Scallops, Risotto, and Revelations

I don't have any resolutions for New Years in terms of cooking per se, but I am trying some new things this year. Including scallops. And risotto. I had a scallop, once. Note the singular. It wasn't very good - it wasn't fresh, and it was spongy and strange. But, when I saw fresh bacon-wrapped sea scallops on sale at Whole Foods for 69 cents each yesterday, I couldn't resist. I bought four.

Four scallops, Amanda pointed out, wouldn't go very far dinner-wise. So, we had to scramble for a last-minute side dish. Enter risotto. We had the rice, and I found a great-looking recipe by Mark Bittman for risotto with basil, parsley and tomatoes. I love risotto, but I had never tried to make it at home. I was worried.

Turns out, both the scallops and the risotto turned out fantastic - I'm sold on both, and I think I'll add them both to my repertoire. That is, as long as I can find scallops on sale. To be continued...

Risotto with Parsley, Basil and Tomatoes - from Bittman's How to Cook Everything (serves 2 with healthy leftovers)

- Heat olive oil in a big nonstick skillet (my biggest skillet was just big enough - remember that the rice will swell up as it cooks). Add a small minced onion, and saute over medium heat until they get soft. Add 3/4 cup of uncooked arborio rice and stir it until it's all mixed up/the oil gets on the rice. Salt and pepper - more than you think you need.

- Put 3/4 cup of undrained canned diced tomatoes in. Also, put 1/4 cup of white wine in now. Stir it up again, and about once a minute from then on.

- Now, all you need to do is cook the risotto in the skillet until it changes from dry rice with tomatoes lying on it to nice risotto. As the skillet cooks the rice, the liquid in the pan will bubble up and evaporate, and some of it will get absorbed by the increasingly succulent rice. Whenever the liquid is almost gone (not soupy, but not dry - it should be a little more liquidy than finished risotto is) - ladle about 1/2 cup of simmering chicken stock into the skillet, and repeat. Remember to stir the risotto about once a minute to avoid the rice burning and/or cooking unevenly.

- Start checking the risotto after about 15 minutes from the time you put it in the skillet. After about 20, 25 minutes, it will be soft on the outside and a little bit al dente on the inside. Let that point be your last addition of liquid. When it's back to the proper consistency, turn off the heat. Stir in 1/4 cup of chopped parsley, 1/4 cup of chopped basil, 2 tablespoons of butter, and way too much parmesan cheese than is good for you. Serve immediately, or risk gumminess.

Bacon-Wrapped Scallops with Spicy Mayonnaise and Avocado - Tyler Florence, with modifications due to the fact that I don't have so-called "good mayonnaise" or fresh limes lying around in general (2 people, 4 scallops)

- If you are not lucky enough to have bought your scallops already wrapped with bacon at Whole Foods, do that. Secure the bacon with toothpicks. Put them on a baking sheet or in a Pyrex dish, drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper. Broil the scallops for around 12 minutes, or until the bacon gets crispy and done. Turn the scallops over halfway through the broiling.

- At the same time (or, if you are making risotto, before you start making the risotto), mix 1/4 cup of regular inexpensive mayo with less than a tablespoon of Shiracha hot sauce (you can always put more in later, so start small - powerful stuff). Also, squeeze in about 1 1/2 tablespoons of lime juice (or the juice of one lime, if you have a lime in your fridge in January). Also, put in a tablespoon of chopped up parsley. Stir this all up.

- Put the cooked scallops on a plate. Put a little sauce on top, and some more on the sides of the plate. Put a few pieces of avocado on top of the scallops, and then sprinkle some more parsley all over everything.

This entire dinner took about 45 minutes to cook from the time I preheated the broiler and put some stock on to simmer. It was also cheap - the scallops were on sale, but besides that, the only things I didn't already have lying around were the avocados, and fresh parsley and basil. It was a great, great dinner, and I'm glad to be able to confidently broil scallops and make risotto at will now. A great technique to know, and I'm sure I'll use it again on those nights when I have no time to cook, but not enough money to order takeout.

Thanksgiving Aftermath

Thanksgiving was, as always, delicious. My mother made the traditional turkey, stuffing, etc. I contributed two things: mashed potatoes, and some roasted butternut squash. I peeled, seeded and cut the butternut squash into about 1 inch cubes. Then, I tossed it with olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh chopped sage, half a minced shallot, and a good tablespoon of paprika. I covered it with foil and roasted it in a 400 degree oven for around 45 minutes, and then uncovered it and roasted it for about another 45 minutes until it was getting crispy on top. I did that early in the day, and then reheated it right before we ate. I also grated some parmesan cheese over the top at the very end.

