Brown Rice Risotto

If you are an Italian grandma please sit down and clutch your heart. I made risotto with brown rice. No expensive little packages of special rice from the north of Italy. I actually like this best made with brown basmati rice but I didn't have any.

Rachel and I had a California Pops rehearsal. All big band music for this show, which is sold out. I made this risotto right before we left I just had a bite of it and left it for my snack after rehearsal.

Brown rice risotto, onion and potato soup

This is an unusual recipe for me.  It takes over and hour. Although there isn't much work to do you do have to be close by. Every few minutes you have to stir the rice and add liquid when it needs it.

The process is the same as making a traditional risotto. I started by sauteing an onion in olive oil, then I added the brown rice and some thyme and sauteed them too.



I boiled some water and added an ounce of dried mushrooms.  When the rice had changed color I added a enough of the mushroom stock to cover the rice, a clove of garlic and stirred like mad.

So for the next 50 minutes or so I alternated between practicing and stirring and adding stock.

At the end I added some sliced water chestnuts, salt and pepper.

Tonight after rehearsal I sat down and heated up some of my leftover onion and potato soup, added a bunch of the now rehydrated wild mushrooms, a dash of Madeira and seasoned it. I reheated some of the risotto and added it to the soup.

Easy, Fast, Tasty Pea Soup

Scarf!

This is a great soup, easy and CHEAP to make. It's half an onion, half a carrot, a bag of frozen peas and some garnishes. It takes about ten minutes to make. The color is bright, bright green. It's low in fat, high in fiber and vitamins and is filling enough for lunch. Get the recipe here.

Pea soup. Ten minutes to make. Tastes great!

Off to the theater to play a matinee. This is a perfect lunch before a concert. Not too heavy but a lot of slow release energy. It can be completely vegan, though I did put a dot of butter in it to finish.

The garnishes I used here are bits of home cured ham (yes, I do throw that on just about everything), walnuts and chunks of Meyer lemon.

Ravioli in the Garage

Teaching, practicing, playing Brahms and going to the dog park doesn't leave a lot of time to make lunch. I ate in the garage today taking bites in between doing other stuff.

Apples and walnuts with walnut oil, ravioli with home smoked pork and peas

I had a box of locally made ravioli so I poached them and in another pan I sauteed some onions and tomatoes in olive oil, threw in some peas, rosemary from the garden and some thin slices of home cured and smoked pork. The salad is just apple and walnuts with a little walnut oil and lemon juice and black pepper. Dash of salt on the salad but the ravioli didn't need it.

My wife loved it. I scarfed it. Cost per serving: about four bucks, mostly for the ravioli.  Time to make it: about 20 minutes.

If I am so Frugal why do I use Truffles?

I am frugal; I like to think I got to retire from high tech because I was cheap, not because I was rich. But I also think life is too short to eat bland food.

I have a nice little collection of fine ingredients that I use on a regular basis. Truffles, nut oil, salt packed capers, Greek olives, fine cheeses and expensive vinegars frequently find their way onto my plate.

A fourteen dollar bottle of walnut oil might seem like an extravagance but if it enhances fifty meals out of it it works out to 28 cents per meal. And it tastes great.

I love condiments made out of boiled down grapes, from the balsamico we know to unusual items like must, which is simply boiled down grape juice. A drop of that on a plate packs a lot of flavor. I love putting just barely a drop on a piece of apple or cheese or a slice of beef. Sweet and sour with a lot of depth it's really worth looking for.

Truffles are the sign of a special meal here. They have the cachet of being rare and expensive but if you use them right they can be a very cost effective way of packing some powerful flavors. I buy jars of truffles or peelings to make sauces for beef or chicken or vegetables. Just a dollars worth sauteed in a little butter in a pan where a steak had cooked will make your whole house smell like truffles and with a few drops of cream you have as good a sauce as can be made.

One area I don't suggest spending a lot of money on is fancy salts. I have tried grey salts, pink salts, sea salts from all over and cheap salts. Use a good brand of kosher salt for most things or everything and you'll do well. There are some fun salts like Maldon, which are little crystal pyramids and crunch when you eat them, but is that worth the bundle of money it costs? Maybe, but it's hardly frugal and doesn't pack a flavor punch.

