mbietz March 2nd, 2008
I needed to use up some leftover roasted pork, and I was in the mood for risotto. I wanted to do something a little different, so I adapted a Cook’s Illustrated recipe for white chicken chili, turning it into a risotto instead of a soup. I think it turned out really well.
The chilis, once they are seeded and the ribs removed, are all quite mild. You can leave in a few seeds if you like some heat, but I didn’t. One of the weird things about California grocery stores is that poblano chilis are called pasilla chilis and the Anaheim is also known as the green chili. The combination of the three different kinds of chilis and two cheeses give a nice depth of flavor.
Here’s what I did:
Ingredients:
For the Salsa:
- 2 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 2 green onions, sliced thin
- squeeze of lime juice
- pinch salt
For the Risotto:
- 6 c. low-sodium chicken broth
- 1 tbsp. olive oil
- 2 medium onions, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 jalapeno chilis, seeds and ribs removed, chopped fine
- 2 poblano chilis, seeds and ribs removed, chopped fine
- 2 anaheim chilis, seeds and ribs removed, chopped fine
- 1 ½ c. arborio rice
- 1 tbsp. ground cumin
- 1 ½ tsp. ground coriander
- ½ c. white wine
- 16 oz. leftover roast pork
- 1 c. frozen corn
- 2 oz. monterey jack, shredded
- 2 oz. chevre
- ¼ c. cilantro, roughly chopped
- ¼ c. flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
- lime juice, to taste
Procedure
- Mix salsa ingredients together and set aside.
- Pour chicken broth in a saucepan and bring to a simmer.
- Heat olive oil in large saute pan or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Once the oil is shimmering, add onions, garlic, and a pinch of salt. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add all of the chopped chilis, and cook stirring occasionally for another 2-3 minutes, until onions are translucent.
- Add rice, and stir for 1-2 minutes until grains turn translucent.
- Add cumin and coriander, and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until fragrant.
- Add wine, and stir until almost all liquid is gone.
- Add a couple ladles of chicken broth, and stir until most of the broth is absorbed. Repeat until all but 1 cup of the broth has been added and the rice is cooked.
- Stir in pork, frozen corn, and 1/2 cup broth, and cook until heated through.
- Add cheeses and the rest of the broth, and stir until incorporated.
- Just before serving, stir in cilantro, parsley, a squeeze of lime juice, and salt to taste.
Serve topped with salsa.
mbietz January 6th, 2008
My friend Serene posted a mouthwatering photo of Thai Noodle Soup and it looked so good I had to try the recipe myself. It calls for Thai shrimp paste (belachan), which meant a trip to one of San Diego’s many Asian grocers.
We discovered something that’s not clear from the Wikipedia article or most of the other references we found online: there are 2 very different things available called “shrimp paste.”
Our first stop was a Vietnamese store, and the only thing we could find were several brands of the stuff on the left: shrimp paste in soybean oil, whose ingredients include shrimp, garlic, soybean oil, pepper, salt, paprika, and often MSG. However, from what I’d seen online, that didn’t seem right. It smells shrimpy, but it wasn’t the “light pinkish gray” or dark brown block that I was expecting. So then we stopped at a Korean store, and picked up the jar on the right. Ingredients: shrimp and salt. Light pinkish gray. Smells like death. But called “shrimp sauce.”
We made the soup with the stuff on the right. It was great (thanks Serene!). Like fish sauce, it adds a wonderful earthy richness when it’s cooked in the soup. The other stuff seems a bit more like a condiment or stir-fry sauce - it’s still got a strong shrimpy aroma, but nothing like the gut-wrenching power of plain shrimp paste (the recipe calls for “a pea-sized piece”).
mbietz December 28th, 2007
I’m quite sure that most people who say they dislike fruitcake haven’t had good fruitcake. And they definitely haven’t had my mother’s fruitcake. Little bits of candied fruit and nuts enveloped in a moist (because it’s been soaking in cream sherry) dense cake. Nummy.
mbietz November 30th, 2007
It’s raining in San Diego. We’ve already had more than 1/2″, including a few moments of near-downpour. To put that in context, our average rainfall is only about 10″. With so little rain, the roads are pretty oil-slick, which makes for a crappy commute. And there are worries of rock and mudslides, especially in the recently-burned areas.
But that’s not what I’m thinking about. This is the first big rain since we moved into the new house. It’s a bit like the first road trip with a new lover. You’ve gotten to know a lot about each other, but now you see all the annoying little quirks. I keep wandering around the house looking at the ceiling for leaks. None so far, but I discovered that the front door doesn’t have weather stripping, and with the wind today, we’ve got a puddle on the floor. The driveway also slopes a bit toward the garage, so there’s a puddle there too (although it’s not right up to the door, so probably not an issue).
But now I’ve got an excuse to go to Lowe’s this weekend. 
mbietz October 26th, 2007
The fires aren’t out yet, but the San Diego Fire Chief announced today that there is no more fire threat for the city of San Diego, and Qualcomm has been emptied. The winds and temperatures are now in the firefighters’ favor. We’ve still got pollution issues - the air is still hazy, and the invisible particulate matter is high. We’ve been keeping the house closed up and we’ve got our small HEPA filter and the air conditioning fan on to help. Dan went in to the UCSD campus today - he said the smell was worse there, and there was some ash in his office around the windows (which don’t seal particularly tightly).
But all in all, we’ve been very lucky. No fires got even close to us, and the pollution hasn’t been as bad here as in most other areas of the county.
mbietz October 24th, 2007
Yesterday Dan got a text-message on his cell-phone from the UCSD emergency response system:
“classes r canceled 4 week du 2 uncertnty of fires & xtreme bad air. Res. dining halls, & studnt health centr open & opn 2 serve. resume norml class & work sched Mon. Oct 29. chk ucsd.edu”
Dan wasn’t sure if it was real at first - it was hard to believe that an official message would be written in txtspk.
I recently saw Leysia Palen speak at the e-Social Science conference about “Crisis Informatics.” One of the points she made is that in times of crisis, the official/unofficial dimension of information is often separate from the reliable/unreliable dimension. The text message (at least at first glance) seems to be low on both scales. It comes from an unrecognized number, has few authority cues, and doesn’t follow any of the genre conventions of official communications. On the other hand, it is both very official (coming through a tightly controlled emergency system) and completely true.
For this message, it didn’t matter much. But if you got a text message from an unknown source that said “evac asap. xtreme dngr. leave valubles bhnd.” would you do it?
mbietz October 24th, 2007
7:45am: A little stronger smell of smoke this morning, but again no change in our status. There has been more “onshore flow” with the winds, which is probably the reason why we’re smelling it more. The smokey sky also made for a colorful sky. With the wind shifting, many of the new evacuations have actually been on the northeast side of the fire (that is, farther away from us).
mbietz October 23rd, 2007
10:15pm: I’m back in San Diego. Flying in was interesting - as we were coming in over San Diego everybody had their eyes glued to the windows. Could see the fire lines on both sides of the plane, and the eerie orange glow in the smoke we were flying through. Became even more obvious, though, that the flames are (thankfully) pretty far away from our house. The weather seems to have been slightly more cooperative today. Hope that continues.
But I’m still on Eastern time, so I’m heading to bed. G’night!
