KATKAT'S KITCHEN
RECIPES FROM KATKAT'S KITCHEN
Spring Vegetable Risotto
Spring Vegetable Risotto is my idea of a perfect spring recipe, fresh light and easy to prepare. I love purple sprouting broccoli, the taste is fantastic and the colour marvelous. As soon as the first shoots start appearing in the garden I am dreaming up new recipes to use it. It has to be savoured when it is available because it has a really short season.
This original Ina Garten recipe Spring Green Risotto is a celebration of spring green flavors with the zap of abundant lemon. Ina’s addition of mascarpone in the end is la piece de resistance! (It didn’t get a five-star reader review for nothing.)
The original version of Ina Garten’s Recipe may be found in her Barefoot Contessa “Back to Basics” cookbook.
Spring Vegetable Risotto Recipe
Ingredients
1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts (2 leeks)
1 cup chopped fresh fennel bulb
2 handfuls of purple sprouting broccoli
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
2/3 cup dry white wine
4 to 5 cups simmering chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 pound thin asparagus, cut diagonally into 1 1/2-inch pieces, ends discarded
10 ounces frozen peas, defrosted, or 1 1/2 cups shelled fresh peas
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese, preferably Italian
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving
3 tablespoons minced fresh chives, plus extra for garnish
Instructions
Heat the olive oil and butter in a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. Add the leeks and fennel and sauté for 5 to 7 minutes, until tender. Add the rice and stir for a minute to coat with the vegetables, oil, and butter. Add the white wine and simmer over low heat, stirring constantly, until most of the wine has been absorbed.
Add the chicken stock, 2 ladles at a time, stirring almost constantly and waiting for the stock to be absorbed before adding more. This process should take 25 to 30 minutes. Blanch asparagus in boiling salted water for one minute until they just bend slightly with the purple sprouting broccoli . Drain and cool immediately in ice water. (If using fresh peas, blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes until the starchiness is gone.)
When the risotto has been cooking for 15 minutes, drain the asparagus and purple sprouting broccoli and add it to the risotto with the peas and lemon zest. Continue cooking and adding stock, stirring almost constantly, until the rice is tender but still firm.
Whisk the lemon juice and mascarpone together in a small bowl. When the risotto is done, turn off the heat and stir in the mascarpone mixture plus the Parmesan cheese and chives. Season to taste with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Serve hot with a garnished with chives and additional Parmesan.
Chef’s Tips on Spring Vegetable Risotto
Stirring is essential, the more you stir the creamier the risotto! Keep stock simmering in a separate pan so itdoesn’t reduce the temperature and stop the rice cooking, add a little at a time; if you run out just add a little boiling water. You don’t need lots of butter, by adding a little at the last minute and stirring vigorously, you get a creamy risotto.Spring Vegetable Risotto can be made with any vegetables to hand. such as wild mushrooms pumpkin etc.Spring Vegetable Risotto is dofferetn every time you make it, it can also be made with different types of rice, I like to use a mixture of wild rice and brown rice for my Spring Vegetable Risotto.
Buffalo Carpaccio
I was first introduced to buffalo meat over thirty years ago in Nepal, and as any of my readers know I love water buffalo mozzarella, but the idea of Buffalo Carpaccio or raw beef is a new one. I had a wonderful beef Carpaccio with buffalo mozzarella at a friend’s recently and I decided to try it with buffalo meat as well. If you can’t get buffalo you can substitute venison or fillet steak. Buffalo is very good for you and it is low in fat as well, apart from the fact that it tastes wonderful. I visited my brother’s recently and he has one of those posh old fashioned butchers near him and they some buffalo meat in the window. It cost an arm and a leg, but fortunately I had the idea of experimenting with a buffalo Carpaccio, because when you serve Carpaccio a little meat goes a long way after it is flattened.
Buffalo Carpaccio and raw meat is not to everyone’s taste.
As all my friend’s know I eat all my meat blue, whether it is pork, chicken, beef it has to be blue, and I adore the distinctive taste of raw meat. I adore steak tartar and raw liver, but it is an acquired taste. I used balsamic vinegar for this dish but I see no reason why you can’t use Worcestershire sauce, it just needs something to lift the flavour.
Buffalo Carpaccio
250 g Buffalo meat
Virgin Olive oil,
Sea Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Freshly Squeezed Lemon juice
Balsamic Vinegar Acetum Balsamic Vinegar Fiaschetta, 8.45-Ounce
Method for preparing the Beef Carpaccio
Slice the buffalo by hand as thinly as you can, then place the slices on a piece of greaseproof paper and drizzle with olive oil, cover with another piece of Paper. You need a heavy object to flatten the meat to about double its present size, because Carapccio tastes better when it is very thinly sliced. I tend to use a meat cleaver, but you can use a wine bottle if you do it carefully, you don’t want to tear the meat.
Put the meat on your serving platter and season with salt and black pepper and drizzle the juice of half a fresh lemon over and more olive oil. Sprinkle your herbs on the top and a little balsamic vinegar. Let the flavours of the Buffalo Carpaccio develop for an hour in the fridge and then serve, with hot crusty bread and a salad.
Ragù alla Napoletana
Ragù alla Napoletana, the Southern Italian Sunday lunch
Ragù alla Napoletana, is a slow cooked meat dish made from the cheapest cuts of meat, which are first sealed and brwonewd in Olive oil to trap the meat juices inside so that they are slowly released in flavour as the Ragù alla Napoletana cooks. It can be made with any of the cheaper cuts of meat, and again the cheaper cuts are marbled with fat and that fat slowly melts and enriches the Ragù alla Napoletana as it melts.