So if you don't know what to get or how to use it I suggest you start with a single item like a good nut oil or maybe an aged balsamic vinegar. Spend ten or twelve bucks. Then taste what you have been missing!

Crazy, rainy day means Turkey

It's been one of those days - I played two concerts at a high school this morning and on my way back I got a call from my dentist. My 18 year old son fell ill as they started to work on him. Rats!

I dashed over there picked him up and ran home. The pediatrician's office was closed for another hour so I slapped lunch together, called them and they gave us an appointment for late in the afternoon. I canceled all my students. As I was getting lunch on plates they called back and said to bring him right it.

The good news is that he's fine and it was probably a one time event. The bad news is that I had to eat in the car.

Sorry about the lousy picture - had to rush to the doctor..

Today I make potato and onion soup and turkey tenderloins. The soup is really easy. I sauteed up a large onion, put 5 potatoes in cut into fourths, with the skin and added boiling water. Today just for kicks I added some dried porcini mushrooms. It simmered while I made the turkey. When the potatoes and mushrooms were soft I used a stick blender and pureed it. Add some salt and pepper and it's ready. I garnished it with a little of my home smoked pork belly.


I love the contrast of the rather bland soup and the strong flavored pork.

I had some turkey tenderloins, which is really part of the turkey breast and not a tenderloin at all, but tenderloins sounds expensive so that's what they call them. They have virtually no waste. I just rinsed and dried them, poured olive oil over them and some of my spice rub. I browned them in a cast iron pan and finished them in a hot oven. Let them rest a few minutes and away we go.

Total cost for today's treats: about 2 bucks.

I don't like to eat before concerts or rehearsals so I will have a snack around 6 then eat a light snack when I get back. Tonight's Symphony Silicon Valley concert is special by the way: Thursday concerts never sell well so they have opened the house to the public for free and will be asking for donations to help the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

It's Sushi Day

(Note: I wrote this onstage in the middle of Brahms' German Requiem, waiting for my cue. Right in front of a large, strong, well rehearsed choir and a fine, large orchestra. Not bad place to be.)

If you think you need years to learn how to make sushi you are dead wrong. In Japan sushi is restaurant and home food. It was originally a way of preserving food for lunches. Think of it as their version of a PBJ.

Simple ingredients. Great food.

 I was lucky enough to have friends of Japanese ancestry when I was growing up and I ate plenty of raw fish back when most Americans thought it was poison.

In 1980 I got to go to Japan with an orchestra. I was the only one who who was used to Japanese food. After a few days whenever they served us something they weren't used to they would all offer it to me. Awesome!


 I remember when we got served huge, incredibly fresh prawns. Oh man oh man.

If you have never eaten octopus you are missing out. You buy it already boiled and tender at the Japanese market but my favorite way to make it is getting it raw and grilling it for a long time in olive oil. Some other time..  

Like so many Americans now my kids grew up eating and loving sushi.

Making it home is easy, fun and way cheaper than eating out. I spent 20 bucks on fish for this lunch and it made a lot of sushi for 4 people and yes, we have leftover ingredients like rice wine vinegar and nori.

Notice the knife blade is almost parallel to the cutting board.

Aside from the fish you need some short grain rice, a bit of rice vinegar, sugar and the Japanese ingredients, none of which cost more than 2 bucks, and there is plenty left over.  To make the seasoning for the sushi rice, we put a little water in a bowl and add the sugar and rice vinegar in small amounts and keep adding until it tastes right.  I know it's not traditional but I like to put a little fresh lemon juice in the solution.

Spreading the vinegar mixture over the rice.

The rice takes 20 minutes to cook, 10 minutes to rest and a few minutes to cool off. Traditionally the chef cuts the rice and sprinkles it with the vinegar mixture while the apprentice fans it to cool it quickly.

Today my son Phil helped out, waving the Gordon Jacob horn concerto frantically at it while I cut the rice and mixed in the solution.

I'm sure my critics would say that's how I play the Gordon Jacob concerto.

With rice and condiments, here is lunch for 4.

Here is a finished serving plate. It really doesn't take much time as aside from making the rice all you have to do is slice stuff up.

The fish we have here is hamachi, octopus, scallops with the roe and innards and marinated mackerel. To make them more interesting I floured and lightly fried the scallops.

