

Serves 3-4
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

Pan-seared prawns

1 lb. fresh prawns (16/20 count size), peeled and deveined
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
½ tsp chili flakes
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Risotto

3 ½ cups low-sodium broth (vegetable or chicken)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium-sized shallot, finely chopped
2 cups Arborio rice
½ cup dry white wine
1 cup fresh green peas
½ tsp kosher salt
½ tsp white pepper
5-8 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped (about 2 Tbsp.)
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice (about ½ medium-sized lemon freshly squeezed)

Instructions

Pan-seared prawns

Using a paper towel, pat the prawns dry. Season with salt, pepper, and chili flakes.
Heat olive oil in a stainless steel skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil easily slides across the pan, add the prawns and cook for 2 minutes tossing occasionally.
Add lemon juice and cook for another minute. Immediately remove the prawns from the skillet as they will continue cooking if left in. Set them aside on a plate.
When prawns are cool enough to handle, pick 6-7 of the larger ones and dice into small bite-sized pieces. Keep the rest of the prawns whole.

Risotto

In a medium sauce pan, bring broth to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low and keep the broth hot and simmering.
In another sauce pan (medium or large) heat olive oil over medium heat until it starts shimmering. Add shallots and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until they become translucent, stirring constantly.
Add rice and increase heat to high. Toast rice for 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently.
Pour in wine. Cook and stir until it evaporates, about 2 minutes.
Reduce the heat to low. Add broth to the rice one ladle at a time. Stir until it is absorbed to make sure the rice releases the creamy starch. Allow each ladle of broth to be absorbed before adding another one.
When the rice is al dente add peas, salt and pepper. Continue cooking for another minute or so.
When the risotto is done, remove pan from the heat and stir in the basil, parmesan cheese, butter and lemon juice. Mix well, taste again and adjust the seasoning.
Stir in chopped prawns and cover the pan with a lid. Let the risotto rest.
Serve hot topped with whole prawns. Sprinkle with freshly grated or shaved parmesan cheese.

Notes

In the world of professional cooking, the expression al dente refers to the degree to which pasta, rice, beans or vegetables are cooked. Al dente translates as "to the tooth” and it indicates that the rice or pasta should be tender but still firm to the bite.
Taste risotto as you go and adjust seasoning to your preference, but be careful with the salt. Remember that the parmesan is salty, too, and isn’t added until the end of cooking.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Sarmale)

December 28, 2015 by Aurel Pop in Main Dish

During Christmas I tried to stay away from blogging. I still cooked, but I tried to make the experience a little less stressful. I skipped taking pictures and writing down recipes. Ever since I started gourmetcubicle cooking hasn’t been the same for me. I still enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s completely different than what it used to be. Now I measure each and every pinch of spice I add and document everything I do which makes the whole cooking process a lot more time consuming. Cooking should be fun. It should be about following your gut, tasting and adjusting, screwing it up then retrying it again until you perfect a recipe. That’s what us bloggers do. We cook the same dish over and over again, until it looks and tastes perfect (or at least that's what we'd like to think).

I brought over a lot of recipes with me from Romania and Hungary. I have recipes scribbled on grease stained paper from my grandma, Buna. Some of them were inherited from from my great-grandma. I am also fortunate to have my mother and grandma give me advice over Skype every time I run into problems. Yet still some of the recipes they’ve been using for decades don’t work with the ingredients that I find here. For example, the other week I tried to make Hungarian pogácsa which is a fluffy and soft scone-like of appetizer. I followed the recipe that my mom used with success in the past, but for some reason the final result wasn’t the same. The first batch was, how to put it nicely, really bad. The second was edible. The third one will be even better. It takes trial and error to perfect something and this holds true for anything in life, not just for cooking. You have to be willing to accept that failure plays an important part in success.

Even though Austin isn’t exactly a place that reminds you of Christmas, I decided to bring back my Christmas tree decoration party after skipping it last year due to my trip to Cambodia. I started this tradition years ago when I moved to Austin and knew no one. Not having any Christmas tree decorations either, I decided to throw a party where I’d serve food for my guests in exchange for a tree ornament that they’d hang. Over the past 5 years I have collected all sorts of decorations from a mustard bottle-shaped ornament, to an ornament with a Popsi-like dog inside of it, to a mini painting of me, Roni and Popsi in front of a Christmas tree. I also have a bunch of handmade decorations. No one knows where life will take us years from now, but it will be great hanging them and remembering those friends.

