I’ve said it before: I love hot food. This rice is a fabulously spicy side that’s packed with flavor. Turn it into a more substantial meal by tossing in some sauteed shrimp or leftover roast chicken or pork.

This rice gets a triple kick of heat from cayenne, chipotle, and Aleppo chili flakes—and a potent dose of bright flavor from fresh lime juice,  chopped cilantro, and fresh garlic added to finish the dish.

Fiery Chili Lime Rice: A note on chilis and raw garlic

If hot food’s not your thing, adjust the amount of chili to make it as hot—or not—as you like. You could also substitute a milder chili, like ancho, for some or all of the cayenne.

This dish also has a lot of in-your-face garlic. To cut that back, toss the fresh garlic in with the rice when you add the other spices. When you add it in at the end, the garlic cooks a little bit in the hot rice, but is really still very pungent.

Fiery Chili Lime Rice: A note on ingredients

I make this with basmati rice, which has a really nice, nutty flavor. It would also be really good with jasmine rice, which is more fragrant and slightly flowery.

I also use ground celery seed instead of celery salt (better control over the flavor and amount of salt in the dish). If you can’t find ground celery seed in your grocery store, Penzey’s sells a 4-ounce bag for just under $3. They also sell Aleppo chili flakes.

Fiery Chili Lime Rice

2 cups basmati rice
4 cups water
1 tsp. ground chipotle
1 tsp. ground cayenne
1/2 tsp. ground celery seed (if you use celery salt, omit the kosher salt below)
kosher salt to taste
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 clove fresh garlic, mashed
1 lime, cut in half
Aleppo chili flakes, for garnish

Serves 4-6 generously as a side

Fiery Chili Lime Rice: Bring the rice to a boil

Put the rice in a medium-sized saucepan. Use one that has a tightly fitted lid.

Add the water to the pot. Toss in the ground chipotle, cayenne, celery seed, and kosher salt (to taste).

Give it a stir to combine. Set the pot on the stove over high heat. You want it to come up to a boil.

Fiery Chili Lime Rice: Prep the cilantro and garlic

While you’re waiting, chop up the cilantro and mash the garlic.

Set them aside until the rice is cooked.

Fiery Chili Lime Rice: Cover and simmer the rice

When the pot comes up to a boil, drop the heat to low and cover the pot tightly.

Keep an eye on it for a minute or two. If your heat is too high, it may boil over.

Simmer covered, like this, until you can’t see any liquid and the surface of the rice is dotted with air holes. When you see that, turn the heat off and cover your pot back up for about 10 minutes to let the rice finish cooking.

After about 10 minutes, uncover the pot. Fluff the rice up with a fork.

Give it a taste. It should be completely cooked through.

Fiery Chili Lime Rice: Season the cooked rice

When your rice is cooked, toss in the cilantro and garlic. Squeeze both halves of the lime over the pot.

Stir to combine well with a fork or wooden spoon. Give it one final taste and toss in a little salt if you think it needs it.

Serve garnished with a sprinkle of Aleppo chili flakes.

Enjoy!

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Ah, risotto. So creamy! So delicious! All that cheese! And you wanna know what? You don’t need to go out to eat to enjoy it. It’s not remotely as hard to make at home as some folks might think.

This risotto gets a smooth, rich balance of cheese-y flavors from Gruyere, Taleggio, and Parmesan. A generous amount of butter beaten in at the end adds just a little extra creaminess.

Seriously? I think I may have died and gone to cheese heaven. (Not a bad ending for a mouse, I know.)

A big thank you to my friends at Cookstr

The good folks over at Cookstr have asked me to do step-by-step walk-throughs of a handful of their recipes. We’re really excited about working with them! This first recipe for Three Cheese Risotto comes from Jamie Oliver.

Cookstr is rapidly building one of the best food sites I’ve seen. All their content comes from chefs and cookbook authors. If you haven’t already, definitely check them out for tons of recipes and info on your favorite chefs.