I also learned that mashed potatoes can in fact be incredibly resilient. I had the whole potatoes boiling in a large pot of water, and a good half a quart of milk with some peeled garlic cloves in it simmering away on the back of the stove in another pot. I didn't think I would need so much milk, but figured it was better to be safe than sorry. In the flurry of last-minute prep, though, my anonymous sous chef poured the entire pot of milk (along with the requisite stick of butter - nobody ever said mashed potatoes are good for you) into the potatoes. They looked like cream of wheat on a very bad day. So, I mashed the potatoes up anyway as best I could, and then put them back on the heat and let the excess milk cook off. Kind of like a mashed potato reduction, if you will. At any rate, about ten minutes after we started our meal, the potatoes were ready to go. And, they tasted very creamy - maybe this could be my family's new traditional recipe?

Today (well, all this week, although I'm just now getting sick of the required stuffing-turkey-gravy sandwich), I'm on a mission to get rid of my leftovers.* I have half a breast of turkey. So, I decided to make soup. I guess I was sort of inspired by the Italian wedding soup Amanda brought me when I was under the weather a few weeks ago. I took a quick trip to the store to grab some spicy italian sausage, some frozen spinach and some crusty bread. When I got home, I started simmering the frozen chicken stock I had made a few posts back in my big soup pot. I also cut up and started sauteing the sausage, to get a nice crust on it. While the stock was melting and heating up, and while the sausage was sauteing, I shredded the turkey breast into bite-size pieces. I put the sausage and the turkey into the stock, and added a can of drained rinsed pinto beans and half a pound of defrosted frozen spinach to the soup. I checked it for seasoning (and I ended up adding salt, pepper, thyme, and a few dashes of hot sauce), and then let it come to a boil. After it came to a boil, I skimmed the gunk off the top, and set it to simmer.

Later tonight, I'll reheat it for dinner. I'll probably also add some small pasta to the soup then. I think we'll have that with the crusty bread, some sharp cheddar cheese, and a cheap bottle of wine. If that's not a good post-Thanksgiving soup, I don't know what is. A word of warning, though - early reports indicate that the spinach is turning the broth a decidedly eerie shade of green. Next time, I might go for whole-leaf spinach and see if the color doesn't bleed into the entire soup.

I also need to cook some tri-tip this week (it was on sale, and cheap anyway). I know tri-tip does well on the grill, but I'm hoping for another method. I don't think it's fatty enough to benefit from a braise or a stew - and also, I'm trying to move away from the braise/stew flavor (delicious as it is, it's going to be a long winter and I want to mix it up a little). Does anyone have any ideas?

* Also, with respect to leftover stuffing: I don't want to let on how much I love stuffing. But, if you woke me up in the middle of the night, didn't give me time to put on my glasses before you shoved me out the door, and pushed me out into the middle of a raging blizzard with no coat on, and locked the door behind me, I'd probably be ok with it as long as you handed me stuffing and a fork before you turned the door latch. I'm just saying. Finishing off the leftover stuffing will not be, and never will be, a problem.

Sportello

Today, we had lunch at Sportello, in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood. Sportello is the newest in James Beard Award winner Barbara Lynch's empire. We've had (or at least I've had) a hankering to eat at a Lynch restaurant for a while. But, B&G Oysters is too expensive; No. 9 Park is too intimidating (the kind of place I expect Mitt Romney to eat at while he explores new and more devious ways to make his election to public office the worst thing to ever happen to America, nee Massachusetts); and on and on. When I heard that Babs was opening up a more casual, inexpensive Italian lunch counter, I had to try it.

And, we weren't disappointed. Sportello's space is gorgeous (if a bit out of the way and hard to find parking around), located on the floor above Drink. Floor-to-ceiling windows and a classic white counter put me at ease instantly, and gave me an excuse to people watch (both other patrons and street traffic) while I ate. The kitchen's right next to the counter. Overall, I got the sense that Sportello's a casual place, with transparent cooking and easy food. There's also a bakery and retail section, which I feel the restaurant could have done without.

The server brought us bread with a spread of marscapone cheese, fig preserves, olive oil and sea salt. It was amazing. The sea salt was a surprising taste, but it really set off the fig preserves just right. For our actual lunches, I ordered a $17 pasta dish: strozzapreti with braised rabbit and green olives. This was my first try at rabbit, and it was worth every penny - homemade pasta (at least, I think/assume it was homemade), dressed with braised, pulled rabbit and perfect green olives. It was hearty, tangy, and comforting, and the rabbit lent a perfect texture to the dish. The rabbit was almost the texture of pulled pork, if that makes any sense. Sorry, Bugs. Meanwhile, Amanda ordered a dish whose name escapes me now - but essentially, it was flat bread with roasted tomatoes and fresh ricotta cheese on it, and it probably wasn't worth the $17 it cost (although, the roasted tomatoes were the best I've ever had - soft, juicy, and a little spicy).

We opted out of dessert, since we were very full. But the options looked good - in particular, there was a pistachio torta with meyer lemon and marscapone flavors that I wouldn't mind making another go at.

This is a restaurant we'll definitely be back to. I was especially happy to see Chef Lynch on the premises today, greeting customers and keeping a watchful eye. Sportello's only open for lunch now (it just opened a few days ago), but the maitre'd told me that the restaurant will be open for dinner soon. This is the kind of place Boston needs more of: serious, good, well-thought out food, but in an atmosphere that's casual and approachable.