Anyway before I go too deep into emotional shit, I better focus on what this blog is about: cooking. Stuffed cabbage is a staple dish in Eastern European cuisine. It’s a dish that is being served during major events or Holidays. Growing up in Romania, I can’t remember a single Christmas without stuffed cabbage. Whether you call them sarmale, töltött káposzta, golumpki, dolma or holubtsi it doesn’t really matter since they are all basically the same – leaves of some sort (cabbage, grape, etc) stuffed with meat (pork, beef, lamb, etc) and rice. There are several variations of this dish all over the Balkans. Some prefer them with blanched cabbage leaves, some with sour cabbage leaves. Others use grape leaves or even cherry leaves. Pork or beef? It doesn’t really matter it will taste good. If you can’t get a hold of sour cabbage leaves, just use blanched cabbage leaves (sweet cabbage leaves as we call them in Romania and Hungary) instead. When the rolls are prepared just cook them in a half tomato juice half water concoction. Adding dill to the mix is pretty common as well. If you are a fan of parsley you can add some to the filling. Also, any smoked meat will do, so if you can’t find smoked pork hock, you can use smoked dry sausage or smoked ham. It adds that smoky-sweet flavor that contrasts well with the sourness of the cabbage.

My mom and grandma sometimes prepare the cabbage rolls in a special clay cooker in the oven, but I found that cooking them in a cast iron Dutch oven yields similar results. My family usually serves them with fresh bread and sour cream, but it’s pretty common to serve them with a side of mamaliga (polenta) or mashed potatoes. The choice is yours. Poftă bună! Jó étvágyat!

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Sarmale)

Yields 30-40 rolls
Prep time: 45 minutes
Cook time: 60 minutes

Ingredients

5 TBS canola oil (or sunflower seed)
1 large onion (about 1/2 lb), finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1/4 tsp ground caraway seeds
2 TBS chicken stock (or water)
2.2 lbs ground pork
11 oz white long grain rice, rinsed
2 medium grated carrots (about 1/2 lb)
1 1/2 TBS paprika
1 TBS salt
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 head pickled cabbage (or 20-25 whole sour cabbage leaves)
1 smoked pork hock (about 1/2 lb)
2 bay leaves

Instructions

Heat three tablespoon of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil easily slides across the pan add onions and sauté for 2 minutes. Add garlic and cook for 5 more minutes. Stir frequently to make sure the garlic doesn’t burn.
Season with caraway and add stock. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 more minutes stirring every now and then.
When the onions become translucent, remove from the heat and let the mixture cool down.
In a large bowl, mix ground pork, rice and carrots. Season with paprika, salt and pepper. When the sautéed onions are cold enough to handle add them to the mix along with the rest of the oil (2 tablespoons)
Using your hand combine thoroughly until everything is well blended. Set aside.
Cut large leaves in half, removing the core and thick stems. Chop them roughly and set aside. Make sure you have 30-35 leaves ready to be stuffed. Don’t discard the rest, we’ll use them later.
Place a tablespoon or so of meat filling in the middle of the cabbage leaf and roll creating a cone (see pic). Make sure it’s rolled relatively tightly. Fold the other end and seal by pressing the cabbage leaf inwards.
Cut the meat off the smoked hock and roughly chop into bite size pieces. Keep the bone.
Sprinkle a third of the chopped cabbage leaves and a few pieces of smoked meat on the bottom of a cast iron Dutch oven.
Place the cabbage rolls in the Dutch oven with the pointy ends towards the middle. Keep the middle free of cabbage rolls. Add another layer of chopped cabbage leaves and then repeat laying the rolls until you run out of them.
Place the smoked hock bone in the middle, sprinkle with more chopped cabbage leaves.
Add enough water to barely cover the top layer of cabbage rolls, add the bay leaves and then lay a few whole cabbage leaves to keep the moisture in.
Cover the Dutch oven with a lid and place it on the stove. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour.
Serve cabbage rolls with sour cream and fresh bread or mamaliga (polenta).

Notes

The amount of oil you add to the filling depends on the fat content of the ground pork. 2 tablespoons are recommended for 80/20 pork (20% fat content). For anything less than 20% fat, add an extra tablespoon of oil.
There are several ways to roll the stuffed cabbage, but my grandma’s method (creating cones) has worked perfectly for me.
Place cabbage rolls as close to each other as possible. That way they will not open while they are cooking.
I used a 24 liter (4 1/2 US quarts) Dutch oven for 38 cabbage rolls. Romanian cabbage rolls are smaller than Polish rolls, so the high number of rolls can be deceiving.

Cauliflower Risotto with Chicken Schnitzel and Pangrattato

May 07, 2015 by Aurel Pop in Main Dish, Side Dish

Roni and I got really hooked on MasterChef, specifically season 6. I love cooking shows, but for some reason this competitive cooking shows were never my cup of tea. I generally go for shows like Pepin's Essentials. In the competitive shows,zz drama out-shadows the essence of the show- the cooking itself. It should be about food and preparing interesting dishes and not about how a contestant passes out during cooking and another one cries her heart out because she's being sent home.

Drama aside, I started watching it and turned Roni into a MasterChef junkie for a week. I found inspiration for a couple of new recipes and overall it was really entertaining up until the Final Five. That is when Roni decided that she needed to find out if a contestant had a food blog or not. Needless to say that when she Googled the name, the first search result was about that person winning the competition.

Her reaction spoiled it for me too, so from then on we just pretended to be thrilled when that cook was in the elimination challenges. After this incident I'm thinking about introducing a house rule where neither of us is allowed to google anything while watching this type of show.

