Pesto Scrambled Eggs

Pesto Scrambled Eggs
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

Pesto is a wonderful food. In fact, I am going to make pesto today for the second time in three days. Why am I making pesto again? Well, there are two reasons. 1) The basil at the Davis Farmer's Market looked amazing. I used all of my pesto eating pesto elbows with sausage and and pesto scrambled eggs.

As you can see here, pesto scrambled eggs is a wonderful food. Especially if topped with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Another wonderful start to a day. If you are looking for something to do with you eggs on a weekend for breakfast, I highly recommend this dish.

The perfect four ingredient food

BLT
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

What is the perfect four ingredient food? Lets go down the list:

The perfect one ingredient food: The is one is obvious and taken a bit for granted. If you had to choose only one one-ingredient food, what would it be. It would be boring. It would be plain. It would be in most cases flavorless (if you are lucky). The perfect one ingredient food is water.

The perfect two ingredient food: What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Is it brushing your teeth.... no. Is it eating breakfast.... no. Is it checking your email... sadly, for large segment of the population (including myself on many a day)... yes. But, what is the most important first activity one can do in a day? That's right - drink that perfect cup of coffee. Your programmable coffee maker is your most loyal servant. It has waiting, at my case at 7am, the most indispensable nourishment of the day: The perfect two ingredient food is the first cup of coffee.

The perfect three ingredient food: This one is simple yet deceiving, mainly because it is taken for granted. I am in the process of making this perfect food as I write this post. What is it? Here is a clue. Water. Flour. Yeast. That's right: The perfect three ingredient food is bread.

Now, to the purpose of this treatise. What is the perfect four ingredient food? After four ingredients, the outcomes are endless. Five, six, ten, twenty ingredients - there is no end in sight... you can eat curry at this point! So what is the perfect four ingredient food?
...
.....
........
..........


The BLT. Bacon. Lettuce. Tomato. (Bread). In this case, homemade baguette, cluster tomatoes, romaine lettuce, and Niman Ranch Bacon. Honestly, this is one of the world's perfect foods. Although it is quite hot in the summer, cooking bacon for a BLT is a pleasure - as it sizzles and hops in the pan, one can only envision the wonderful end to its life. The smell will permeate your house for hours after the consumption of the perfect food.

The BLT. A wonderful food.

Scrabble

Scrabble
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

Baking Baguettes

Baguette
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

There is something about summer that leads me to bake. One might figure that winter is an appropriate time to get into baking: its cold outside, the oven can warm the house, generate the beautiful smells of bread.

Such is not the case for me. I bake in the heat of summer. 95+ºF outside and I turn the oven on to 500ºF. I can't exactly explain why, except that summer is when I have the time to coordinate my day around the bread.

That's the thing with bread: The actual hands-to-dough work is not all that intensive, especially if a mixer is employed. It is the waiting time: 16 hours, 20 minutes, 3 hours, 1 hour, 25 minutes - that force baking to command scheduling priority.

Today I did a bit of baking using a new recipe that I found on an amazing website: The Fresh Loaf.

Last night I started with the poolish and pate frementee (two methods used as bread starters. Usually a recipe calls for one or the other. This recipe called for both). This morning I mixed, let the dough rise, shaped, and baked. I came out with three loaves, two of which are ready for photos. Above is the baguette. Below is a batard - something a little bit longer. I think the batard is going to make wonderful sandwiches over the next two days.

Now, what can I bake this weekend???

Batard
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

The closest I have come to recreating a Cheeseboard pizza

Pizza for dinner - 7/23/08
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

How can I convey to you, reader, how good this pizza was (and I say was, because it is gone - I ate the WHOLE pizza. All 8 slices.)?

As the title of this post states, this is the closest that I have ever come to recreating a pizza from Cheeseboard. Now, if you have ever heard me wax poetic about The Cheeseboard and you know me, you are aware that I do not have a large enough ego to even attempt to recreate one of their pizzas. This is just a "pizza in the style of Cheeseboard." Cheeseboard pizzas are truly a heaven on earth.

I have recently returned to bread baking thanks to Peter Reinhart, and others. 4-6 baguettes every week, plus pizza. The pizza recipe comes from the King Arthur flour website. Now, if I were able to afford KA flour, I would buy it every time. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Tonight Antonia and I had pizza made from the KA .

