Squashy Risotto

It's getting to be risotto weather.  Or am I crazy?   Fall just seems kind of risottoey to me.  Kind of like pot roast or stew.  And when you're making your risotto with butternut squash, well it just screams autumn.  I've tried making Butternut Squash Risotto before and the result was not what I had hoped for.  But this time, I had a new plan.  The previous time I made it, I peeled, seeded and diced the squash, tossed with a little salt, pepper and olive oil and roasted it.  Then I made a basic risotto and folded the roasted diced squash into it.  I'm not saying it was bad.  But what happened was, when I took the squash out of the oven, I had to taste it.  It was good.  So I had to taste it again.   And well, just to be sure, I had to taste it a few more times.  Quality control is very important.  So by the time I finished tasting and testing, there wasn't much left for the risotto.

This time I'm starting with an around 2 lb butternut squash.  Butternut just happens to be readily available, inexpensive and darn tasty.  But my fave of the winter squashes is by far, the kabocha squash.  But they are not readily available and they are not inexpensive.  But they are delicious.  So either way.  Hell if you want to use acorn or delicata, by all means, feel free.  Cut your squash of choice in half, take out the seeds and place cut side down on a baking sheet with either a little cooking spray or a light coating of oil.

Roast in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes.  These suckers are hard and they take a long time to cook.  When you take it out the cut side should be caramelized and all kinds of delicious.

Let it cool for a little while.  When it's cool enough to handle, scrape out all the yummy and discard the skin.  Then just mash it up with a fork.  You can puree it in a food processor if you must dirty this annoyingly difficult to clean appliance, but a fork or even a potato masher will do the trick.  And then set aside until later.  It might get watery while it's stilling there waiting to be added, no worries.

Now for the risotto.  It's pretty much standard.  One small onion or two shallots, diced.  I'm using a vidalia onion today because I was *gasp* out of shallots.  How could this be!  No worries, it won't happen again.  Add the diced onion to a heavy glorious pot that already has two Tablespoons of butter and three Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil heating up.  Cook the onions gently on medium heat, just sweating them out.  You don't want to brown them.

While the onions are sweating, in another pot you should have 5 and a half to 6 cups of chicken stock heating up.  If you make this yourself, bravo!   I don't always have time or inclination to make my own, but when I do I freeze it and us it as needed.  This time I'm using my favorite stock in a box, Kitchen Basics.  It's by far the best, has the least amount of sodium and is made right here in good old Cleveland (actually Brecksville) Ohio.

When the onions start to turn translucent, it's time to add the rice.  You will need 1 and a half cups of a short grain rice, preferably Arborio.  Add it straight to the butter/oil and onion mixture and stir it around to coat the rice.

Cook the rice for about 2 minutes on medium heat and then add 1/3 cup of white wine.  Stir the rice and wine until the wine has all but evaporated.  Now it's time to add your heated stock.  You don't want it to boil on that burner, but just come up to heat.   I use a large soup ladle and ladle in one or two each time.  After adding that amount, stir the risotto while the stock gets cooked in.  You don't have to stir constantly.  I know a lot of recipes say to do that, but I don't stir constantly and it turns out beautifully.  You want to stir a lot, don't get me wrong.  And you don't want to walk off and leave the risotto unattended.  But you don't have to give yourself that Tommy John elbow ailment from making risotto.

Don't forget to season as you go.  You know how much sodium you have in your own stock or in whatever store bought stock your using so be as aggressive or passive as necessary based on that.  This whole process should take about 20-25 minutes, adding another ladleful or two of stock after the last ones have cooked in.  And when you're down to your last ladle of stock, add it in and then add in your mashed butternut squash and stir it in.

Thinking about this dish had me going straight out to my garden and picking a nice big bunch of sage.  What says fall more than sage?   And it's a beautiful accompaniment to butternut squash.

Look how pretty my hand looks holding this gorgeous sage.  You would think I was in a commercial for sage the way I'm holding it.  I feel so Vanna.

Clean and chop the sage into ribbons and add to the risotto just about when it's done.