Three Cheese Risotto: A note on ingredients

Risotto is made with Italian arborio rice, a short-grain rice that’s super starchy. Slow cooking and constant stirring help coax that starch out, creating risotto’s trademark creamy texture.

For the cheeses, I used Gruyere and Taleggio.

Gruyere is a Swiss cow’s milk cheese with a fabulous nutty flavor. It’s generally aged for 10-12 months, and is good for eating out of hand or for cooking.

Gruyere

Made in the Lombardy region of Italy, Taleggio is a rich, semi-soft cow’s milk cheese. When it’s younger, it’s a pale-ish yellow and fairly firm. As it ages, it gets darker in color and runnier.

Taleggio

For chicken broth, I like Pacific brand if I don’t have any homemade on hand in the freezer.

Three Cheese Risotto: The basic technique

Here’s the basic technique. There’s a lot of stirring. But trust me, your efforts will be well worth it.

+Heat the stock in a separate pan
+Sweat the veggies in another pan
+Add the rice to the veggies and cook it a bit
+Pour in the wine and cook until absorbed, stirring constantly
+Add the stock one ladle at a time. Stir constantly until the stock is absorbed before adding more.
+When the rice has absorbed all the stock, stir in the cheese
+Add the Parmesan and butter
+Cover for a few minutes
+Serve and enjoy!

Read on for a step-by-step walkthrough.

Three Cheese Risotto

Recipe by Jamie Oliver

~1 quart chicken stock, preferably organic
1 Tbls. olive oil
2 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
3 sticks of celery, trimmed and finely chopped
1 ¾ cups uncooked risotto rice
2 wine glasses of dry white wine
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 oz. Appenzeller or Gruyere cheese, roughly chopped
4 oz. Taleggio cheese, roughly chopped
6 Tbls. butter
2 oz. Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

Three Cheese Risotto: Do a little prep

Gather your ingredients together. You want to prep everything ahead of time. Once you start the risotto, you won’t really be able to walk away from it.

Set two medium-sized pots on the stove. Pour the chicken broth into one. Set it over medium-high heat. You want to barely bring it up to a simmer, then drop the heat to low (so it’s still hot when you add it to the rice).

Meanwhile, prep the cheese and veggies. Cut the rind off the Gruyere and Taleggio and discard.

Chop them up roughly. Set the cheese aside in a bowl.

Chopped Gruyere (left) and Taleggio (right)

Peel the onion and chop it finely.

Trim the ends off the celery and cut it up the same way.

Peel the garlic and mince it up. Set the chopped veggies aside for a sec while you heat the oil.

Three Cheese Risotto: Sweat the veggies

Add the olive oil to your other pan. Set the pan over medium heat. Toss in the onion, celery, and garlic.

Stir to combine and coat with oil. Keep your heat on medium. You want them to start to turn translucent, not brown. Cook them like this, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes.

Three Cheese Risotto: Add the rice

When your onions are getting translucent, pour the rice into the pot.

Give the pot a stir to combine the rice and veggies. Raise the heat to medium-high.

Cook the rice like this, stirring constantly, until it starts to look translucent.

Three Cheese Risotto: Pour in the wine

Next, add the wine to the pot.

Stir to combine. If the pot feels like it’s too hot (i.e. the rice is sticking or sizzling a lot), turn the heat down a bit. You don’t want the rice to cook too quickly on the outside.

Cook, stirring constantly, until all the wine is absorbed.

Three Cheese Risotto: Add the stock one ladle at a time

Next, add the first ladle of stock.

Toss in a little salt.

Grind on a little black pepper.

Cook like this, stirring constantly, until all the stock has been absorbed.

Then add another ladle of stock.

Keep stirring, just like you did with the first ladle.

Repeat this process until you’ve used all the stock. As it cooks, the rice will plump up and turn more and more opaque.