The routine at our house when it comes to pizza is that each of us makes our own pizza. I divide the dough recipe in half and we bake two pizza: one for Antonia, and one for me. We each design our own.

Tonight, Antonia's was comprised of: tomato sauce, meatballs, onions, mushrooms, scallions, and zucchini.

Mine, as the title of this post suggests, was good enough mention Cheeseboard in the same sentence.

My pizza was topped with: Roma tomatoes (home grown), roasted zucchini (home grown), garlic (home grown), mushrooms, sauteed red onions, scallions, Gruyere, and Mozzarella. This was a truly sublime pizza. The vegetable:cheese ratio was perfect. The crust was great thanks to 500ºF on a pizza stone for 12 minutes.

Now, with such a tasty pizza, only a good bottle of wine could make things even better, and such was the case: 2005 Hanzell Chardonnay, courtesy of our friend Wynne.

This was truly one of the nicest meals that I can remember making at home: we ate outside, it was warm, Antonia and I had great conversation - everything was perfect.

To top the whole experience off, I was fortunate enough to have Stakes Is High by De La Soul playing while I wrote this, an album which contains one of my favorite songs: Itzsoweezee (Hot).

Enjoy your dinner, enjoy your pizza, enjoy your wine!

train track line 2

train track line 2
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

Egg Salad Sandwich

Egg Salad Sandwich
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

I am going to forgo posting about our wedding and honeymoon for just a little bit longer in order to write about one of my favorite foods - the egg salad sandwich.

Why do I like egg salad sandwiches? I believe that I like these sandwiches for much the same reason everyone likes them: my mom made egg salad often when I was a young child. As a result, eating them is both tasty and nostalgic.

When Antonia and I were deciding what to have for lunch today, we were close to making a tofu stir fry over rice. This plan made sense except for one glaring oversight: I had made baguettes this morning. A brief aside:

Last night before bed, I started the poolish for a French bread. Usually, my routine is to let the poolish go for about 7 hours then refrigerate it to retard the yeast. Last night, however, I decided to let the poolish go overnight, then I would wake up early to make bread. Upon a brief back-calculation, I learned that to have bread ready for a visit to a friend this morning, I would have to wake up at 5am to start the dough. Oh, to be the type of person who plans out projects before starting them. No matter - I was going to follow through with my plan. At 5, I woke up, started the dough, and by 5:30 I was back in bed. 7:30, the dough was formed, and by 9:30 the last loaf was out of the oven. One baguette went to our friend and the other was for us.

Now, back to the story. With this fresh bread in front of us, sandwiches were just a short logical hop. Now, what kind?

Our refrigerator solved that problem for us. Eggs. That was about the only sandwich-worthy foodstuff on the shelves.

I went online to find a hard boiled egg recipe - I have used so many over the years that I couldn't even keep them straight any longer. After a brief perusal of the available literature, I settled on this one from Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet.

The Amateur Gourmet's Egg Salad Soliloquy, as modified by me.

6 eggs
mayo
Dijon mustard
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper
smoked paprika

Put the eggs into cold water and put the pot on the stove on high. When the pot starts to boil (I actually stopped at 90ºC), take the pot off the heat and let it sit for 15 minutes (not about 15 minutes, but exactly 15 minutes. If one is going to be particular about the cooking time, punctuality can be expected, no?). After 15 minutes, place eggs into a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Let them cool down for a few minutes, then peel.

Here is where this recipe sold me: instead of mashing the eggs, they are finely cubed with a knife. It gives the egg salad a different texture, as the yolks do not totally dissolve into the mayo.

Put all of the egg into a bowl, add a tablespoon of mayo, salt, pepper, spices, and mustard. Mix and eat.

I broiled the sliced baguettes to get them a bit crunchy, then built our lunch. I was quite happy with the outcome - the smoked paprika give it a bit of sweetness that was unexpected but nice.

I think this may become my standard egg salad. While it didn't have the spicy tang of Tabasco that my mom's has, it still produced the nostalgic pang that makes egg salad such a fulfilling dish.

I just found out that this is my 100th post. And it only took 3 years!

Kitchen Still Life

Kitchen Still Life
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

A snapshot of life in our kitchen.

