Watch the Pots
When I was younger my parents made me intern on weekends at a local restaurant. This way I should find out what life was like in the real world. Needless to say I was a clumsy baby faced kiddo and sometimes cooks from that restaurant ordered me to "just watch this so it does not burn or boil over!" or I was put on tedious jobs like filing invoices or picking up things from the store. One time, to everybodys’ amusement I realized I had watched a pot of water - not realizing that a pot filled with water does not boil or burn!
Stirring Risotto Rice
Later on in my carrer when I had actual experience and knew more about the physics of boiling water (why something burns or boils over, e.g.) we young cooks played the same silly tricks on interns. Nowadays we tell the new kid in the kitchen to prepare risotto. Not for fun just to see how good of a cook that person is. Risotto is round corn rice which you must stir, stir and stir cooked over low heat (at least for 30 minutes). The constant stirring and adding some sort of a flavorful liquid makes the rice corn release its natural starch (besides cooking it evenly). Cooking risotto in that way makes a creamy consistency.
Short-cut Cooking
The majority of people who are new to my kitchen stir risotto haphazardly and then at the end dump cream and butter into the “test risotto” to have a creamy consistency – to me clearly a shortcut. I will accept a teaspoon of butter or cream here and there but not as a substitute for cooking technique. Have you ever had that heavy-brick-like-feeling in your stomach when you ate a dish like risotto or pasta in some restaurants? Now you know why.
Contemporary Enrichments
Over the years I have been developing more of a cooking style with a focus on vegetable based enrichments instead of dairy. If you are interested in cutting out some of the butter and creams with an even better flavor I have some suggestions:
Avocado
A combination I enyoy is adding crushed California avocado (the dark kind with bumpy skin) to that long stirred risotto. To savour avocados vitality and richness fully, crush them then add to risotto just before serving.
(Risotto with vineyard snails crushed avocado and lettuce)
Butternut Squash
Toss roasted then pureed butternut squash under your next pasta (or risotto) for a nutty tasting and creamy textured finishing touch.
Butter from Lettuce
Rather heavy backed dishes such as lasagna benefit from adding baby spinach or butter lettuce (Boston bibb lettuce) for a lighter texture.
Technical Ingredients
If you are into technoemotional cooking (molecular cooking), buzz your sauce (with a hand mixer) with a touch of xanthun gum powder and lecithin powder (also available in liquid form). This way your beurre blanc style sauce a la Julia Child (or any other butter sauce) will need only a touch of butter and will give you a nice frothy texture. Spoon the airy sauce over a dish like steamed fish. By the way beurre blanc (‘white butter’ in French) is a rather heavy butter rich sauce and became known in France in the 1930’s.
Nutmilks
My recipe of home-made almond milk (another cream substitute) for your fall vegetable soups you can find in this month’s issue (September 2009) of Self magazine Bean Consomme . It is a nutritious way to get that rich taste.
1980s are Back .. But Not Everything
Cooking with mountains of butter and cream was in vogue when I learned how to cook in culinary school. Well, that is how we cooked in the 80's. You can’t fit into skinny jeans if you eat loads of cream and butter anyway – times are changing.
