Let’s begin. What we’re going to do is we’re going to make a simple Risotto. What’s great about making a Risotto, you’re going to use a short-grain rice. We’re going to use an arborio rice, a short-grain high starch content.
What we’re going to do, we’re going to start with a little bit of butter. I love to die happy so we’re going to put a little bit of butter in there. Now, we’re going to sweat some onions. And the onion is about, it’s a half of sweet onion that we have here. Now, if we want to extract all the natural sugars from the onion okay, so while it’s doing what it’s got to do, to make a make a Risotto the best way is to have hot chicken stock that we made yesterday morning. We let it cooked for about six hours to extract the flavor, strain it, and then keep it hot. So, you want to have a hot stock adding to Risotto in small increments. The reason why is because a Risotto is so small and such a high starch content. They cook it like a pilaf. It’s not going to behave the right way. The starch actually releases itself too fast. And see, you have a glueball and you don’t want to have that. What we’re doing is just melting it. Now, you have to control the heat. You don’t want to caramelize the onions. The reason why, think about the Risotto. The Risotto is white. Keep everything translucent. At the point that it’s translucent, you’re actually extracting a lot of sugar. Natural sugars of the onion and the flavor are starting to reproduce. Now, the butter that I use is actually a sweet butter and it’s not a salted butter because I want to be able to control the amount of seasoning that goes into this dish. Now, at the point that the onions are translucent, we’re going to add some mushrooms. Now, the mushrooms that we have here, I’ve already diced our cremini mushrooms. Now, anybody like portabella mushrooms?
Now, portabella mushroom is the adult version of a cremini mushroom because the portabella goes to different stages. As an infant, it’s actually called the cremini. As it becomes an adolescent, it becomes a portabalini. And when it’s an adult, it’s actually the portabella mushroom. So, it’s actually the same spore. So, what’s great about working with these types of mushrooms, if you want to have a great flavor at the end, make sure you use a cremini. Everybody typically uses a white domestic mushroom but the difference in flavor is night and day between the white button and a cremini. It only cost a little bit more. Use the cremini, you have a better flavor at the very end.
Now at this point, we want to extract the natural sugars of the mushroom and the onions that are inside with the butter. Now, we’re going to help it along, we’ll add a little bit of salt. It’s going to help draw out the moisture. We’re also going to take some pepper. I always prefer to use fresh ground black pepper because if you go to the store and you buy pepper that’s already ground in the can, you’d really don’t know how old that is. It was either ground yesterday or it’s ground 10 years ago, you really don’t know. So, I always like to use a fresh pepper because it gives a better flavor at the end. It smells really good up here. Now, the point that the mushrooms are half sautéed, we’re going to take some garlic. What I’ve done is taken the garlic, cut in half. Now, be careful when you’re using fresh garlic because typically when you open up fresh garlic and you see little green piece in the middle, the little below the root, take that out, it’s bitter. Just discard it. Now, since it’s going to happen—I just get rid of it. We are going to add one clove of garlic in here. Now, working with garlic is very tricky because you just want to cook it to the point that you extract some of the oils and the sugars but you don’t want to caramelize it. So, it’s a quick 30 seconds sauté in here just to get the flavor to bloom. We get the oils all mix with all the mushrooms and the onions. Now, at that point, we’re going to take some white wine. Now, white wine that you want to use is a good drinking wine. I’m not talking to a $30.00 bottle of wine, a good drinkable wine. If you want to use a bag-in-a-box that’s fine but use a wine that’s drinkable because it’s going to be palatable.
Now, cooking at this point, you have the mushroom, the onion, the garlic, the pepper, a little bit of salt. When you put the wine, make sure that the wine is reduced to all the way down to almost nothing, it’s ‘au sec’ in French. Reduce it down because you don’t want to have a winy flavored Risotto at the end, you want to have a Risotto that has a good flavor enhancing the mushrooms. You don’t want to taste an acid in the Risotto later on. So, at the point that it’s almost dry, we’re going to add in the Arborio rice. Now, what’s interesting about Arborio rice, it’s Arborio rice making the Risotto dish. It’s not a Risotto rice—I’m using Arborio rice. The Risotto is a type of dish and the Arborio rice is the rice that you use to make the Risotto dish. So, be careful when you’re interchanging that. At this point, you have the mushrooms, the onions, all the flavors in here. You want to cook this to the point that you want to coat all the kernels of Arborio rice, put the flavor. I’m going to add a little bit more flavor guys. All right now, you want to coat all the kernels of rice with everything here. Now, you’re going to cook it to the point that it’s translucent. At the point that we get it to the point that it is translucent, we’re going to add small increments of sock that hot, it’s got to be hot. At this point, it’s simmering, it’s about a 195 to 200 degrees. This is one of those dishes that you can’t walk away. You always have to stand by it. So, like making a good tomato sauce. You always have to constantly stir it.
