You may remember a few weeks ago I posted a recipe that didn’t interest me. I failed to adequately point out why.

It didn’t have anything to do with the pork recipe itself. I made and ate it with roasted barley, and the potential I saw in that had me 209472789 times more stoked on playing with the barley than even eating the tenderloin. So now that I’ve had time to toss it around, this is what came out.

It’s vegan (I know, a bit out of character) and packed with that fifth flavor, umami. I’m guessing I got the umami part down right, because I would eat a forkful and think, “Weird…” and promptly shove three more forkfuls into my face. It has a disturbing addictive quality.

What I Used

• Arborio Rice, 1/2 cup.
• Barley, 1/8 cup.
• Fresh White Corn. 1/4 cup of kernels.
• Fresh Shiitake Mushroom, 1/4 cup diced, 4 mushrooms left whole.
• 2 Medium-sized Shallots, fine diced.
• Kombu (dried kelp) Sheets, 15g.
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 2 tablespoons.
• Fresh Italian Parsley.
• Fresh Tarragon.

What I Did

1. Spread the barley out on a baking sheet and dry roast at 425°F for 5 minutes. Set aside for later use.
2. Take equal parts of fresh parsley and tarragon and finely chop. Set aside 1/4 cup of this mixture.
3. Make kombu dashi by following these four steps. (Clean the kombu by wiping it with cloth, soak it in water, heat that water to just below a boil, and remove the kombu.) For the amount of kombu I’ve listed in the ingredients you will want to use ~8 cups of water.
4. 
5. Keep the heat on the kombu dashi so that it stays just below a boil. The dashi will be our stock for cooking the risotto.
6. In your favorite skillet heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add shallots and some salt and cook until translucent.
7. Add the Arborio and roasted barley. Stir, coating the grains in oil and keep cooking over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for two minutes.
8. 
9. Kick the skillet to high heat. Pour a ladle of the dashi into the skillet. Start stirring.
10. Whenever the bottom of the skillet is visibly dry, bring another ladle of the dashi over. Always keep stirring. You’ll notice things start to get creamy and thicker almost immediately.
11. After 10 minutes of this, add the corn. Continue with the cycles of adding dashi.
12. After another 8 minutes (18 minutes total now) add the diced mushrooms and continue.
13. At 25 minutes, make your next liquid addition your last. Things should be al dente at this point. If not continue the cycle until you reach al dente.
14. During the last addition, salt the risotto to taste. I avoid adding salt before this because with all the liquid reduction going on, it may become easy to overdue things.
15. When the bottom of the pan is nearly dry, add the whole mushrooms on top of the risotto, cut the heat, put a lid on the thing, and walk away for 3 minutes while the mushrooms steam a bit.
16. Remove the lid and stir in the fresh herbs.
17. Serve up a pile of risotto and top it with one of the steamed shiitakes.

Oh yes, also: Hello Evernote users!

If you are here by way of the Evernote Blog, welcome, and take everything I say with a grain of salt. A grain this size should do.

For those of you who don’t know about Evernote, it is an online tool for capturing…well, anything. Cool webpage you want to remember? Just a few lines of text? Random thought in your head? Pictures? You can put all of that stuff on Evernote. Then you just install one of their applications on any computer or phone you use and all the notes you’ve made are available to you anywhere. It’s the 21st century version of a 3″5″ memo book. On crack. For somebody like me who’s plugged in 29hrs a day, it’s quite useful.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting at work and recipe ideas will pop into my head. So I create a note, and if anything else comes to mind later I just update the note. Then when I finally make it to a kitchen I can look over the note and start trying things out. In fact, here’s what the brainspew that led to this recipe looked like:

What will I do now that I’ve posted this recipe? Delete the note. It’s just my preference to get rid of it once it’s served its purpose.

That’s all for this one. Just a few little extra tidbits to be aware of:

• The umami sources are the mushroom, corn, and kombu. In a normal risotto Parmesan cheese packs the umami punch. Huge piles of free glutamate in that stuff.
• Don’t throw away the kombu. What you’ve created is ichiban dashi (the first brew), but you can reuse the kombu to make niban dashi (second brew) as well as cut it up and put it in other dishes to be eaten.
• Are you not vegan? That pork + garlic shallot sage butter goes great with this. :)

When you find yourself spending most of your time in a hotel room without a microwave you can still make delicious food. Here’s how.

Cheat, damnit. Don’t cook your food.

Ingredients

• Chivas Regal 12-Year Scotch
• An assortment of the freshest fruit you can buy locally. In this case:
  • Strawberries
  • Raspberries
  • Blackberries
  • Baby Thomson Grapes
  • Medjool, Deglet Noor, and Zahidi Dates
  • White Peach, sliced
• Water crackers, just to break up all the sweetness

Instructions

1. Put the fruit in a plastic bag and add a few ounces of Chivas.
2. Wait an hour and remove. If you’re brave, pour the Chivas into a glass and throw it back like a man.

I had the bottle of Chivas siting around from when my old team at work gave it to me as a parting gift I totally acquired it outside of work. The fruit was chosen at the local farmer’s market. If you’ve been to one recently in California you’ve probably seen the insane selection of awesome fruit available, so really just go for what you find addicting.