The inspiration to cook risotto came from the show. One contestant cooked a green apple risotto, and when I saw it I was immediately intrigued. I mean seriously? How did that idea even crossed her mind?

I was set on making risotto but since we didn't have green apples at home I started to think about alternatives. Whenever we go to the grocery store Roni has a funny habit of putting a cauliflower in the cart regardless of if the plan is to cook cauliflower or not. And that's how a great recipe was born! (Roni says, "You're welcome.")

I have cooked risotto several times before, but never with cauliflower. I started searching for recipes and oddly enough not too many of them popped up. The top one was Jamie Oliver's, so I looked there for inspiration and found his idea of using pangrattato (flavored, toasted breadcrumbs) to sprinkle over the risotto to be really smart and creative. For the breadcrumbs, instead of going the spicy route with red chili, I chose to make it more Italian by using basil, oregano, lemon zest and Parmesan cheese.

Schnitzel on the other hand, didn't require much research for this Eastern European. It may not be the healthiest food, but it's definitely one of the tastiest. Who doesn't like meat fried in a crispy and flavorful crust? When cooking chicken breast, I learned from my mom to season the flour with paprika and black pepper to add that extra flavor to the otherwise bland and boring meat. In the breadcrumbs, I like to mix in a bit of crushed nuts--almonds, walnuts or even hazelnuts--and some parmesan for an extra nutty aroma.

Cauliflower Risotto with Chicken Schnitzel and Pangrattato

Serves 4
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 60 minutes

Ingredients

Cauliflower Risotto

1 small cauliflower
5 cups stock (vegetarian or chicken)
4 TBS olive oil
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
5 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
1/2 cup parmesan, freshly grated
4 TBS unsalted butter
1 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
salt, to taste

Pangrattato

1/2 cup bread crumbs
5 anchovy fillets and 1 TBS anchovy oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp lemon zest
2-3 fresh basil leaves, chopped
5 fresh oregano leaves, chopped
1 TBS parmesan, freshly grated
1/2 black pepper, freshly ground
1 tsp olive oil

Chicken Schnitzel

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast
1/2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1 TBS paprika
2 large eggs, pasture raised
3 TBS whole milk or heavy cream
1/4 cup parmesan, freshly grated
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup almonds, crushed
salt, to taste
1 cup oil, sunflower seed or peanut

Instructions

Pangrattato

Add all the ingredients to a food processor and pulse until the breadcrumbs are evenly coated. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and toast the breadcrumbs until they become golden brown, about 5-7 minuets. Stir and toss often so they don't burn.

Cauliflower Risotto

Trim the leaves off the cauliflower and remove the stalk. The cauliflower will naturally fall apart into large florets. Cut these into small florets and save the tender stems. Finely chop the stems into small pieces.
Bring stock to a boil in a medium pot over medium-high heat. Add the florets and continue boiling for about 5 minutes. Remove pot from the heat. Do not discard the stock.
In a large saucepan sauté the shallots with olive oil over medium heat for about 3-4 minutes and then add the chopped cauliflower stems and continue to sauté for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently until soft. The vegetables should become translucent, not browned.
Add rice and turn up the heat to high. Cook for a minute or two until the rice becomes translucent. Add white wine and cook until absorbed, stirring frequently.
Reduce the heat to low. Using the stock in which you boiled the cauliflower, add stock to the rice one ladle at a time. Stir until the stock is absorbed to make sure the rice releases the creamy starch. Allow each ladle of stock to be absorbed before adding another one.
When the rice is al dente add cauliflower florets with each ladle of stock crushing them into the risotto. Continue until rice is cooked. Taste as you go and adjust seasoning to your preference, but be careful with the salt. You will add parmesan next which will make it saltier.
When the risotto is done, remove from the pan from the heat and stir in the parsley, basil, parmesan cheese and butter. Mix well, taste again and adjust the seasoning.
Cover with a lid and let it rest until you finish the schnitzel.

Chicken Schnitzel

Cut the chicken breast into 1/4 inch thick cutlets. Place them between two strips of plastic wrap. Pound the breasts with a meat tenderizer until the breasts become slightly thinner. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Mix flour, pepper and paprika and place mixture on a plate. Beat eggs and add milk or heavy cream in a shallow and wide bowl. On a third plate mix the breadcrumbs, almond crumbs and parmesan.
Working with one chicken breast at a time, dredge meat in flour, shaking off excess, then dip into egg mixture, turning to coat evenly and then carefully coat with breadcrumb mixture. Transfer the breaded chicken to a plate.
Pour oil into a large skillet and heat over medium flame. When the oil is shimmering- the temperature should be around 400F (200C) if using sunflower seed oil- add the coated chicken breast and fry in a single layer. 2 or 3 breasts should fit into your skillet depending on the size of the schnitzel and skillet.
Fry for about 5-6 minutes on each side until the breading becomes golden brown. If you used thicker breasts make sure that the inside temperature is over 155F (65C), but not more than 160F (70C).
Remove schnitzel from the skillet and place them over a paper towel patting off the excess grease.
Serve with risotto sprinkled with pangrattato and a lemon wedge.