Now, if you look at the rice, you see little white specks in there which is a kernel of rice. You also have the outer layer. It’s actually becoming translucent because the rice is starting to rehydrate. Now, what’s important about rehydrating rice, you have to season it because it you don’t season it in the beginning, how are you going to be able to get seasoning inside later on. There’s a big difference in seasoned rice from the beginning because as it rehydrates, it’s going expand and absorb that flavor in the middle. If you only season that at the end, the seasoning and the salt just stays on the outside, so you’re tasting the salt instead of just tasting the rice. So, always put a little bit in the beginning. Okay, get it all incorporated. Now, how much stock are we going to add? In the beginning, we’re just going to add enough stock to cover.
Now, making Risotto is an old myth, stir it clockwise with a wooden spoon. Don’t go counterclockwise, don’t ask me why. It’s the way it is. So, grandma used to tell me, stir it clockwise. Now, in cooking especially making a Risotto, it takes a while to actually finish. Taste it in small increments because if you’re tasting it as you’re making it, you can adjust it to have it behave the way you want it at the end. Okay. So, I call it, simple phrase that I use, taste a natural progression of cooking, because you can affect the change in the beginning, how the outcome—I guess it’s going to behave. Okay. So, you are going to keep stirring that for a moment. Okay. So, while ‘Madeline’ takes care of that, we’re going to make a little bit of Ratatouille to go along with that.
Okay, Ratatouille is just a simple sautéed dish, stewed vegetables. Now, what we have here—sautéing by definition is hot pan, minimal fat, and as a dry heat. You’re not adding any moisture to it at this point. At the very end where we add tomato is just we’re going to infuse a flavor. Now high heat, if you don’t have a teflon pan at home don’t worry about it. Put up the sauté pan on the fire, get it hot, little whispers of smoke coming off of it. At that point, add your fat. Let the fat liquefy. If you let the fat liquefy, you actually create a small layer of oil that will separate the product. It doesn’t matter what the product is, away from the pan it will never stick on you. Now, what we’re going to do is I have two pans going simultaneous here. We’re going to use extra virgin olive oil. Now, when you cook vegetables, you have to think in the stage of how dense they are and how much water content they actually have inside. So, the denser the item the longer the time it’s going to take to cook. The lesser the item like the eggplant to sponge, it’s going to cook in no time. So, we’re going to start with the onions, the peppers, cook them, put them on the side. Sauté the squash, combine it with that. Add the tomatoes, combine it with that. Take the tomatoes, put it all together with the eggplant, bring it to a boil, season it, add some garlic, good to go. It’s actually absorbing all the stock that we just put in. Just by continually stirring it and adding small amounts of liquid, you’re going to control the amount of creaminess and richness that you have in this Risotto. Good job!
Now, at the point you see little whispers of smoke coming off the oil, that’s the right temperature that we want. Now, I’m going to take some onions and I’m going to put it in the pan. Okay. At this point, we’re going to gently sauté it. Incorporate all the fat with that. We’re going to add a little bit of salt to help break it down. I’m going to add the peppers in the first one over here. Now, remember when you put stuff—a product into the pan, always place the product away from you because where’s the oil would naturally going to go if it does go out. It’s going to go away from you—so everyone in the front row. Now, if you put it in the pan as it goes towards, where’s the oil going to go? It’s going to go on your hands. It’s going to go on your clothes. Now in sautéing, keep it at a high heat, agitate it little by little. Let it do what it’s got to do in there. You have to naturally remove the sugars and the moisture. And increase the caramelization of those sugars in that sauté pan. Sauté in French actually means “to jump”. It’s a simple technique. If you just take the pan, put the product at the bottom in the slump of the pan. It’s a push and pull method. Push away and pull back. Okay. And it doesn’t matter what pan is going to be in as long as it has a natural slump at the bottom. The behavior of the sauté will be exactly what I just take. Now, remember don’t take the pan and take it off the fire because sauté, you have to be over high heat. If you’re going to agitate it, do it right over the flame so that you’re not going to loose any temperature in that sauté pan. Now, in sautéing a vegetable, the more time you caramelize in this pan now, the end result of flavor is going to be more intensified. You’ll get a more natural flavor of an onion, of a pepper, of the zucchini, of the eggplant at the very end. I’m going to give it a stir.
