Category: Recipe

Instant Pot spicy pork and mushroom risotto (featuring gochujang)

 

Pork and mushroom risotto with gochujang

Instant Pot spicy pork and mushroom risotto (featuring gochujang)

This recipe may well "stir up" some controversy with the Italian community out there!
Now we're all familiar with risotto, the famously rich Italian dish. And indeed what's not to like? It has toasted rice, shallots, (usually) mushrooms and grated hard Italian cheese, parmigiano reggiano or gran padano cheese. You can make it with pretty much any protein you like, it's delicious and filling.
And that is great. But as someone who's made risotto a few times the traditional way, it's quite a process. You have to keep stirring the rice constantly and add liquid by the ladle until you get the right consistency on everything. Your stirring arm will hate you for it.
Also most risotto recipes out there concentrate on making traditional Italian risottos with traditional Italian ingredients. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I was thinking "how can I expand the range and make this a bit spicier than the average risotto?"
For this II took inspiration from Korean cuisine and went with gochujang. It's a spicy red pepper paste that's slightly sweetened and fermented You can find it nowadays in most grocery stores, but if you have the chance of visiting an (East) Asian grocery store you should probably get it there. It's often used as a flavor base to make a spicy sauce for korean fried chicken, but today we're going to use it to spice up our risotto.
We're also going to make it all in an Instant Pot. Because the Instant Pot cooks with pressure and not just application of heat to the bottom of a pan, it's not going to burn your rice at the bottom of the tub, and you can add your broth all at once and not worry about standing by the stove for half an hour.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian, Korean
Servings 4 people

Equipment

  • 1 Instant Pot

Ingredients
  

  • 2 tbsp neutral oil I like avocado oil.
  • 1 lb pork, cut in small strips
  • 4 shallots
  • 1/2 lb mushrooms, quartered white button or cremini
  • 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced or minced
  • 2 tbsp gochujang
  • 1.5 cups arborio or baldo rice don't use other varieties of rice or things won't turn out well
  • 3/4 cup white wine
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 1 cup shredded gran padano cheese
  • salt to taste
  • thyme to taste

Instructions
 

  • We're going to start by browning the pork. Set the instant pot to saute on medium heat, add some oil, and brown the meat. Don't crowd the pot or leave it to cook for too long, as the real cooking takes place later when we use pressure.
  • Take the meat out and set aside.
  • Add a bit more oil and throw the mushrooms in there. Mix the mushrooms well so they pick up the oil, add a little salt, and let the mushrooms lose moisture for 8 minutes.
  • Add your shallots to the mushrooms and cook until the shalot pieces are transparent, about 4 minutes.
  • Add the garlic to the pot and keep stirring everything for a couple of minutes.
  • Add the gochujang to the pot. Let it heat up a little at the bottom, and then stir it into the veggies.
  • Add your rice to the pot. Keep stirring so that the rice gets a little darker.
  • Add your wine to the mix. Deglaze the bottom of the pot, and keep stirring the rice and veg mix. Pay close attention and you'll see the wine gradually disappear as it gets absorbed into the wine.
  • When the wine has been absorbed, stop the Instant Pot's saute function.
  • Add the broth to the pot, and then add the pork. Mix it all together.
  • Set the Instant Pot to pressure-cook (manual) for 5 minutes at high heat.
  • Once the cooking time is over, do a quick release. Make sure you don't lean over the Instant Pot when you do that because you can seriously burn yourself with the steam. Open the cover.
  • Add the cheese to the pot, and stir everything together.
  • Add salt and thyme, to taste.
  • Now this is important -- close the cover again (tightly) and let your risotto rest for about 15-20 minutes. this will let a little heat and pressure build up again so that the tastes will be better integrated.
  • Open and serve.

Notes

The gochujang goes well with the pork in terms of flavor, but mostly it adds heat that will linger in your mouth for a while. It's not excessive, however -- but you can experiment with adding more or less gochujang to suit your taste.
Gochujang will also work well with chicken if you prefer that to pork. I'm much less sure how well it would work with beef.
You can also add:
  • some spicy peppers to add a more serious level of spiciness. 
  • spinach or gai lan to add a bit of greens 
  • some people suggest adding cheddar as well as parmigiano/gran padano but I wasn't sure how it was going to mesh with everything in there already, but I might give it a shot in the future.
Keyword gochujang, granpadano, mushrooms, pork, spicy, thyme
Pork and mushroom risotto with gochujang

Instant Pot spicy pork and mushroom risotto (featuring gochujang)

