Pilau, Pilaf, Risotto, Paella or Jambalaya

I cooked a Jambalaya for some friends, who commented that it was a lot like paella, and some thought is like pilaf, but I know risotto is very similar… so I started to get for you the story of Jambalaya origin. Pilau, Pilaf, Risotto, Paella or Jambalaya- is a dish in which rice is cooked in a seasoned broth and depending on the local cuisine, it may also contain a variety of meat and vegetables. Fried rice in Asian cuisines is similar dish who take the cue from pilaf.
All this recipes start with a similar process. The grain is sautéed in oil, fat or butter to brown it slightly. To fully cook the dish, wine and stocks are added, which add different flavor to the dish. Depending on recipe and region, the grains are different from long grain rice to risotto and this make the dish to have different consistency. A variety of vegetables, seafood, poultry or meat may be added too, so it can be a whole and filling meal or a side dish.
This rice based dish -called ‘’pilau’’ originated from the Persian Empire, always begins by first browning the rice in butter or oil before cooking it in stock.
In India they're highly spiced it with masala, chili and coriander.
In Greek cuisine, ‘’piláfi’’ is soft rice that has been boiled in a meat stock then finished with lemon juice and melted butter.
In East Europe, ‘’pilaf’’ is made with chicken or sausages and finished with a bunch of fresh herbs. Left over meats and vegetables are use very often as well.
In Italian cuisine ’’risottos’’ are made using short-grain rice, where stock is being added gradually while the rice is stirred constantly. The cooking technique leads the rice to release its starch, giving the finished dish a creamy texture and of course adding Italian flavors to it like parmesan, mascarpone, sundried tomato …etc.
In Spain ‘’paella’’ (a wide, shallow pan with looped handles) famous rice dish is a free-style combination of meat, seafood and vegetables. The key ingredients include saffron and olive oil.
If you mix into any of these dishes some dry apricots, cumin, almonds and fresh chopped coriander, you have a Malaysian pilaf.
Exploration of the “New World” brought the dish to the America. Each culture has created its own version of pilafs.
It was an attempt by the Spanish to make paella in the New World, where saffron was not available. Tomatoes became the substitute for saffron and the Jambalaya was born. Additions at the end of cooking in all of these dishes can include a bit of butter or cream.
Here are some samples of this dishes that I made. Please feel free to explore more and add your favorite flavor to it.

Risotto with wild mushrooms.

Jambalaya with bbq beaver and coleslaw salad.  

Safron risotto with salmon and grill lime.

Black ink risotto with tiger praws. 

You must work with the correct quantity of liquid in all of these recipes.
I work on the basis of one part of rice for two and half the quantity of stock.
Here is one of my recipe for shellfish risotto (or jambalaya or pilaf, or whatever you want to call it)

Ingredients for 4-6 people:
2 white medium onions, chopped
1 liter fish broth or stock
250 g mussels, steamed open
500 g mixed fresh seafood, shrimps, scallops and calamari
400 g can crush tomatoes
100 ml olive oil
400 g Arborio rice
100 ml dry white wine
4 teaspoons butter
100 g shaved parmesan cheese
bunch of chopped parsley or basil for garnish
salt and black pepper to taste
Method:
Heat the oil in a heavy braising pan, add a spoon of butter and chopped white onions and sauté until translucent. Add the rice and sauté, stirring continuously, for about a minute. Add the white wine and stir until it evaporates.
Low the heat and begin ladling the fish stock over the rice. Add the can of crushed tomatoes. Cook the rice and add some more ladles of fish stock only when the previous one has been absorbed. Repeat till rice is almost cooked.
When the rice is almost cooked, add the seafood. Be careful not to add the seafood too early as the heat of the rice will cook it in just a few moments. Prawns and scallops need only to turn opaque to be cooked and the mussels only need warming. Finish by adjusting the salt and pepper and add a knob of butter and parmesan cheese. I use the mussels in the top of risotto for a finishing touch.

Garnish with chopped fresh herbs and parmesan and serve immediately.
Enjoy! Pin It Now!

French onion soup with Guinness and mozzarella baguettes

In France - ´´French onions soup´´ is a standard bistro fare, in Ireland they do a version with Guinness and today I combine both recipe to do my own version of this classic soup were I will add a Italian twist. A classic soup perfect for winter, is packed with onion flavor and is delicious for those occasions when soul food is needed to raise the spirits. Make sure that you use a good beef stock and allow the onions to caramelize to get the maximum flavor in your onion soup. For vegetarians, the beef stock can be replaced with vegetable-based stock.
The trick for this great onion soup is starting with good stock. Another important step is to caramelize the onion. Caramelizing onions take at least thirty minutes of slow cooking the onions over medium heat. The browning, or caramelizing, of the onions brings out the sweetness of the onions.
Recipe below make enough for 4-6 portions.
Chopping onions note
Chopping onions is a nice 'crying' experience! The way to stop you from crying when chopping onions is tricky! Just use a very sharp knife, serrated knives are no good. When you chop an onion you break the walls of the cells, this allows the juices of the onions to go into the atmosphere. Sharper the knife is, the less cells are broken.

Ingredients
6 large Spanish onions peeled and thinly sliced.
olive oil
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ½ liter beef stock
1 of 500 ml can of Guinness
1-2 table spoon worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon of fresh chopped thyme
salt and pepper
12 slices from French baguettes
150 gr grated Gruyeres cheese
6 of 80 gr French baguettes with garlic butter
4 of 125gr Buffalo Mozzarella
pot of basil to garnish.

