Fresh Pea and Chicken Risotto

As far as blogging goes, I've been a total slacker. By all appearances, I started a blog and then got lazy. But, it's not so!

In the last 30 days, we sold our townhouse, closed on it, and moved into a temporary apartment while we continue our search for a new home. Said apartment comes with a postage-stamp sized kitchen. There is almost literally no counter space, with the exception of the small, narrow space in front of the toaster and the microwave. Cooking is hard. Add a little dose of clumsy, and you may see why I've already done things like tipping the chopping board (and its contents) off the slide of the counter. A Pyrex dish full of marinated meat suffered the same fate recently too. It makes food blogging and taking pictures a bit tougher!

So, the day after a glorious Saturday on which we grilled some fantastic cajun chicken breasts, I decided to try cooking again in our itsy-bitsy kitchen. I settled on risotto, using some of the cajun chicken from the previous night. I picked up some fresh peas from Trader Joe's over the weekend too, and seeing those lovely, sweet green peas in my fridge sealed the deal on my brain practically shouting 'risotto!' at me.

Risotto with Fresh Peas and Chicken
2 cups Arborio rice
6 cups vegetable broth
1-2 cups water
2 medium shallots, sliced
1 cup fresh English peas
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup of cooked chicken breast, chopped
Zest from one lemon
Pepper, to taste
Asiago (or other hard cheese)

Bring the broth to a simmer. Heat a tablespoon of oil over medium heat (I used peanut, but olive would do fine), and sauté sliced shallot.

Add rice to pan, and stir until slightly translucent and rice gets a bit of color (2-3 minutes). Add 1 cup of broth, stir continuously until liquid is absorbed. Continue adding liquid 1/2 cup at a time, stirring until absorbed. Repeat. After the rice has cooked for about 10 minutes, add peas and pepper to taste. Continue adding liquid at intervals and stirring constantly. When rice is creamy and just shy of being done, add tomatoes, chicken and lemon zest, and stir for another minute or so.

Then remove from heat, cover and let sit for 5 minutes (this should help the rice to finish cooking, get a bit creamier and the flavors to melt together). To finish, grate in a little cheese and serve immediately.

Ta-da! Hope you enjoy. 

Spiced Lamb Meatballs

This weekend's cooking plan held great promise. There was going to be cake, and meatballs, and marinated feta, and slow-roasted tomatoes.

I knew I was submitting this month's recipe to the 14 Foodies blog: Grapefruit Cake
And had a meal plan to go with it, also all from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home. However, I realized too late that Tom's recipe for lamb meatballs called for cured lemons. Not exactly the type of time I had.

In our house, if you say there will be meatballs for dinner, you can't back out of the plan. Nothing else will do at that point. So in search of plan B, I came across The Kitchn's recipe for Spiced Lamb Meatballs. While trying to choose between meatball recipes, it was the garam masala and ginger in this particular recipe that piqued my interest.

Plan back on track. (Well mostly, because we switched out the feta for a cucumber salad, to better balance with the new meatball recipe's ingredients.)

There are only two of us, so I cut the recipe to 2/3 of the original (roughly). And made a few minor adjustments, most notably to the cooking method.

Spiced Lamb Meatballs

*makes approximately 35 small meatballs (1.5 inch diameter)
1 pound ground lamb
1 pound lean ground beef (I used 90/10)
1 large onion, very finely diced
1 3-inch piece fresh ginger root, peeled and finely grated (I put about 1.5 Tbsp in the meat mixture)
5 garlic cloves, finely diced (or crushed, but my preference is to just dice them)
2 teaspoons salt
2/3 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2/3 teaspoon chile powder
1 2/3 tablespoons garam masala
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons ground almonds
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup flour

(I really hesitated about the flour. I wasn't sure about including it. In fact, I was this close to substituting fresh breadcrumbs, but decided to give it a whirl. Although these came out perfectly, I'd still consider a switch next time. There is just something kind of weird about adding flour to meatballs.)

Combine everything together. (The original recipe says to mix the meats first, and then add the rest of the ingredients - but I ignored this).

Instead of baking these in the oven, like the original recipe calls for, we decided to grill the meatballs. The major deciding factor in this change was that we didn't want to make our house smell like grilled lamb. You see, our house is for sale, and cooking lamb meatballs in your oven is the type of thing Realtors frown upon.

So, we grilled them for 20 minutes on a baking pan (trying to maintain a roughly 400 F temperature in the grill), turning them 3 times during that time. They came out perfectly crispy. I'd highly recommend cooking them this way.

To serve, we chose to eat them on a fresh baguette from one of the amazing bakeries here in Durham. And with a base of an oven roasted tomato puree on the bread, a side of the remaining tomatoes, and a cucumber salad, this dinner was darn near perfect.

Using beef in addition to lamb gave the meatballs a really great flavor balance. The garam masala is prominent, but not overwhelming, and the ginger adds a unique element to this recipe.

Food Inspiration

I have to start with a confession. I have percolated on the idea of starting a food blog for a couple of years now. Years. But I have a fear of commitment. Mostly, it's the realization that the web has born a gluttony of food-related blogs - and if a new one is born, it needs to be special, it needs to have an inspirational purpose of some sort.

I think I've figured it out. I'm inspired daily (and luckily, sometimes many times daily). A lot of the most joyful inspiration in my life centers around food, cooking and eating - and those I enjoy it with. I'm hoping to extend that experience and share with others. As part of the journey, I'll be able to reflect on and re-experience those dishes and joys.

As for the name, Savory Saturdays comes because despite the best of intentions during the week, my most dedicated days in the kitchen are Saturdays.

And last of all, I've recently joined a group of self-proclaimed foodies in a group blogging adventure. Find us over at 14foodies.blogspot.com. When it came time for my first post there, I was so inspired by the recipes I found, I decided I wanted to share beyond that blog. And thus, Savory Saturdays...