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Observations on Risotto
Jul. 5th, 2020 06:14 pmFor the record, if it has no recipes whatsoever for any kind of organ meat you cannot properly call your book "How to Cook Everything", Mark Bittman. Organ meat and particularly liver is hardly some kind of rare food product no one will ever be cooking at home. Like, there are recipes for liver in my handed-down family cookbook; I just didn't make them because they're all extremely old-fashioned, being from a cookbook compiled in the nineties of recipes that had mostly been handed down from my great-grandparents' generation. This is not some obscure food! And yet nothing in the index for liver, nothing in the poultry section (as these were chicken livers), nothing in the index for organ meats... (I really need to track down what happened to my copy of Joy of Cooking. *They* would have had a recipe for it.)
Anyway, this was my first time using the cooking one, rather than its baking counterpart, and regular readers will recall me complaining about Bittman's cookbooks tending to have *quirks*. I wound up just finding his risotto recipe and then trying to cook the livers in a separate pan, which did not work well because internet recipes tend not to come with the kind of technique instruction comprehensive cookbooks do. (Non-comprehensive cookbooks, on the other hand... well, I also didn't make any of the liver recipes from "The Joy of Jewish Cooking" because they do not give any technique explications at *all*, which is fine with baked goods but not so much for stoves.) It's actually very clear and well-written and the risotto came out fine, but I wish there had been more instructions on flavoring and more flavor variations presented, because it actually came out kind of bland, even after I dumped liver into it.
The liver, by the way, was cooked with a random internet recipe that I really think did not provide me with enough technique instructions, and came out kind of tough. Next time I am baking it in the oven.
(Also this was supposed to be a joint experiment with Mathfriend and I am salty about COVID interfering with that. One of the things we do is cook together, and in response to him exclaiming "Liver is delicious" with more enthusiasm than he usually shows about particular food products I went to the fancy organic market and bought a small container of fancy frozen chicken livers... and then had two weeks in a row where I had a job interview the day after we were getting together and didn't want to risk eating a new food and reacting badly to it the night before a job interview, so we were REALLY GOING TO DO IT the next week... which turned out to be the week lockdown happened. As it's not looking like socializing will be okay anytime soon and I finally got my hands on the necessary wine, I bit the bullet and cooked it alone. He says this is me perfecting the recipe and therefore it will be even better when we finally do cook it together, but... Not Happy. I am basically living on the long list I am compiling of the things we are going to cook/watch/do together Someday, When It Is Safe To See Each Other Again.)
Another thing: yes, cooking's always tiring, and I've been sleep-depriving, but I shouldn't be this exhausted from making one risotto and cleaning up after, especially when I sat on a stool at the stove for part of the stirring process.
Anyway, this was my first time using the cooking one, rather than its baking counterpart, and regular readers will recall me complaining about Bittman's cookbooks tending to have *quirks*. I wound up just finding his risotto recipe and then trying to cook the livers in a separate pan, which did not work well because internet recipes tend not to come with the kind of technique instruction comprehensive cookbooks do. (Non-comprehensive cookbooks, on the other hand... well, I also didn't make any of the liver recipes from "The Joy of Jewish Cooking" because they do not give any technique explications at *all*, which is fine with baked goods but not so much for stoves.) It's actually very clear and well-written and the risotto came out fine, but I wish there had been more instructions on flavoring and more flavor variations presented, because it actually came out kind of bland, even after I dumped liver into it.
The liver, by the way, was cooked with a random internet recipe that I really think did not provide me with enough technique instructions, and came out kind of tough. Next time I am baking it in the oven.
(Also this was supposed to be a joint experiment with Mathfriend and I am salty about COVID interfering with that. One of the things we do is cook together, and in response to him exclaiming "Liver is delicious" with more enthusiasm than he usually shows about particular food products I went to the fancy organic market and bought a small container of fancy frozen chicken livers... and then had two weeks in a row where I had a job interview the day after we were getting together and didn't want to risk eating a new food and reacting badly to it the night before a job interview, so we were REALLY GOING TO DO IT the next week... which turned out to be the week lockdown happened. As it's not looking like socializing will be okay anytime soon and I finally got my hands on the necessary wine, I bit the bullet and cooked it alone. He says this is me perfecting the recipe and therefore it will be even better when we finally do cook it together, but... Not Happy. I am basically living on the long list I am compiling of the things we are going to cook/watch/do together Someday, When It Is Safe To See Each Other Again.)
Another thing: yes, cooking's always tiring, and I've been sleep-depriving, but I shouldn't be this exhausted from making one risotto and cleaning up after, especially when I sat on a stool at the stove for part of the stirring process.