When all your stock is used up, your risotto should be nice and creamy. Give it a taste. The rice should be totally cooked, but still have the slightest amount of bite to it.

You want to be able to draw a spoon across the bottom of the pot like this:

Take the pot off the heat and get ready to finish the risotto up.

Three Cheese Risotto: Finish the risotto

This is the fun part. Add the chopped Gruyere and Taleggio to the pot.

Stir well to combine and start melting the cheese.

Toss in the butter and Parmesan.

Stir well to combine. Cover the pot for a few minutes to let the cheese finish melting. When you uncover it, give it a stir. It should look about like this:

Three Cheese Risotto: Serve and enjoy!

When your risotto is done, heap it up in bowls.

In terms of consistency, it should be thick and creamy, but not so much that it’s rubbery or gluey.

Top with a little minced parsley if you like.

Serve and enjoy!

Three Cheese Risotto: How to reheat your risotto

Here’s the best way I’ve found to reheat risotto (assuming, that is, that you have leftovers).

To help maintain the nice, creamy texture that you worked so hard to create, reheat your risotto in an uncovered double boiler, stirring frequently. If it’s feeling a little dry, beat in a small nob of butter to loosen it up.

Cheers!

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This is fast food, Mouse House style.

We eat a lot of rice. It’s almost always our starch of choice over pasta. This rice is bursting with fresh spinach flavor. It’s salty, garlicky, and laced with a heavenly amount of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

And hey, with a little bit of fresh garlic and all that spinach, it’s *almost* health food.

Spinach is packed with vitamin C, magnesium, and folate. Fresh garlic is full of allicin, a compound some studies have found helps fight infections, but that breaks down when preserved.

Garlic & Spinach Parmesan Rice—a fresh, fast, and easy side dish

And of course, the most important parts: It’s loaded with flavor and it’s a total breeze to make.

The hot rice melts the cheese and warms up the spinach and garlic just enough, but still leaves both with plenty of bite.

For an extra satisfying meal, toss in some leftover roast chicken or a handful of sliced almonds.

Vampires beware

One tiny word of warning. Because the garlic only comes into contact with the hot rice, it’s still really very raw. This means that this rice is super-duper (duper, duper) garlicky.

If that’s not your cup of tea, cut down on the amount of garlic, or toss the garlic in the pot when you cook the rice.

A note on ingredients and technique for garlic & spinach parmesan rice

Use any rice you like. I prefer the nuttiness of Basmati (cooked by absorbtion method with a ratio of 1 part rice : 2 parts water), but jasmine would also work. Use fresh rice, or just reheat leftovers.

This is more technique than exact recipe. Measurements are approximate. Use more or less garlic, spinach, and cheese, depending on your tastes.

The following proportions yield a salty, cheese-y, spinach-y rice. Don’t add any extra salt until the end. There’s already plenty in there from the Parmesan.

Garlic & Spinach Parmesan Rice

1 1/2 cups cooked Basmati rice
1-2 cups baby spinach, loosely packed
1 small clove garlic, mashed
2 Tbls. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Freshly cracked black pepper

Prep or cook the Basmati rice

If you’re using leftover rice, start by heating it up.

If you’re using fresh rice, set a pot of it to cook.

(Put 1 part rice and 2 parts water in a medium-sized pot, bring to a boil, cover and lower the heat, then turn the heat off to finish cooking when most of the liquid has been absorbed.)

Garlic & Spinach Parmesan Rice: Prep your ingredients

When your rice is ready, set it aside and prep the other ingredients quickly.

Measure out the baby spinach (pick out any blemished leaves and discard them).

Give it a quick rinse and pat it dry with paper towels if you like (or give it a whirl in a salad spinner).

Mince the spinach.

I like mine to look about like this:

Put the minced spinach in a bowl. Add the mashed garlic.

Toss on some freshly cracked black pepper.

Add the Parmesan.