Tasting: 1986 Wines

This weekend, I had the chance to sit for a very nice tasting.

1986

1986 Beringer Private Reserve, Napa Valley, CA
1986 Cos d'Estournel, St. Estephe, FR
1986 Gruaud-Larose, St. Julien, FR
1986 La Jota Howell Mountain, Howell Mountain, CA
1986 Chateau Léoville Las Cases, St. Julien, FR
1986 Chateau Margaux, Margaux, FR
1986 Mondavi Reserve, Napa Valley, CA
1986 Chateau Montelena Estate, Napa Valley, CA
1986 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac, FR
1986 Joseph Phelps Eisele Vineyard, Napa Valley, CA
1986 Chateau Pichon-Lalande, Pauillac, FR
1986 Chateau Talbot, St. Julien, FR

It was great - my favorites were the Mouton Rothschild and the Cos d'Estournel.

A night at Billo's House

After tasting 13 wines from Burgundy and California at the VITIS Burgundy tasting last week, a few of us headed to Billo's house for a relaxing night of wine tasting.

Here is the list of wines we enjoyed.

1995 Domaine Beaurenard Chateuneuf-de-Pape
2001 Turley Petit Sirah, Library Vineyard, Napa Valley
1992 Hess Collection Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
1993 Hess Collection Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
2003 Hess Collection Mountain Cuveé, Napa Valley
1988 Delicato Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
2004 Ridge York Creek Zinfandel, Sonoma
2005 Frank Family Zinfandel, Napa Valley
1999 Argyle Brut
2004 Chateau Pesquié Quintessence
1999 James Irvine Merlot, Eden Valley
2005 HdV Syrah, Los Carneros
2004 Lamborn Family Zinfandel, Howell Mountain
1994 Chateau Montrose
1994 Phillip Togni Cabernet, Napa Valley

and the last wine I missed :(

1977 Gould Campbell Vintage Port

Another great night.

1926 Mouton Rothschild

1926 Mouton Rothschild
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

A 125L Savor Wine. I'd be willing to bet that I won't taste this wine again. Old...very old. Tasted like cigars, leaves, and soy with just a glimmer of fruit. Apparently not a good Bordeaux year, either.

Pasta with Garbanzo Beans, Chorizo, and Bread Crumbs

Pasta with Garbanzo Beans, Chorizo, and Bread Crumbs
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

Mark Bittman's blog at NY Times, Bitten, has become one of my go-to places for weeknight dinner ideas. Although I love to cook, I haven't had much time to explore the kitchen lately. I am tackling data analysis for my Master's thesis; I think I have made 100+ graphs in the last 2 days.
But, overworked or not, I still love to cook. This article came across my feed reader yesterday describing a recipe for pasta with garbanzo beans, chorizo, and bread crumbs. It sounded great and Antonia was on board, so tonight I made it.

Pasta with Garbanzo Beans, Chorizo, and Bread Crumbs
by Mark Bittman

salt and pepper
olive oil
1/4 lb cooked chorizo sausage (I used two fresh sausages from Nugget Market)
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 cup fresh bread crumbs (hooray for the food processor)
4 cups cooked chickpeas/garbanzo beans with their liquid (I used two cans, one drained, one not drained)
1/2 lb cut pasta (I used 1 lb. large shells)
chopped parsley (None in the fridge, I used dried parsley)

Since I started with fresh, uncooked sausage, I had to cook the sausage first. I did this on a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Once the sausages were cooked, I set them aside. In the same skillet, I added 1 tbsp olive oil and added the garlic. I gave it a 1-2 minute hot oil bath and just as it started to change color from yellow to gold, I added the bread crumbs.

The pan was turned down to medium-low and the crumbs were stirred until they turned a deep deep gold, almost brown proper. I didn't let them burn, but they were teetering on the edge. I find the best cooking-derived flavor (as opposed to ingredient-derived flavor) comes when the food is balanced on the edge of browning and .... more than browning. Once the bread crumbs were done, I put them aside.


After letting the sausage cool a bit, I cut it up and gave it another run in the pan, just to make sure the insides were cooked.

Cooking is very relaxing for me, despite what people who have been around me when I cook will say. The serenity of cooking is furthered by some music (I listened to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde) and a glass of wine. I am down to my last few bottles of Rd 29, so this was a treat to myself.