And then as the final step, add three quarters of a cup of grated Parmesan cheese to risotto and stir it in.  Now there is nothing left to do but enjoy it.  Buon Cibo mia Amici.

Summertime is Corn Time

I recently delved into my very first grilled corn. Seems strange that I never have and I don't really have a reason. But I got a bee in my bonnet to do it, and do it I did dammit! So after making my corn purchase at Szalay's Farm Market in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio I was ready to do it. I got advice from several different people on how to do it several different ways, so as I always do, I took what I liked out of that advice and then winged it.  First, look at this gorgeous corn! Szalays' does it right!I've never once been disappointed. The yellow/white corn combo is winner.

I pulled off the outer layers of the husk and all the inner silks, leaving just the inner, lighter colored husks on the corn. Then soaked the ears in a big bowl of water with about 3/4 cup of sugar. So about a gallon or so of water to the sugar. I let them soak for half an hour.

While they soaked, with about 10 minutes or so left, I got the grilled heated up. The inner husks did not cover the corn completely but that was fine with me, I wanted some of the char marks on it. So on the grill they went!

The first (and well, maybe the only mistake) I made during this process was that at first, I did not close the lid of my grill. I rarely do this, so I didn't think to do it this time. But when I went out for the first turn, I could see that the husks were charring and the corn itself still looked very raw. The lid needs to be closed to seal in the heat and cook the corn more evenly. After I realized this, it was smooth sailing. I turned it several times in the cooking process. All totaled, it was probably about 15-20 minutes, with a turn every 5.

While the corn was cooking, I prepared a big salad with lettuce, herbs and scallions from my garden.  Tomatoes aren't quite ready yet.  With croutons and some nice Havarti cheese, with a similar balsamic vinaigrette, it was a refreshing yet hearty salad.
 

I also decided to make a Romano cheese and sage (from the garden again) butter.  I happen to really love the taste of sage on corn, but that may not be your thing.  So try chives, or thyme if you prefer.  Once the corn was done, I peeled off what was left of the husks.  They did get pretty burnt up, but the corn did not.

Then a slather of Romano sage butter, and it was time to sink our teeth in!  Delish!!!

If you've never tried grilling your corn, I highly recommend it!  

Wilton Course 3 - The Final Exam!

Just in time for the next class to start, I bring you my final exam from Course 3 - Fondant and Tiered Cakes. Be afraid, and if it's too much, please look away!

First of all, this course had the most homework of any of the previous courses. Seriously. Before the final class we had to have a 9 or a 10 inch layer cake, a 6 inch layer cake, both iced and covered in fondant, they also needed to have their dowels in place. In addition to all that, we needed to bring some vile buttercream, 20-30 fondant roses and a bunch of fondant leaves.

Starting with the cake, since Nick and I will not touch anything that has that vile buttercream on it, I don't really bother making a cake from scratch for class. This week I used a Pillsbury fudge cake mix and I would say I will never use this cake mix again. As far as boxed cake mixes go, it's fine. It tastes decent and is very moist. Which is kind of the problem, it's very very moist. Which makes icing it kind of a nightmare. And I made it even more moist. I couldn't think of anything to use as a filling so while searching my pantry and refrigerator for something I found a bottle of maraschino cherries. I brushed each trimmed layer with the juice and then put the cherries in the middle of the cake.



Someone was most likely going to eat this cake so I didn't want it to have an empty center. That's just cruel! But then, icing it. No matter how many times I cleaned off my spatula, no matter how many times I tried to scrape the cake, it came out looking like a horrible crumby mess.


In the end though, it just didn't matter since I was covering the iced cake in fondant. So I rolled it out and got to work on smoothing the fondant over the cake.


I did ok, but ran into one little problem area.


I decided to make due with it though. Then I did it all again with the 6 inch cake. Yep, another crumby mess.


Booooo ghosty cake!


Nice, smooth. Just don't look at the other side ok?


Dammit! I told you not to look!


After getting both cakes covered, then I had to put the dowels in the 9 inch cake and get the dowels cut so they weren't sticking out by 5 inches in the cake.