With a fork, toss all the ingredients together to combine them well. You want to evenly distribute the cheese, and make sure that you break up any larger lumps of garlic.

Garlic & Spinach Parmesan Rice: Assemble the dish

Top the spinach mixture with the hot rice.

Mix the rice and spinach together with a fork until well combined.

It should look about like this:

And that’s it!

Garlic & Spinach Parmesan Rice: Serve and enjoy!

Nowadays, I tend to use chopsticks more often than a fork.

For any New Year’s dieters out there, this is a great trick for slowing down when you eat. Chances are, you’ll feel fuller after less.

Cheers!

Here are some of the best discounts and sales I’ve found this week.

***
Copyright 2008-2009 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

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This is a quick and easy rice dish you can whip together on a weeknight in short time.

It’s packed with buttery, toasted pecans and bits of fried ham. A fresh bay leaf and pinch of clove give it a distinct and warm spiciness.

I used the same absorbtion-cooking technique that I use to cook plain basmati rice:

+Bring the rice/water to a rolling boil

+Lower the heat and cover tightly

+Simmer covered for about 5 minutes

+Turn the heat off completely and let the rice sit (covered) for about 20 minutes to finish cooking

+Fluff and serve

I like to serve it as a side for sauteed chicken breasts or roasted cornish hens. Start the rice, cook your chicken, and it’ll be done by the time your bird is. The pecans also pair really well with fried pork chops.

Ingredients for toasted pecan rice pilaf

I made this pilaf with water. If you use stock, however, start with a low-sodium brand, because the ham will add some salt to the rice. (You can always add more at the end.)

For the ham, use your favorite brand of cooked ham steak.

For the basmati rice, I love Royal brand basmati rice, which we buy in embarrassingly large sacks at Costco. (If you have the room to store it and serve rice often, it’s more economical than buying smaller packages.)

Toasted Pecan Rice Pilaf

1 Tbls. olive oil
1 Tbls. butter
3/4 cup pecans, roughly chopped
3/4 cup cooked ham, diced
2 cups basmati rice
4 cups water or low-sodium chicken stock
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. kosher salt (omit if using chicken stock)
1 fresh bay leaf
freshly cracked black pepper
pinch of ground clove
butter + minced parsley, for garnish

Put the olive oil and butter in a medium-sized pot over medium heat until the butter melts.

Add the pecans.

Stir to coat. Cook for a minute or two, until the pecans are wonderfully fragrant and start to brown. (Watch your heat closely here, and turn it down if they start to burn.)

Toss in the ham.

Stir to combine. Cook over medium heat until the ham is lightly browned.

Add the rice and stir to combine with the pecans and ham. Cook for a minute or two, stirring, to get the rice cooking.

Pour in the water or chicken stock. (I used water here.) Give the pot a stir to mix. Scrape at the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to loosen any brown bits (that’s pure flavor!).

Add the garlic, onion, salt (leave this out for now if you used stock instead of water), bay leaf, pepper, and clove.

Stir to combine. Then raise the heat to high and bring your mixture to a boil.

When it comes to a boil, drop the heat to low. Cover the pot with a tight fitting lid. Simmer like this—untouched—for about 5-7 minutes.

At that point, uncover your pot. The rice should look about like this. (If it doesn’t, cover it back up and cook another minute or two, then check again.)

All the liquid should look like it’s been absorbed. Look for tiny steam holes in the surface of the rice, like this:

When you see those, turn the heat off completely. Cover the pot back up and let it sit on the stove, untouched, for about 20 minutes to finish cooking.

Uncover the pot and scrape a fork through the rice to fluff it up.

Serve topped with a little butter and parsley.

***
Copyright 2008-2009 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

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Rice has got to be one of my favorite foods. Fried rice. Buttered rice. Jambalaya. Rice crackers and krispies. You name it, I most likely have a closely-guarded stash of it in my cupboards.