I have made this with Italian sausage, or chorizo the spicy sausage of Southern Spain, Shin of beef, Pork spare ribs, Skirt of beef, just choose whatever looks best, the perfect Ragù alla Napoletana is based on mixed meats slowly cooked.
Ragù alla Napoletana
Approach this legendary long and slow simmered Ragù alla Napoletana (Pasta Meat Sauce) with reverence. Although much of the Amalfi coast has been very poor until about forty years ago this dish has always been associated with the rich and not the poor. The reason for this it has at least two kinds of meat and in the sixties most Neapolitans ate meat only on high days and holidays. Then Ragù alla Napoletana, is a dish truly elevated for feast days and holidays.
Interestingly many Southern housewives made the curved pasta from flour and water, by rolling it around the spoke of an umbrella, they then sold the fresh pasta to merchants and they used the money for staples to feed their fmaily.The making of the pasta was a social thing four or five housewives would get together and share the job.
Ragù alla Napoletana
It maybe further enriched with the addition of beef and pork skin rolls bound up with string after being filled with chopped parsley, garlic, pine nuts, raisins and cheese shavings: a truly magnificent feast! I also add roughly chopped onions and red peppers both of which melt during the cooking process but they leave a wonderful flavour.
Ragù alla Napoletana
As you can imagine there are as many recipes for Ragù alla Napoletana as there are Italians, but use this as a building block to make your family favourite Ragù alla Napoletana. Read more about Neapolitan Food .
Ingredients for Ragù alla Napoletana
5 tablespoons virgin olive oil
1 large Spanish onion, roughly chopped
2 large red peppers roughy chopped
500g/1lb 2oz topside of beef, chopped into medium-sized pieces
500g/1lb 2oz pork ribs
200g/7oz meaty Italian pork sausages
3 tablespoons tomato purée, diluted in 100ml/3½fl oz red wine
3 x 400g/14oz tins chopped tomatoes
large handful fresh basil leaves
4 fresh bay leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper
pasta or bread, to serve
Method
1.Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, add the onion and cook for three minutes, or until softened. Fry the meat in bratches until it is completely sealed.
Increase the heat, stir in the diluted tomato concentrate and continue to cook until the volume of the liquid is reduced by about a third. Add the tomatoes and bay leaf, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and stir well. Cover and cook very gently for about two hours, when the the sauce will be thick and silky, and the meat will have fallen off the bone. Stir from time to time, checking that there is enough moisture; if necessary add a little more wine or water. Add several large handfuls of basil in the last half an hour.
Serve with bread or pasta to mop up the sauce and then serve the meat as a second course with a salad.
My Italian page can be found here, when you have eaten your Ragù alla Napoletana
Ricotta Dumplings
Ricotta Dumplings
Ricotta Dumplings are not as light as potato dumplings but they make up for it because they are tastier. However, when making dumplings the same rules always apply they should be light fluffy and airy and ricotta dumplings should not be overworked. Home made ricotta is also fabulous it does not have the rather waterlogged content of commercial rocotta.
Ricotta Dumplings recipe
Ricotta dumplings Ingredients
For the dumplings
200g/7oz 00 flour, plus extra for dusting
225g/8oz ricotta
3 large free range egg yolks
50g/1 1/2 oz freshly grated parmesan,
A good pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the sauce
6 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly crushed under your hand
1 chilli, sliced
2 x 400g/14oz cans tinned italian plum tomatoes,
A large handful of fresh basil leaves
Method
Mix the flour, ricotta, egg yolks, parmesan, nutmeg and seasoning together in a large bowl and bring togey together until they form a soft, moist dough.
Place the dough onto a floured work surface and knead for five minutes. Roll the dough into a long, thin sausage shape, then cut into dumplings about 2cm/1in long.
Cook the dumplings for about three minutes in a large saucepan of salted boiling water. They are cooked when they rise to the surface.
The sauce
Heat the olive oil in a deep heavy frying pan and fry the garlic and chilli for one minute, then remove the pan from the heat and add the plum tomatoes and break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.
Return the pan to the heat, bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes.
Remove the dumplings from the pan with a slotted spoon and add them to the tomato sauce.To serve, spoon the dumplings onto a serving plate and sprinkle over the basil leaves and masses of freshly grated parmesan.
Ricotta dumplings can be made wiht commercial ricotta but homemade ricotta is another dimension entirely.
Homemade Ricotta
Ricotta is traditionally made from the whey left over from the cheesemaking process, from the whey from buffalo mozzarella, sheep’s milk pecorino, fontini etc. Delicious fresh ricotta can also be made by using the freshest milk you can find. The beauty of home made ricotta is the fact it is like a farmer’s cheese and does not require rennet or any special cheese equipment
Ricotta tastes and smells like the milk it coems from so mix your milks, use a mixture of goat’s and cow’s if goats milk is too strong. The consistency of rocotta cheese is defined by the length of time you drain it for. For a creamy ricotta for dumplings just drain for a few minutes, for a drier ricotta drain for about twenty minutes.
Homemade ricotta for ricotta dumplings
Ingredients
1 quart whole goat’s milk
1/2 cup plain Greek yoghurt
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sea salt
Method
In a large pan, bring the milk, yoghurt, heavy cream and salt to a boil, then add the acid, it can be lemon juice or vinegar. Simmer gently for two minutes until it curdles.
line a colander with cheesecloth, or an Irish linen teetowel if you have not got the cheesecloth. Drain the curds for five minutes.
An overview of Italian recipes can be found here Ricotta dumplings are the perfect example of italian comfort food, Italian mama’s cook with love and care.
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