So, armed with 20 fondant roses that looked really bad (I could not get my edges to ruffle and now realize that I needed to roll the fondant a bit thinner), no leaves because I forgot to make them, 2 cakes, vile buttercream and all the other supplies, I'm ready to head to class and put this final exam cake together!


The class mainly consisted of putting our tiered cake together and decorating it. As it turns out, my dowels didn't like up right with the pillars for the cake, so I had to move them.


It really wasn't much of a problem though because vile buttercream in the holes make it look pretty seamless, and plus the flowers were going to go over most of the area. So I started by putting the two cakes together with the pillars between them.



Then it was time to start piping the vile buttercream onto the cake so the roses would stick to the cake.


When the flowers were going to be on the side, a toothpick was added to insure they wouldn't fall off.


Once all the flowers were on, I had to color some of the vile buttercream green so that I could pipe on some leaves.




I also decided to make the border stars, yeah, because it's the easiest one. You caught me there. And then I decided to add more stars. The funny thing is, I've seen Buddy on Cake Boss say many times, "The more I added to that cake, the better it looked" and that really proved to be true. In the end, even though I was disappointed with my roses and I didn't get the fondant completely smoothed out in some areas, I was actually pretty happy with the look of the final product.

Wilton Course 3 - Fondant and Tiered Cakes

I'm a glutton for punishment. This fact is becoming very very clear. I decided to take Wilton's Course 3, Fondant and Tiered Cakes even though I have a fear of fondant. What does it taste like? Is it hard to work with? What about coloring it? I don't have a sheeter so how hard is it to roll? Lots and lots of questions. But I hiked up my big girl pants and dove in. It was in the second class that fondant really came into play. We played with it a little in the first class, but applying it to an actual cake happened in the second.

So let's start with the cake. You may remember from such blogs as this one and this one, how much I detest buttercream icing. This class uses buttercream and royal icing, but in very limited quantities. So let's start first with the cake. Class two is the package cake, meaning it looks like a package, so the cake was to be square. Knowing this probably will not end up being edible, I used a box cake mix and baked it in an 8 inch square pan. Check out the bump on this bad boy!



This cake had to be evened out so I used my handy dandy cake leveler, which by the way, is my fave tool ever. It's the coolest thing. It looks like this. And after leveling it, this is how the cake looked:


Then I put it on the cake board upside down so the flat side was up. Then it had to be iced with the vile buttercream. This step is important because it keeps the fondant in place. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be smooth.



So far, so good. From there I took the cake to class to finish up the decorations. But first, we got to make fondant roses. There are a lot of steps and they are time consuming, but I like them a lot better than vile buttercream roses. One of the reasons being that the center can be a jellybean! Believe me, when you realize you have to roll out the fondant, cut it, ruffle it, cup it, and fold it all up into a rose, the fact that you don't have to make the center too is a very welcome time saver! Here is my very first fondant rosebud.


So, now we're getting to the good stuff. Time to decorate our cake. We started by rolling out the fondant. It's like rolling out dough, and then you roll the fondant around the rolling pin like you would if you were making a pie.



Then drape it over the cake, and start smoothing it down!



My fondant might look like it's a little thick, but it actually wasn't. And it smoothed over the cake just beautifully. My fondant fears were so far proving to be unfounded. It's actually almost easier than vile buttercream!

Once the cake is covered and smoothed, I trimmed off the excess and started to build my decorations on it. I had strips of pink fondant that would look like a ribbon and bow, plus some pink spirals and some white flower cut outs. To get the fondant to stick to each other, we brushed each piece with clear vanilla extract.


And here it all is, put together. Hey not too bad for my first try huh?? (humor me ok?)



There are some errors, sure. And the edges could use a border. But I'm actually pretty pleased with this result. What I'm not pleased about is this weeks class. It's daunting, to say the least. Before class I will need to make about 30 fondant roses and some fondant leaves, two cakes (iced and covered with fondant), dowels placed in cakes. And then in class we will put it all together and tier them. I'd be totally lying if I didn't say I was ascared! Yikes!