Next, the pasta water is boiled and salted, and the pasta goes in.



While the pasta is boiling, the garbanzo beans went into a large skillet with a few tablespoons of olive oil. One of the cans of beans was drained, the other was not. While they simmered with the olive oil, they received a dusting of salt, pepper, and dried parsley.



When the pasta is maybe 2 or 3 minutes from being ready, drain it out of the water and add it to the garbanzo beans to finish cooking with the sauce. This will let the flavors of the sauce soak into the pasta, as well as have the starch from the pasta thicken the sauce.



After the pasta is cooked through (sample prodigiously while cooking; it is bar-none the best perk of spending time in the kitchen) add the chorizo and toss (carefully).





It's done! Sprinkle with the breadcrumb mixture and eat.

Thank you, Mr. Bittman.

A Day of Bread

A Day of Bread
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

Noble Pig asked me, in the comments on one of my previous posts, where's the bread?

Here it is, Mrs. Pig. Three loaves of Rustic Bread, and a big stack of naan. The bread had a wonderfully dark crust that almost took on a caramelized sweetness. It also had a nice crunchy crust with a soft, stretchy crumb. I had quite of bit of leftover biga pre-ferment, so while the bread was proofing and baking, I mixed the biga with water and flour to make an ersatz naan dough. It wasn't traditional, but it did the job.

We had bread for a week from this bake-a-thon - I even sent out a mass email to a student group offering a loaf of bread to the first person who could get to our house to pick it up; there was no way Antonia and I could eat three loaves of bread before they went stale. A loaf of the bread when to a good home within the hour.

Wines, Week 1

Old Cork
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

This quarter, I am one of the teaching assistants for VEN 125L - Sensory Evaluation of Wines. During the labs, students are introduced to sensory techniques for wine evaluation - difference testing, reference standards, etc. At the end of each lab, the students are given 6 wines to try - these wines are termed savor wines (savor wines from last year).

Week 1 were oxidized white wines. All of the wines were old, but each had a different "old wine" character. Some where outright spoiled, while others had hints of life left in them. All of the wines were tasted blind.

Week 1 - Unintentionally oxidized white wines

1986 Wente Napa Valley Fumé blanc - ethyl acetate, acetaldehyde.

1988 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Napa Valley Chardonnay, Beckstoffer Ranch - chalk, acetaldehyde

1990 Jordan Alexander Valley Chardonnay (375mL) - honey, Lyle's Golden Syrup

1991 Alderbrook Dry Creek Semillon - plastic, grapey, phenol, floral

1992 Van Der Heyden Vineyards Napa Valley Chardonnay - acetaldehyde, lemon, soy, brothy/meaty, ashy, boiled mushrooms

1996 Louis Martini Napa Valley Sauvignon blanc - green tea/olive oil, fruity flavors

My favorites were the Jordan (in splits!) and the Alderbrook Semillon. I was pleasantly surprised that some of these wines still had something left - I wouldn't call what was left "life", but there is a spark of something. Other wines, like the Wente and Stag's Leap, were just plain dead.

I look forward to next week's tasting, though I'm not sure what it is.

A weekend of food and Rigatoni with Spinach and Green Beans

Rigatoni with Spinach and Green Beans
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

I am now technically 5/6 done with grad school. I say technically, because I will be finished with grad school when my thesis is finished, not when classes are over. Nonetheless, it feels like school is winding down.

This last quarter, Winter Quarter 2008, was quite busy. I was TAing for Wine Stability with Dr. Boulton while at the same time carrying out the sensory portion of my thesis research. I spent hours on end holding wine glasses up to blindfolded students' noses. I am glad that data collection is almost complete.

March 24-28, 2008 is when Spring "Break" was scheduled for this year. "Break" is in quotation marks because there really was no break in the traditional sense for me. I was in the lab every day working on my thesis. I have been working on the Methods and Literature Review sections. I think I made some good progress in the quite of the Break-time lab.

A second, tastier consequence of "Break" is that it once again gives me time to do some cooking.

Last night for dinner, I made the pasta pictured above (recipe to follow). This morning, after I began my one day stint as a dogsitter, I started to work on bread. Oh break, I have missed you so. There really is nothing like kneading dough. It is therapeutic in a way very few other activities are. I have been making bread out of Curst and Crumb by Peter Reinhart. I recommend anyone who wants to get into bread baking pick up this book or one of Mr. Reinhart's other books.