This recipe may well "stir up" some controversy with the Italian community out there!
Now we're all familiar with risotto, the famously rich Italian dish. And indeed what's not to like? It has toasted rice, shallots, (usually) mushrooms and grated hard Italian cheese, parmigiano reggiano or gran padano cheese. You can make it with pretty much any protein you like, it's delicious and filling.
And that is great. But as someone who's made risotto a few times the traditional way, it's quite a process. You have to keep stirring the rice constantly and add liquid by the ladle until you get the right consistency on everything. Your stirring arm will hate you for it.
Also most risotto recipes out there concentrate on making traditional Italian risottos with traditional Italian ingredients. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I was thinking "how can I expand the range and make this a bit spicier than the average risotto?"
For this II took inspiration from Korean cuisine and went with gochujang. It's a spicy red pepper paste that's slightly sweetened and fermented You can find it nowadays in most grocery stores, but if you have the chance of visiting an (East) Asian grocery store you should probably get it there. It's often used as a flavor base to make a spicy sauce for korean fried chicken, but today we're going to use it to spice up our risotto.
We're also going to make it all in an Instant Pot. Because the Instant Pot cooks with pressure and not just application of heat to the bottom of a pan, it's not going to burn your rice at the bottom of the tub, and you can add your broth all at once and not worry about standing by the stove for half an hour.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 1 hour
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Course Main Course
Cuisine Italian, Korean
Servings 4 people

Equipment

  • 1 Instant Pot

Ingredients
  

  • 2 tbsp neutral oil I like avocado oil.
  • 1 lb pork, cut in small strips
  • 4 shallots
  • 1/2 lb mushrooms, quartered white button or cremini
  • 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced or minced
  • 2 tbsp gochujang
  • 1.5 cups arborio or baldo rice don't use other varieties of rice or things won't turn out well
  • 3/4 cup white wine
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 1 cup shredded gran padano cheese
  • salt to taste
  • thyme to taste

Instructions
 

  • We're going to start by browning the pork. Set the instant pot to saute on medium heat, add some oil, and brown the meat. Don't crowd the pot or leave it to cook for too long, as the real cooking takes place later when we use pressure.
  • Take the meat out and set aside.
  • Add a bit more oil and throw the mushrooms in there. Mix the mushrooms well so they pick up the oil, add a little salt, and let the mushrooms lose moisture for 8 minutes.
  • Add your shallots to the mushrooms and cook until the shalot pieces are transparent, about 4 minutes.
  • Add the garlic to the pot and keep stirring everything for a couple of minutes.
  • Add the gochujang to the pot. Let it heat up a little at the bottom, and then stir it into the veggies.
  • Add your rice to the pot. Keep stirring so that the rice gets a little darker.
  • Add your wine to the mix. Deglaze the bottom of the pot, and keep stirring the rice and veg mix. Pay close attention and you'll see the wine gradually disappear as it gets absorbed into the wine.
  • When the wine has been absorbed, stop the Instant Pot's saute function.
  • Add the broth to the pot, and then add the pork. Mix it all together.
  • Set the Instant Pot to pressure-cook (manual) for 5 minutes at high heat.
  • Once the cooking time is over, do a quick release. Make sure you don't lean over the Instant Pot when you do that because you can seriously burn yourself with the steam. Open the cover.
  • Add the cheese to the pot, and stir everything together.
  • Add salt and thyme, to taste.
  • Now this is important — close the cover again (tightly) and let your risotto rest for about 15-20 minutes. this will let a little heat and pressure build up again so that the tastes will be better integrated.
  • Open and serve.

Notes

The gochujang goes well with the pork in terms of flavor, but mostly it adds heat that will linger in your mouth for a while. It’s not excessive, however — but you can experiment with adding more or less gochujang to suit your taste.
Gochujang will also work well with chicken if you prefer that to pork. I’m much less sure how well it would work with beef.
You can also add:
  • some spicy peppers to add a more serious level of spiciness. 
  • spinach or gai lan to add a bit of greens 
  • some people suggest adding cheddar as well as parmigiano/gran padano but I wasn’t sure how it was going to mesh with everything in there already, but I might give it a shot in the future.
Keyword gochujang, granpadano, mushrooms, pork, spicy, thyme

Revenge of the Naan!

Naan. I didn't take this myself but these look just like mine.

My Daily Bread 2: bigger, longer and uncut

tony
After a site re-host gone awry, my most popular article about making naan bread disappeared. This was a bit of a problem, as I think it's a great and easy way to make great naans. And since I had lost the original recipe I had tried it a few times but it didn't quite work right. So I rethought the entire recipe to improve it, in great part by increasing its size to make 8 naans instead of 6 (bigger), and giving dough more time to rise (longer). The "uncut" was purely a puerile addition on my part.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 3 hours
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 3 hours 15 minutes
Servings 8 naans

Equipment

  • 1 cast iron griddle Optional, but with one of those you can cook the naans two at a time

Ingredients
  

Dry Ingredients

  • 3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour for making dough easier to handle
  • 2 tsp salt for finishing

Wet Ingredients

  • 1.5 tsp traditional yeast
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 1 cup warm water (~40C)
  • 1 egg large
  • 1/4 cup kefir yogurt or other plain yogurt
  • 1/4 cup melted salted butter or ghee
  • 1 tbsp butter for finishing

Instructions
 

Bloom the yeast

  • Put the yeast and the honey into a bowl.
  • Add the warm water and mix everything together.
  • Let bloom for 15 minutes.

