[Sca-cooks] cooking rice

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach ekoogler1 at comcast.net:
>  > Adamantius (who still loves the asparagus butter risotto he made
>>  every day for about a year, at one point)
>>  _______________________________________________
>Dear, Wonderful Adamantius....
>I LUV asparagus...and am very fond of risotto.  Is there ANY chance 
>you have the recipe
>for this and would be willing to share it????
>
>Kiri

Uhhh. Yes and no. I don't have it written down, but I can tell you 
what I did, with a slight shortcut on my part: I'm going to suggest 
using Lorenz's recipe for the basic risotto (I think I omitted the 
wine and the garlic, and used only chicken stock, plus a couple of 
bay leaves, but otherwise the basic method and ingredients are quite 
similar).

Basically, we used odds and ends from various pounds of sweet butter, 
softened. For a pound of butter you'd use the trimmed, but still 
woody ends, of about two bunches' worth of asparagus. Trim off the 
tips and slice the remaining stalks, blanch in salted water and 
quench in salted ice water so they remain bright green. Drain and 
reserve.

With the woody bases of the stalks (which still have green and tasty 
asparagus pulp inside), slice them and whiz up in a food processor, 
or if you have a really powerful blender, capable of pureeing these, 
use that. Add a peeled clove of garlic and maybe 1/2 pound of 
softened butter, a little at a time, until you have a creamy mass 
(yes, it'll still have a lot of fibers swirling through it). Push 
through a fine sieve or strainer; we used a fine chinoise, to 
separate out a smooth, fluffy green cream, looking suspiciously like 
asparagus-flavored cake frosting.

Make the risotto (maybe use about 1/2 cup less liquid than the recipe 
Lorenz gave us), stir in some of the reserved asparagus tips and 
slices, and finish with grated parmigiano and a little parsley, as in 
Lorenz's recipe, but also stir in between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of the 
asparagus butter. Basically, it's a rich, buttery, asparagus-flavored 
risotto, with chunks of asparagus.

We also used the same butter for a similar dish of penne pasta, the 
main difference being that we cut the asparagus to the [approximate] 
size and shape of the penne. Boil the pasta (tossing in the asparagus 
slices and tips for the last 20 seconds or so), drain (but not 
completely dry; leave just a bit of the cooking water in a mixing 
bowl with the pasta), and toss with grated parmigiano, parsley, and, 
of course, a big dollop of the asparagus butter. The water is there 
-- although the asparagus mixed into the butter also provides some -- 
to help keep the asparagus butter and cheese in a creamy emulsion and 
not watery grease.

Both dishes are helped by a grinding of fresh black pepper...

Adamantius