My mind is BLOWN.

So, as I said before, I have pretty much zero time to cook this semester. And when I do have time, chances are I'm way too exhausted or drained to actually cook something worth blogging about. However, as this is a food blog, I feel okay writing about food in a totally not-cooking way.

Today at the grocery store, I was debating between cooking something for dinner or just eating brie on french bread and some apples--the latter option won out by far. But while I was thinking about what I might cook, and vegetables, I was looking at the asparagus and artichokes. These are, hands-down, my favorite vegetables ever. They're both super delicious, and anyone who thinks differently is crazy.

So I get home, and I'm talking to one of my friends about asparagus, and I mention that it's my favorite vegetable. Of course, I then had to stop and say, wait, no, artichokes too. Both of them. I started thinking about them and how similar they are. The way the leafy part at the top looks, for example, and the way the stem has coarse stringy things on the outside with tender vegetableness on the inside. They have to be related, right?

Artichokes growing (via)

Asparagus growing (via)

They even grow the same way! I mean, the artichokes have a lot more leaves, yeah, but they both grow in a big stalk with layered leaf-like things at the top. I decided that it was about time I figured out just how closely related they are. You remember the whole Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species thing from biology, right? It's okay if you don't, really, because I just listed them.

Now, if someone had asked me to place a bet on this prior to my research (highly scientific wiki-ing of the two vegetables), I would have put a lot of money on "family." Their genus and species can be different, but I thought everything above that would be the same. You probably guessed by the the title of this post that my assumption was wrong, but--where would you think they were? Which do you think is the most specific classification they have in common? Think about it. Think hard. Okay, I'm about to tell you, but I'm curious as to what you would have thought had I not told you.

Phylum. They don't have anything in common beyond the phylum. They're both Plantae Angiosperms, but that's it. Branches off after that: Asparagus are monocots and artichokes are eudicots. I don't really know what those mean, but apparently it has something to do with the structure of their pollen and something about their seeds.

They're no more related to each other than they are to lilies! Wow.

Asparagus Risotto

A while ago, a couple of the blogs that I follow posted recipes for asparagus risotto. I've never made a risotto before--well, not a REAL risotto--and I absolutely love asparagus, so of course I absolutely had to make it. I went searching for recipes all over the place. Though I didn't really know how to make a risotto, I felt very strongly that it should include more than a tablespoon of cheese and/or cream, yet that seems to be how most recipes write it. I finally found a satisfactory-looking recipe over on Epicurious, modified it a teensy bit, and got cooking.

This was my first experience that caused me to realize how much I've come to love cooking from blogs and sites like Recipezaar (now Food.com), where people who aren't professionals make the dish and write it up. The instructions are clear to those of us who didn't go to culinary school, and if we have a question, we can easily ask. Things like "turn the burner from medium to low" don't usually get left out. While I'll probably make this again sometime, I'll make it from the recipe I'm typing up here, not the one I followed the first time.

RECIPE: Asparagus Risotto

Ingredients:

-1 1/2 lbs asparagus

-4 cups chicken broth (one box)

-1 tbsp butter

-1 large red onion

-2 cups arborio rice

-1/2 cup white wine

-2 tsp chopped fresh sage

-1 cup freshly grated romano cheese

-1/4 cup fat-free half and half

-water (about 2 cups)

Instructions:

1. Wash and trim the asparagus. Cut off the tips and set them aside. Cut the rest of the asparagus into inch-long pieces.

2. Combine about 2/3 of the asparagus with one cup chicken broth and one cup water in a blender. Puree and set aside for later.

3. In a large saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the onion over medium heat until tender. Add the rice and lower the heat to medium-low. Once the pan has cooled down a little, add the wine and stir until absorbed. (This should take about 4 minutes. If it takes less time than that, lower your heat more. If it takes longer, turn the heat up a little. The original recipe doesn't say anything about changing the heat so my first half cup of wine just cooked off immediately and I ended up using a whole cup and it was perfectly delicious, so if it cooks off too fast and doesn't actually absorb, don't worry about adding a little more.)

4. Add 1/2 cup broth and the chopped sage, again stirring until absorbed. Continue to add broth but the half cup, allowing each one to be absorbed before adding the next half cup. After about 15 minutes, add the asparagus pieces that you didn't puree, and continue adding half cups of broth. Once you've run out of broth, add two half cups of water in the same manner.

5. Increase the heat (back to medium) and add the asparagus puree. Stir often until absorbed.

6. Add the cheese and cream, stir thoroughly, and serve! Garnish with fresh sage if you would like.

Step 2. I took about 12 pictures of this and this was the least blurry one. Sometimes I think my camera hates me.

The rest of Step 2. It looks like those green smoothies that I buy at the store, but I wouldn't drink this. Just set it aside for now.