Some of the fruits I picked worked better with the Scotch than others. I’m not going to pretend I know the finer points of whiskey tasting, so here’s a basic breakdown:

• Blackberries: My favorite. Neither of the flavors overpowered the other and there wasn’t any harsh alcohol bite or aftertaste.
• Raspberries: These were smaller and denser than the blackberries so less of the Chivas stuck around. Tasted mostly like the non-macerated raspberries, or in other words, still delicious.
• Strawberries: Dear god this was awful. Let me spell it out in full. Chivas Regal and strawberries mixed together taste of death. I’m not even going to try to figure out how to modify it. I’m just leaving this fruit out of future Scotch equations.
• Dates: Of course, these don’t really soak up much with their slick skins and dense interior. Nothing interesting.
• Grapes: Again, they have skin. If you just dip them in the Chivas and eat them, I do like how these little sour things taste. As an aside, the grapes look huge in the picture above but it’s just the placement, shot angle, and tiny plate used. They’re seriously micrograpes.
• Peaches: These soaked up a lot of flavor. It wasn’t disgusting like the strawberries, but it wasn’t fantastic. There’s potential. What I want to do with these is macerate them and then grill them. All I have to do is figure out how to turn a hotel reading lamp into a 400°F griddle.

Final note: This “recipe,” if you want to call it that, is vegan and raw but by absolutely no means healthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if this tiny plate of fruit + booze is more sugar than you should have in a whole day. But if you’re cool with that, go right ahead, dig into the sugar pile, get drunk, and enjoy.

Stupid Taco Bell commercial. Ok, so I know they’re all pretty bad, but you may recognize this one that has been running recently. I’d show you the real ad on Youtube but I guess the folks behind the Volcano Burrito don’t want to take advantage of free advertising. Smart. Not.

Two stereotypical Taco Bell Commercial Douchebags are lounging next to the pool eating a Fiesta Taco Salad. How these two ordered such a thing without receiving unending ridicule from friends and family is left unexplained. We are, however, given this brilliant exchange of words:

Dude A: “Hey bro, I thought this was a salad.”

Dude B: Removing finger from ass… “Huh?”

A: “I can’t find the lettuce.”

B: “Did you look under the cheese?”

A: “Not there.”

B: “Did you look under the meat?”

A: “Dude, I looked under the meat, the taco shell, I even stood up and looked under this kickass lawn chair. The lettuce is fucking gone.

Hottie: Entering the scene, thinking she’s awesome for being in a Taco Bell commercial… “Did you look under the beans?”

A: Obviously not the first time he’s needed a woman’s help finding something under something, now holding lettuce on his fork… “Aaaallllriiiiiiight.”

B: “So it’s technically a salad.”

I’d like for these geniuses to find the lettuce in three-bean salad, potato salad, or antipasto. So what really constitutes a salad? Hell if I know. If you believe Wikipedia then it might as well be a mixture of any food items, hot or cold, no matter what they are.

Well if that’s all it takes to play this salad game, I want in.

What I Used

• Cucumber, peeled and julienned (I’m sure my knife skills did not produce a proper 1/8 in. x 1/8 in. x 2.5 in. cut)
• Extra Soft Tofu, 1/2 in. cubes
• Dried Cranberries
• Pistachios, finely chopped
• Lime Juice, freshly squeezed
• Don’t forget the salt

What I Did

1. Combine the cucumber, tofu, cranberries, and salt.
2. Squeeze fresh lime juice on the whole thing.
3. Top with chopped pistachios.

You know what I love about this salad? Cooking Time: 0 minutes.

So it isn’t mind-blowing, but the flavors do work. It could really use something to tie all these things together with more body than just lime juice. Maybe make this into a lime vinaigrette?

This dish did let me discover that I really like how cranberries and pistachios pair. On Mothers Day I made a Cran-Pistachio Pesto that the parentals seemed to enjoy. With a couple small tweaks that recipe could very well end up here.

A couple weeks ago I found myself walking around the store for an hour. Before putting anything in the cart.

Usually during the waning hours of work or in the car I’ll come to a conclusion on what to cook for that night. On this occasion all I could figure out before the store was:

It has to be healthy. It cannot star meat.

Sure, chicken and fish are generally healthy proteins, but I’ve seriously been overdoing it lately. Apparently chiffinade garnish doesn’t satisfy the daily recommended dose of vegetables. So after eyeing some tofu and considering some weak salad options I settled on the Portobellos and got working on something substantial and quick.

What I Used

• Portobello Mushrooms
• Tomato, sliced
• Green Leaf Lettuce
• Artichoke Hearts, in oil
• Jalapeno Pepper, minced
• Unexciting Store-bought Hamburger Buns

What I Did

1. Heat skillet and add water until bottom is shallowly covered
2. When water boils add Portobellos stem side down, reduce to simmer, cover, steam for 8-10 minutes
3. In food processor add artichoke hearts, jalapeno, salt, pepper, and obliterate
4. Put buns under the broiler until brown and crispy
5. Arrange mushrooms, tomato, lettuce, and artichoke/jalapeno spread between buns to form a guiltless burger

I’ve seen a few different variations on Portobello-as-meat burger out there before, and I’m glad I gave it a run. The thing was giant and I couldn’t finish it. The artichoke spread will probably find use in other dishes in the future.

Well, now I feel a little better having cooked at least one vegan meal for myself. Now back to the usual programming of saturated fat and fork-tender animal flesh!