Along with the fish we have shiso leaves,  nori seaweed sheets that I waved over a flame and shredded, sliced cucumber, wasabe, pickled ginger, and takuan, which is daikon pickled with rice bran.


On this plate, starting at the top is the fried scallops on top of shiso leaves, then on the left is takuan and on the right is cucumber and below the scallops are octopus, yellowtail and vinegared mackerel.

Today we served sushi Chirashi or 'scattered' style. Instead of making rolls or lumps we simply put the rice in the bottom of a bowl and topped it with the fish and stuff.

This was Phil's bowl. Not a bad lunch.





I have a hot tip for you today. We use Kikkoman Organic Soy Sauce. Not because it's organic, but because it tastes awesome. A really fine flavor unlike the usual dull soy sauces.  It smells and tastes great.

Since it was an insane day

The day involved playing Wagner and Rossini in the morning in Fremont, running back to Saratoga to lead my elementary school band, then home for an hour before leaving to play Brahms downtown. Lunch was provided by the symphony and it was nice but no pictures or recipes. Instead I'll share one of our favorites.

The recipe is almost as I sent it to a flute player friend of mine. It's from a period when my kids were little and I would do just about anything to get some plants into their diet. Hence the boatload of garlic and two cups of herbs. I'm not kidding around.

Maybe it's because I know the charming lady involved it seems funny and quaint to me. And the dressing is quite tasty. We use it to marinate meats, dress bruschetta, grace salads, perk up guacamole, etc.

Scott
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Hartman House
Dressing/Marinade/Cheap drunk

1 liter     Kalamata Olive oil (1)
1 cup or so cheap balsamic vinegar
1 large wine glass     Latour '63
4 or 5  anchovy fillets, or smoked herring (see NOTE)
1/2   Lemon
1 big blopping tablespoon     Dijon mustard
1 Boatload     garlic, peeled,  little brown umbilicals and any brown spots cut off (2)
1 Boatload     fresh herbs (3)
Wooooseeestershire sauce to taste, probably a teaspoon or so
Freshly cracked black pepper to taste
One nasty little pinch of sugar
Salt to taste

1) Juice the lemon and if you want, chop up a teaspoon or so of the zest. Rinse the herbs and dry them on a paper towel. (4)

2) Put the garlic, mustard, anchovies, herbs, lemon juice and zest into a food processor. Add enough balsamic vinegar just to cover it and chop the bejeezes out of it. It doesn't need to be pureed,  it should have lots of little pieces in it.

3) With the motor running if possible, add a few drops of olive oil. Let it process for a few seconds to start the emulsion. Slowly add more oil, waiting for it to process every few seconds.

I don't have a big food processor, so at this point I put it into a large bowl and use a wire whisk to beat it like DELETED as I slowly add the oil. You'll want to add more vinegar.

4) Call me first, then rush like hell over to my house so I can have the Latour. Hmm, maybe I'll make myself a steak to go with it. Thanks!

5) Add the Woosterstuff sauce, pepper and sugar. Mix it up and taste it (I like to use a cucumber stick or jicama, but a clean finger works well) before you add any salt, or more pepper or other stuff.

(1) OK, so you'll need a little less than that.
(2) 1 boatload equals a dozen big cloves or so. At least.
(3) A bunch of basil and half a bunch of parsley does well. I use about two cups of herbs.
(4) You don't have to go crazy drying the herbs, they're full of water anyway.

 NOTE: If you are using canned anchovies or anchovy paste you don't have to rinse them. If you are using the fancy salted anchovies then soak them for five minutes in water, then pull their little spines out, pinch off any bones or guts that are left on them (this is why anchovies don't like humans) and rinse them well. You can also use smoked herring, which is really cheap and you can get it in any market. A can costs about a buck. Sometimes they are called kippers or kippered herring. Use the ones in oil, not sauce.

NEXT NOTE: It hardly ever stays emulsified so don't worry about it.

EVEN MORE OF THESE DAMN NOTES:  You might notice that I have these NB type notes and the numbered notes above. I noticed that too. Too much Fledermaus will do that to ya.

SIGH - MORE NOTES:  If you are going to use a different oil, I would recommend cheaper rather than more expensive. You are going to process it with a boatload of garlic and anchovies. Any subtle flavor derived from the precious volcanic soils of Vesuvius are going to be smothered by the fragrant tang of the fruit of Gilroy.