Prepare the wet ingredients

  • Put the egg and the yogurt in a bowl.
  • Pour the bloomed yeast mixture into the same bowl.
  • Pour the melted butter/ghee into the same bowl.

Prepare the dry ingredients

  • Put 3 cups flour and 2tsp salt into the large bowl and mix together.

Make the dough

  • Pour the bowl of wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients.
  • Mix the ingredients together until combined.
  • When the items are combined, handle the dough into a ball. If the dough is too sticky to handle cleanly, add flour.
  • Cover the large bowl and let rise for 2 hours.

Divide the dough into portions

  • The dough should have roughly doubled in size. Remove the dough ball from the bowl and knead it a little to remove extra air within the dough. Again, if the dough is sticky, use flour to make it manageable.
  • Cut the dough in two pieces, and make a ball out of each piece. Keep doing this until you have 8 roughly equal-sized balls of dough.
  • Place back in the bowl and let rise for a further 30 minutes.
  • Use a cast-iron pan or (preferably) griddle, on the flat side. Pre-heat on low-to-medium heat for about 15 minutes so the temperature is steady.
  • Once the dough is ready, take a small ball of dough out of the bowl and press it down with your fingers into a circle shape, then flatten it with a rolling pin. It's not going to remain circle-shaped, but as long as it fits into your pan or griddle it's perfectly ok. Repeat for each ball. As a tip, I do this two dough-balls at a time while I have two naans cooking on the griddle.

Cook the naan

  • Take your flatted dough ball (two if you use a griddle) and place it/them on the cooking surface. You should hear a very faint sizzle when you put it down.
  • Cook the naan(s) on the first side for 2 minutes.
  • Flip the naan(s) and cook for 90 seconds.
  • Transfer the naan(s) to a cooling rack.
  • Use a brush to spread melted butter on top of the naan(s).
  • Sprinkle a little pinch of salt on top of the buttered naan.
  • Once the naans are sufficiently cool to handle, place them in a bread box.

Notes

My recipe certainly is not low-fat, I prioritize taste. If you absolutely want you can replace the butter with a neutral oil, but this will affect the taste.
Something else that will affect the taste is the type of honey you use to bloom the yeast. Try several varieties and see for yourself!
Also make sure you use grain salt and not salt flakes for the dry ingredients mix. Salt flakes will not mix well with the flour and create salt "hotspots".
Naans go great with whatever you put on them, really, especially when they have that nice fluffy texture. One thing I used to do is use them to make little pizzas and lahmajouns. You can also spread garlic spread ("toum") on a warm naan for a super-tasty snack, but be mindful of your breath afterwards.

Maple Leaf Hot Wings

Every time I make those I tell myself that I should put the recipe online, and tonight for the first time I haven’t forgotten. This is a recipe for spicy wings that’s derived from a Korean wing recipe I’ve seen on the internet, only adapted to suit the ingredients I happened to have at the time — including maple syrup, hence the name (yeah, imagination isn’t my strong suit). It’s hot, and it’s tasty as hell.

Marinade/sauce

  1. In a bowl, combine the following:
    • 4 tbsp chili paste (this stuff)
    • 2 tbsp hot chili powder (I use this one these days)
    • 1/2 tbsp cayenne pepper
    • 1.5 tbsp minced or chopped garlic
    • 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
    • 1 tbsp sesame oil
    • 2 tbsp maple syrup
    • 1 tbsp ground mixed pepper
  2. Mix thoroughly, so the powders won’t stay in a clump or stick to the sides of the bowl.
  3. Take 24 chicken wings. Place in a large ziploc bag, then douse with the sauce you just prepared. Mix well, make sure the sauce gets on all exposed chicken bits.
  4. Place in your fridge overnight (or longer).
  5. Bake the wings on a cookie sheet for 60 minutes at 350F/180C, turn halfway through.
  6. Enjoy.

This will produce wings that have a good spicy kick to them. They’re not 5-alarm wings or anything like that, but they’re really tasty and you can actually enjoy eating them.

Of course if that’s not spicy enough, ditch the chili powder and use 2 tbsp of cayenne pepper, but be forewarned — that will turn the heat up to 11. And if you think the wings are spicy on the way in, wait until the next day… ’nuff said.