Tomorrow, I am going to pick up some ground beef from Mr. Bledsoe at the Davis Farmers Market and will make some kreplach. I may not
fry them as per the NYT recipe, but who knows.

Any any event, it has been nice to be able to cook and blog again; hopefully it won't be so long until I do it again.

Rigatoni with Spinach and Green Beans

1 lb dried rigatoni
2 tbs olive oil
1 big handful of green beans, trimmed and cut in half
1 big handful of frozen spinach
1/2 yellow onion, sliced thin
paprika
garlic powder (I'm out of garlic - who knew that could happen?!?!)
dried thyme
dried fennel
cayenne pepper
salt
pepper
1 can diced tomatoes
2 big tablespoons of hummus

Start pot of water boiling. In the mean time, heat up a large skillet or pot with olive oil on medium high. When the oil is very hot and moves about the pan with little resistance, add in the onions and green beans. Turn down heat to medium and let soften.

When the water comes to a boil add a big pinch of salt (big!), add the pasta.

After about 6-8 minutes, add in the spinach and the spices. When the spinach has unfrozen and incorporated, add the hummus. This gives the sauce body without adding cream or butter. Once that cooks for a minute or two, add in the diced tomatoes. Let these cook for a few minutes. If the pasta is already in the water, add about a cup of the pasta water to the sauce. The starch in the pasta water will help to firm up the sauce. If the pasta is not in yet, don't worry; just add the water.

Keep the sauce simmering over medium-low, allowing it to reduce and concentrate. Add back a little bit of pasta water if the sauce gets to thick. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.

When the pasta is just about finished (maybe 1 minute before you would normally take it off), add it into the sauce and let them cook together. This will allow some of the sauce flavor to infuse into to pasta.

I finished the sauce with a little bit of Pecorino cheese. It was a very fulfilling meal which I am about to go eat for lunch.

Weekend Re-cap

This weekend was quite productive for me. I was able to:

1) Can the walnut butter that I had made
2) Bake 2 loaves of bread
3) Make 4 quarts of chicken stock
4) Read, cover to cover, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan.
5) Catch up on sleep.

On #4, I recommend that everyone go as soon as possible to the library or bookstore and pick up this book. The food that we eat is a subject that needs to be sorted out and I think this book goes a long way to clarify things.

Walnut Butter Jars

Walnut Butter Jars
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

Last week on Tuesday the Pomology Department, which shares Wickson Hall with the Viticulture and Enology Department, put out walnuts for people to take home. There must have been 50-100 lbs of walnuts. I took home a few bags worth, spent the next two days shelling them, and turned them into walnut butter. As you may note by looking below, there is not much to making nut butters.

After making the walnut butter, I put it in jars, made a label and a little tag, which more or less includes what is stated in the preceding paragraph.

Walnut Butter

walnuts, lightly toasted (7-10 min in a 250ºF oven)
walnut oil (or peanut, olive, etc.)
salt (optional)

Place walnuts in food processor. Blend until it forms a paste, and add a little bit of the oil to fix the consistency. Add salt if you desire.

Fresh Fettucini with Pesto

Fresh Fettucini with Pesto
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

Another day, another lunch. How I enjoy vacation time!

I can never find the pasta dough recipe, but it is really easy:

Fresh Fettucini with Pesto

3.5c flour
4 eggs
pesto
olive oil
garlic

Add 3.5 cups of flour to a food processor with 4 eggs. Pulse until mixed, but not to where a ball forms. Add a little dash of water if necessary. Turn out and knead into a ball. Let sit for 20 minutes. Cut into 8 parts and roll out on a pasta machine. For this, I rolled the pasta out to "1", or the thinnest setting on my machine (which I broke in the process of making this pasta, but that is another story).

Once you have sheets of dough, let them sit for ~20 minutes to partially dry out. Dust the dough with flour on both sides and roll up like a cigar. Cut off the frayed ends then cut into thin rings - when you unwrap them you will have fettucini (or whatever shape's thickness you cut them to). Put into salted, boiled water for 3-5 minutes and its done!