The rest of the asparagus, after 2/3 of the stalks were pureed. The only reason to separate the tips is to not puree them, so if you want to toss them in the bowl together now, that's okay. You probably don't even need a separate bowl to begin with.

Step 4. I loved how the red onion had a nice pink color that contrasted with the sage (and, later, asparagus) but most of the color disappeared after cooking for so long. Oh, well--it tasted delicious.

Still step 4--this is right after I added the asparagus. I'm glad I used the hugest pan I had, this made a TON of food!

Step 5: Asparagus/water/chicken broth puree added, and I'm now very worried that my pan will overflow if I stir too vigorously. Epicurious seems to think this takes 3 minutes to absorb. Like I said earlier, I like to have some direction about the heat. Mine did well after taking a while to absorb, so I guess it's okay.

Everything is added! It's ready! WOOOOO! Notice how the onions don't look nearly as pink anymore? After some refrigeration they lost their color completely.

The 'eat' step. It was rich and thick with plenty of asparagus flavor but it didn't overpower the grilled chicken that we ate it with. It's very warm and perfect for a cooler evening.

So, there's my first risotto! I was pretty happy with it, and I had leftovers for quite a while, which was nice. One night my mom and I had the leftovers with poached eggs, thanks to Kevin over at Closet Cooking. (I forgot where I'd seen it when I decided to try it, but went and found his post afterward. He deserves credit for such a perfect combination!) My mom was skeptical; I was not--the runny yolk complemented the creamy risotto perfectly and made for a great light meal. (Not that the risotto itself doesn't make a delicious light meal, of course.)

Given the amount of risotto I had left over, unless you're serving at least 6 people, I would probably recommend cutting this recipe in half or freezing half of your leftovers--the last of mine went bad before I could eat it! I was very sad about this. Now, though, I have a bag of arborio rice and an idea of how to make risotto, so I'll be looking for more tasty recipes. I think it would be fun to make this with three colors of asparagus--green, white, and purple. It would be so pretty!

Okay, so I've voiced my opinions about where I like to cook from. How about you guys? I'm assuming that if you're reading this you're not averse to cooking from blogs, but do you have difficulty with cookbooks or "professional" recipe sites? I'm sort of nervous about using epicurious again; both recipes I've followed have been less than ideal in the way of instruction, and I'm not sure there's anything I'd want to make that couldn't be based on something in one of the blogs I read. What do you think?

Oh, and I've also started a new thing with the comments. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I've enabled commentluv, which means that if you have a blog and leave a comment it'll link back to your most recent post with a title. I think it will also let me reply to comments directly, but I'm not sure. Let me know how you like it!

Stir-Fry, part 2

I've finally finished my finals! Now I only have three semesters left...ugh. Oh well.

I feel bad. I haven't been posting at all, but I have an explanation. (Not an excuse, but maybe you'll be sympathetic.) This past week was Finals. Even though my finals weren't all that stressful in and of themselves, the concept of Finals is pretty terrifying and makes me want to do nothing except hide and read, so while I have some...ahh...interesting book recommendations, there wasn't really much time to cook involved. Add to that the fact that my mom's been in Florida for a week and then she packed off to some sort of retreat, and Mike also had some tests (that he actually had to care about), I was on my own. And, actually, for the six weeks before this week, Mike was off on the other fricken' side of the state, leaving only me and my mom. I don't know why I have such a mental block about cooking for just me and my mom--I cook for just me and Mike all the time, right? So I'm not entirely sure why. But a lot of time time I've just been home alone, and that means heating up some Trader Joe's frozen foods in a microwave (or, if I'm feeling energetic, a frying pan). I know I'm not the only one with this problem. I think it's depressing to put a lot of time and effort into something and not be able to share it. (I'm feeling this way right this second, actually. Glad I still have some frozen gyoza left.)

Anyway, I did manage to get some cooking in during the past six weeks, even if it wasn't nearly as much as I would have liked. (I tend to eat much healthier food when I make it myself. Going out is bad for me.) One morning during the last few weeks of the semester, I woke up and did my homework that was due for class that day and checked my school email and class was canceled and for some reason, my first thought was: MARINADE CHICKEN! (Okay, that was my third thought. My first thought was, Dammit, I like that class. My second thought was, WOO DAY OFF! Then I had the chicken thought.) I think there is nothing that pulls together a bunch of somewhat random ingredients better than a good marinade. In this case, I had a roasted garlic marinade waiting in my cabinet. I threw some chicken in and went back to sleep. (Yeah, so what if I went back to sleep at 11? I'm in college. I'm practically nocturnal. Or an insomniac. Or both. Any sleep I can get is precious.)