I especially love rice pudding. I can eat bowls of it at a time, which is why I don’t make it that often. But when I do feel like a treat, I don’t mess around.

This rice pudding pulls out all the stops. (I’ll say it again: I don’t eat like this every day.)

Made with whipping cream instead of milk, this rice pudding is ultra rich. It gets a double dose of sweetness from white sugar and a touch of honey. It’s velvety and soft, with great texture from the pearly grains of rice.

This recipe is a snap to throw together, then it slow cooks on the stove for 2 hours. It’s a great thing to make for a dinner party dessert. I put it together before I start making the meal, then let it do its thing as I cook. It just needs to be stirred occasionally.

Decadent Sweet Cream Rice Pudding: Serving and reheating

Because it’s so thick, I recommend making this the day that you want to serve it.

When you refrigerate it, it gets positively solid. To loosen it up, leave it on the counter to bring it up to room temperature. Thin it out with a little cream if need be.

Whatever you do, don’t microwave it, as it will separate into an oily mess. If you want to reheat it, do it in a double boiler.

Decadent Sweet Cream Rice Pudding: A note on ingredients

I make this recipe with sushi rice, which is medium-grained milled rice.

My favorite brand is Kokuho Rose.

Depending on what you have on hand, you could also substitute short-grained Arborio rice.

If you can’t find whipping cream (30%-36% fat), you can try using heavy cream (36%+ fat) instead. If you do this, increase the cream by maybe a half a cup, then keep a good eye on it as it cooks. If it gets too thick before the rice is cooked, thin it out with a little more cream or some whole milk.

Decadent Sweet Cream Rice Pudding: A note on cooking equipment

If you have a large double boiler, use that. If you don’t, here’s how to improvise one.

My old double boiler isn’t big enough to handle this recipe, so I make my own by filling a pot a third full with water, bringing it up to a simmer, then setting a heat-proof bowl on top with my ingredients.

You’ll want a bowl that fits well in the pan without touching the bottom. Mine looks like this:

Pot with simmering water (bottom), bowl with rice pudding mixture (middle), lid large enough to cover the bowl (top)

(If you haven’t used a double boiler before, the idea here is that the pudding slow cooks, heated by the steam from the boiling water. This way, the pudding never comes in contact with direct heat, so it won’t scorch or stick.)

Decadent Sweet Cream Rice Pudding

1 cup sushi rice
6 cups whipping cream
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbls. honey
1 Tbls. vanilla extract
cinnamon or nutmeg

Fill a pan a third full with water. Set it on the stove over high heat to bring it up to a simmer. In the meantime, whip together your rice pudding.

Add the rice to a large, heatproof mixing bowl.

Pour in the cream.

Add the sugar.

Drizzle in the vanilla and the honey.

Whisk the ingredients together really well. Be sure to break up any clumps of rice.

By now, your water should be simmering.

Turn the heat down to low. Place your bowl on top of the pot.

Cap it off with a lid that fits the bowl well. If you don’t have a lid that fits your bowl, you can totally use aluminum foil instead. The idea is to keep the pudding moist and prevent it from forming a skin as it cooks.

Simmer covered for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

When you take the lid off to stir it, the condensation that’s formed on the underside of the lid will drip into the pudding. That’s just fine. Stir it right back in.

After about an hour, you’ll notice that the rice is starting to expand and thicken the pudding. There should still be a fair amount of liquid, like this:

After about 2 hours, your pudding should be nice and thick. The rice should be completely cooked, and the cream should have thickened to a custard-y texture. It should look about like this:

When it’s done, turn the heat off and leave it on the stove, covered until it’s dessert time.

When you’re ready to serve it, spoon the pudding out into dishes or thicker martini or wine glasses for a fancier presentation. Garnish with a little cinnamon or nutmeg (or a drizzle of honey, my personal favorite).

Serve and enjoy!

***
Copyright 2008 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

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