For the pesto, I took a little olive oil and infused it with a clove of chopped garlic by chopping the garlic and adding it to the cold oil in the pan, then turning it on to medium. As soon as it bubbles, I turn it off. The result is garlic flavored olive oil, with cooked garlic but not browned. I tossed the finished pasta in the garlic oil, then added some pesto, which I bought from Nugget. Then I ate.

I only made ~10 stands of pasta for my late, so if you were making the whole recipe, I would add more than 1 clove of garlic.

Spaghetti with Peas

Spaghetti with Peas
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

This morning it was really cold in my lab. I went in to do some experiments, but it was too cold to even work - the aroma compounds in wine volatilize as a function of temperature, and my experiments are done at a warmer temperature. It was 14ºC in there - 57.2ºF. So, being that I couldn't work, I went to the library to pick up some books. One that I picked up was The Art of Modern Cookery by Auguste Escoffier. It's amazing that there are literally thousands of recipes in that book. #19 is a recipe for roux. A roux is a combination of flour and butter used to thicken sauces. It is the base for béchamel and hollandaise. I decided that my lunch would be thickened with a roux.

I spent a few hours at Mishka's (not-)studying, trying to do some work. On the way home I picked up some English peas from the Co-Op. I once had a dish at Chez Panisse Cafe of Campanelle with Morels and Peas. That was the inspiration for this. My lunch came nowhere close the the delicate beauty of that meal, but it was still very tasty.

Spaghetti with Peas

Spaghetti, enough for one
A few handfuls of peas, shucked
1 tbs butter
1 tbs flour
1/2 c milk
salt
pepper
paprika

Cook the spaghetti according to the package. In the mean time, shuck the peas. Put the peas in a sieve and cook in the boiling pasta water for 5 minutes, until bright green.

For the sauce, heat up a saucepan to medium heat. Add the butter and flour. Stir constantly, until the flour cooks out and turns a very light brown. Add the milk and whisk until the sauce thickens. Add salt and pepper. Toss in half of the peas and cook a little longer. When the pasta is finished, drain off the water and add the pasta to the sauce. Mix through. Put on a plate, add the remaining peas, a dash of paprika and eat.

For a cold, rainy day like today, it was a nice warm lunch with a little bit of heft, but not heavy.

Leek and Mushroom Risotto with Shrimp

Leek and Mushroom Risotto with Shrimp
Originally uploaded by monkeycat!.

The quarter is finally finished. Now that I am done with classes and mostly done with my TA duties, I have time again to cook and take some photos.

On Friday night we had our annual "Repeal of Prohibition" party for our department. We decided this year to cater the event ourselves, so on Friday morning, 10 or so of us cooked for 150 people. If my calculations were correct, we made ~1800 pieces of food. The party was great; everyone seemed to have a good time. Of course, there was lots of wine - how could one celebrate the repeal of Prohibition without it?

After the party, it feels like I slept for 2 days. Finally today I was ready to start cooking again. Antonia and I went to the Nugget and I picked up some leeks and a few shrimp to make some lunch.

Leek and Mushroom Risotto with Shrimp

5 c hot chicken broth
2 leeks, white and pale green parts, sliced and rinsed
8 or so crimini mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 1/2 c arborio rice
3/4 c white wine (I used a bit of Rd. 29 Chardonnay)
3 tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil + 1 tsp olive oil
3 16/20 shrimp
4 tbs grated Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Heat up butter and 1 tbs olive oil over medium heat. Once melted, sweat/sauté the leeks and mushrooms until both are soft, about 7 minutes. Add in rice and cook for 2 or 3 minutes, just to coat the rice and let it heat up a little. Add the wine and turn down the heat to medium low. Once the wine is absorbed, start adding in the hot stock, 1/2 c at a time. Keep stirring. Add more stock once it is absorbed. After about 30 minutes, the rice will be tender yet toothsome and creamy. Take off the heat and add the cheese, stir to incorporate. Season with salt and pepper. Because the cheese is salty, it won't take too much salt. In a separate skillet, heat up the 1 tsp oil over medium heat. Season the shrimp and gently cook them. Do not over cook, if possible - they are so nice when they are still juicy and soft and just a bit crunchy.

I enjoyed my risotto with a glass of Rd. 29 Chardonnay. If you can find a bottle of this wine, you must know me :)