In a large saucepan, sauté the onion in the olive oil on medium high heat until well browned, but not burned, about 30 minutes.
Turn the onions every minute or so to ensure they are evenly cooked.
Add the minced garlic, sugar and thyme and continue cooking on a medium heat for 10-15 minutes until the onion is well browned, stirring frequently.

Stir in the Guinness,  worcestershire sauce and stock and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.Cook the onion until gets a light brown color so that is soft but not falling apart.
Put the French baguettes slices under the grill or into the oven, to toast them.

Rub each slice of toasted French bread with a garlic clove.
Top with grated cheese, and grill or oven backed for 3-4 minutes until cheese begins to melt and bubble. Put the cheese croutons on the top of the soup, garnish with fresh basil and served.

To make a meal on its own I served on the side with a mozzarella and garlic baguettes.

Enjoy! Pin It Now!

Teriyaki Salmon

Teriyaki Salmon it’s so simple, healthy and it is a great recipe for entertaining. Teriyaki is a Japanese way of cooking where the food is broiled, baked or grilled in a sweet soy sauce mixture. Many foods can be cooked in teriyaki style such as salmon, tuna, chicken, beef, tofu etc. It’s simple to make your own teriyaki sauce and only requires few ingredients: soy sauce, onion, brown sugar, mirin, ginger, garlic, sesame oil. Mirin is a sweet rice wine that is similar to sake and contains alcohol. You can make a lot of teriyaki sauce and store it in the fridge until needed. I recommend serving the Teriyaki salmon with rice or noodles and cucumber-coriander salad or pickle ginger, wasabi and mooli salad (white radish salad). If you have any leftover, this tasty sauce can also be used tossed through a crunchy cucumber salad or like I do, use it in julienne vegetables salad. You can cook the rice ahead of time and keep it in the fridge until need, no more than one day.

Ingredients:
4-200gr salmon filets
4 cups of cooked rice
For Teriyaki sauce:
100 ml soy sauce
100 ml mirin
50 ml sesame oil,
2 chopped onions,
50gr grated ginger,
50gr chopped garlic,
3 tablespoon brown sugar
For julienne vegetables salad:
1-red pepper
60gr white radish (mooli)
60gr zucchini
60gr carrots
coriander
60gr pickled ginger
2tbs mirin
2tbs sesame oil
2tbs lime juice
2tbs soy sauce
Directions
To make the sauce fry onions in a saucepan, then add all ingredients for the sauce and boil slowly until a syrupy consistency is achieved, about a 50 percent reduction. Let cool completely. Add salmon and marinate for 1 hour. Cook salmon with marinate in the oven at 180c for 10 min or until cooked. Do not overcook.

For the salad cut vegetables into very thin sticks. In a bowl, combine all vegetables and set aside. I chose and I recommend to don’t cook the vegetables to get all the benefit from fresh vegetables.
To make the dressing, in small bowl, combine sesame oil, mirin, lime juice, and soya sauce; mix thoroughly. Pour over vegetables and toss to mix. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the teriyaki salmon with rice, julienne vegetables on top and garnish with fresh coriander and pickled ginger. Enjoy. Pin It Now!

Kringel bread

Kringel is a Estonian traditional sweet-bread cake that appears to be originated from Germany. Is knotted and sprinkled with nuts and chocolate and filled with cream cheese or raisins. A standard dessert at Estonian birthday’s parties.The dough is similar with traditional Romanian sweet bread ( cozonac) a cake for all holidays: Easter or Christmas, wedding or christening. Every Romanian has a recipe from her mother or grandmother. My grandma always cooks huge quantities of sweet bread for Easter or Christmas. There is a lot of Romanian sweet bread recipes on the net for that I chose today to make a Estonian version in my own Romanian way. I made extra dough for my daughter to play with and she came out with some beautiful cinnamon rolls bread.

Ingredients
24 g dry yeast,
75 ml warm water,
550 ml milk,
500 g sugar,
1 tsp. salt,
1 tsp. cinnamon powder
3 eggs,
900 g plain flour, sieved
225 g butter, melted
Filling
250 g soft butter
2 tsp. cinnamon powder
250 g raissins
250 g chocolate
150 g butter,
100 g tasted almonds,
Method
Preheat oven to 200°c. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water.
Stir in the milk, salt, cinnamon, eggs and 200g of the flour, until the mixture forms a batter. Beat until smooth before adding about 300g more flour. Beat well, until the dough is quite smooth and glossy. Stir in the melted butter. Add the remaining flour and mix to stiff dough. Turn the mixture out onto a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes. Return the dough to a lightly greased mixing bowl and leave to rise for an hour or until double in size. Take the dough out of the bowl and rolled out to a thickness of 1cm. Spread the softened butter evenly over the pastry, then sprinkle with raisins, cinnamon and sugar.

You then roll it up Swiss roll style and slice it in half lengthwise. Twist the dough together, lifting each half over the other in turn. Finally, shape the bread into a bretzel shape and transfer to a buttered baking tray and leave to rise for another hour.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 190C  for a further 30-35 minutes until dark golden brown and cooked through. In the meantime, prepare the chocolate topping by melting the chocolate and butter in a bowl over boiling water or in microwave. Once out of the oven, let the bread cool down a bit, place on a serving plate and drizzle with chocolate sauce and toasted almonds.

To make a savory, Kringel, leave out the raisins and sugar, fill them with cream cheese, bacon, spinach, pepper sundried tomato and cheese then sprinkle the Kringel with grated cheddar. Here is the pictures of one I made.

Enjoy. Pin It Now!