Now, think about making the Risotto. The more you agitate it as the rice rehydrates what’s going to happen? You’re going to release some of its natural starch that’s rehydrating on the outside of the kernel so, that now develop a natural creaminess and richness in the Risotto at the final stage. So, you see the natural caramelization of all the sugars from the pepper. All that is just the flavor that’s now being released from that pepper under the intense heat of that flame, so the end result is going to be very, very tasty, so doing well. Now, the Risotto takes about 40 minutes from beginning to end. So, if you notice we sorted that in the beginning. So, by the time we have the Ratatouille ready to put on the Risotto, that’s going to be just about time. Good. Now, I’m just going to combine this two, put a little bit more oil into the pan, get the pan hot, get the oil to liquefy again. Now, we’re going to add the zucchini. Now, zucchini is going to go very quick because think about the water content that’s in this. It’s going to be released very quickly. And a little bit of salt to help break it down, okay looking good.
When you make the Risotto, how do you know when it’s done? If it’s cooked a 100%, it’s mushed. You don’t want to have a peel off or a long-grain rice, you want to have a Risotto that has a little bit of a bite in the back. Cook it 90-95 %. But the natural carry over cooking when we add the herb later on and a little bit of butter to finish, it would be naturally creamy by itself. Put a little bit of more stock. Now, you’re going to be careful about the Risotto. You can actually make the Risotto go bad very quickly by adding too much stock and not controlling the fire because it will burn on the bottom. You don’t want to have a burned Risotto. Okay, you always constantly stir it, agitate the product now. Now, do you have to make a Risotto at the last minute, no. You can actually stop it at this point which is 50% cooked. Put it on the pan, surround wrap it, put it in the refrigerator, you can make it in the morning. So at night time, when you have a guest over, you can take 10 minutes and finish that Risotto just by bringing it back to a boil with adding the stock, adding the butter at the end, adding the herbs, bring it back, then make it creamy again, and then serve it immediately. So, it’s one of those things that you’d either do all—or you can do it ahead of time. Now, eggplant is one of those things that is a natural sponge. I just put oil in there where did it go? It’s gone already. It just absorbed it. You always can add, you never can take out in cooking. Okay add in small increments.
We have a whole lot of flavors going on that one, right? So, we’re going to leave that for a moment. How are we doing? That’s looking good. One of those things that—when you cook a lot, you can look at the product and see that it’s just about done. I mean if you look at the Risotto, the color of the rice in the beginning where it’s very dried then have a little bit of a white spot in it. Now, it’s almost all white. It’s just about done. That’s tasting really good. One more and you’re good to go. Now, you see the natural creaminess that’s in there, that’s all natural starch. There’s no butter, I mean a little bit okay, maybe a little bit. But there’s no cream in there. It’s all natural. Now, the Ratatouille, everything that we have in there is already sautéed. You have great caramelization in that pan. Now, we’re going to add some garlic. How much garlic, I don’t know, not that much. It’s about three cloves, okay. Now, I’m going to add a little bit of oil just to help sauté it because remember what we said before about the garlic. You want to heat it just to release the oils and get all the flavor evenly distributed in that pan. It takes about 30 seconds. Just get enough warmth in there, extract that oil and flavor. And you all notice there’s an aroma that’s going to come out in a minute. It’s the garlic. It’s a natural oil.
I read about it last night how to do that. All right now, very simple tomatoes. You can either use fresh tomatoes that are in season, that are juicy, or right now we’re not in season so I’m using a canned plum peeled tomato that already has basil in it. There’s all different types of tomatoes you can buy in the can. Buy a good one that’s already seasoned, that has good flavor. You just want to mix it just to incorporate all that flavor. And again, I just want to taste. I’m going to add a little bit of more of garlic because I love garlic. Now, when you work with a fresh herb, a fresh herb is one of those ingredients that have a lot of natural oil. I’m using just plain flat leafy thyme and parsley. Two types of parsley, you have curly parsley and you have the Italian parsley or flat leaf. If you’re going through a flavor, use the Italian or the flat leaf. Don’t use a curly, use a curly just for decoration. You have more flavors in the Italian. Always use a fresh herb at the very end. Never put in the beginning because you just want to have a little bit of application of heat just to release the natural oils and the aromas into the product and then serve it immediately. When you plate food, think about the eye. Think about what the eye is going to see. Think of this as an appetizer.
Okay, the different combination of flavor that’s in there is going to be great, okay. And we’re going to enjoy some Risotto.