When I threw the chicken in the marinade, I had no plans for the actual meal. I just hoped to have some delicious chicken with some other also-delicious things for dinner that night. When it came time to actually throw dinner together, I was thrilled to realize that I'd stocked up on vegetables and was able to make this without going to the store at ALL! That's a big deal for me. A softball-sized onion and a bundle of asparagus caught my eye and I just went to town, tossing in whatever seemed like a good idea. The unfortunate thing is that this was probably a month ago and I didn't write anything down, so I'll be re-making-up this recipe as I write it here. On the plus side, it follows the basic rules of electrostirfrydynamics: if you see something that you think would be good in it, toss it in. If you're not sure (especially with spices), hold the potential meal component next to what is, so far, part of the meal. Inhale. (Through your nose.) Do the smells work? Congratulations. Now, for a recipe that I hope tastes as good as the memories in my head.

Roasted Garlic Stir-Fry

An Original Creation

Ingredients:

-About a pound of chicken strips

-A bottle of roasted garlic marinade (I used Hannaford-brand. Well, Hannaford "Taste of Inspirations" brand. Hannaford is a grocery store near me. I was surprised at how delicious it was. Next time I'm there, I'm stocking up on this.)

-A bundle of asparagus

-A really big onion (I used yellow, but I feel like red would have worked better. I'm not really sure what the differences between onions are, but after eating this and thinking a bit, red makes more sense with the flavors.)

-Cumin seeds

-Salt and pepper

-Soy sauce or Tamari

-I might have used a little bit of Worcestershire sauce too but I can't remember.

-1 cup uncooked brown rice

Instructions:

1. Wake up at a reasonable hour in the morning (by which I mean, in the morning. As long as it's before noon, you're good. Unless you eat dinner at, like, 3. Then wake up early.) In a gallon-sized Ziploc-style bag, combine the chicken and marinade. Let sit in the refrigerator all day, until you're ready to cook. (I always squeeze the bag and stir around the contents a little bit a few times during the day. There's always some chicken poking out of the top or something, and I don't want that bite to be less flavorful.)

2. About an hour before you want to eat, start your brown rice. Make it however the directions on the package tell you to. (I usually eat white rice because it cooks so much faster, but I've been trying to get whole grains into my diet more regularly, and the flavors of this dish were PERFECT for brown rice. Use white if you must, but I don't recommend it.)

3. Take the chicken-bag out of the fridge. On a plastic cutting board, cut the strips into cubes. DON'T TOSS THE BAG WITH THE MARINADE. Okay. Throw the chicken and some shakes of cumin seeds into a frying pan on medium-high heat and let it cook for a while, until the chicken is mostly white.

4. As the chicken is cooking, begin to cut your onions and asparagus. Cut them to whatever size you like--I usually keep the onions between 1 square inch and 1/2 square inch. Most people say to cut asparagus into 1-inch segments, but I like them longer than that. Maybe two or three inches.

4.5 You're sort of doing this as you're cutting the vegetables. As the chicken cooks, slowly add small amounts of the marinade from the bag. I hear sometimes that you're not supposed to do this, that it's contaminated from having the chicken in it all day. I don't understand this. If the chicken is okay to cook and eat, then it doesn't make any sense not to cook and eat the marinade, but you have to make sure it stays at a pretty high heat for a while.

5. Throw in the vegetables, along with any remaining marinade and a little bit of water (no more than half a cup). Stir everything together. Add a couple dashes of soy sauce (probably about a tablespoon) and possibly some worcestershire sauce (and like I said, I can't remember if I did this, but I know that if I did it was only a tiny bit), along with a little bit of salt and pepper. (I don't usually add salt while I'm cooking--I like to let people salt to their own tastes, and I don't really do pepper 'in moderation' so I leave that up to everyone else, too.)

6. Let everything simmer until the sauce has thickened at least back to its previous consistency. If the stir-fry is done before the rice, cover it on very low heat, stirring occasionally, until the rice is finished.

7. Scoop some rice into a bowl. Or onto a plate. Cover with your stir-fry. Enjoy.

Cumin seeds, yum! I'm not sure what that thing that looks like bacon on the bottom is. This was definitely just chicken.

This was wonderful. I was rather proud of myself--it's something really simple to throw together and yet extremely delicious. As I was cooking, I was just opening my fridge and cabinets and seeing if anything caught my eye to toss in--that's how the soy sauce and cumin came about. It's always nice to know that I can just throw something together out of what's already in the house--unfortunately, that means keeping food in the house. I'm not very good at that part.

I love how cameras capture the steam coming out of a pan. I also don't. I need a better camera.

So--woo! I have a few more things to post, and now that it's Summer (according to school), I have time to cook! I'm super excited to start grilling, and I want to take advantage of summer fruits for delicious pies. What are you guys planning on making this summer? Are you excited for any particular aspect of summer cooking?