Risotto Cake

I made risotto the other day, and inevitably had some leftover. I'll post pictures of the risotto tomorrow, I think, if I can them. The usual answer with leftover risotto is to push it together, dip in flour, and to sautee in olive oil to make a delicious snack. It is accompanied by kale, first fried in olive oil, and then drained, squeezed, and sauteed again.

Hugh Hewitt?

Hugh Hewitt wasn't on my radar screen until I reengaged with politics earlier this year. I certainly didn't know of his abominable record on pushing conservatives around with his own view of what makes up conservatism, most spectacularly on the blundered Harriet Miers nomination, which he defended with considerable vitriol. (Professor Bainbridge particularly turned me on to Hugh's seemingly wilful blindness) Now, as everyone but me knew, he's in the tank for Mitt Romney, of which this post is indicative. His theory, apparently, is that Romney is the only plausible choice for a good conservative, and that Mccain is some sort of liberal trojan horse.

I'll go into this a little more deeply over the next couple of weeks, I guess, but it really needs to be said - a moderate governor from Massachusetts who created government health care is a more authentic conservative than John McCain, who has fought the good fight for decades? How is this meme passing the smell test? And no, a willingness to defend waterboarding isn't the litmus test of conservatism.

It seems clear to me that Republicans, and especially the Republican money men, needs to start coalescing around Mccain. Bizarre stories about a conservative icon being liberal aren't going to get us there.

Melanzana Sirenuse

This is a meal that Mario Batali says he used to eat at Le Sirenuse, a luxury hotel in Italy, near Lake Garda. I love eggplant*, and sandwiching mozzarella di buffalo and fried, it's one of my favorite foods. What's more, the technique is straightforward. Just bake sliced eggplants for about 10 minutes in a little olive oil, make sandwiches out with the cheese, and then dip in egg and flour before frying in the best extra virgin olive oil (eggplants suck up oil, and you'll pay for scrimping on the oil with poor taste).

* Why do we call it eggplant? Melanzana (italian) or aubergine (French) are much better. I wonder if the Germans manage anything less palatable.

How we find ourselves here

Probably the chief reason for this vacation from my law firm (which I've been calling a sabbatical, as it is very long) is that I have gained weight. Those who used to read me on Crescat might remember that one of things I'm proudest of is of having lost eighty pounds, mostly by learning to cook, and eating clean, honest food made by my own hands. My job has robbed me of what I thought was a luxury, and the results were far worse than I anticipated. It turns out that restaurant food combined with tremendous stress makes me fat, and though the situation isn't irretrievable, it has turned grave, at least to me. So I decided to spend this time digging back towards the roots of the original weight loss, back to my hands and kitchen, to the food that brought me here, so to speak.

There is a profound peace in being in one's own kitchen, music in the background, hands deep in flour, or listening to the rhythmic chop of one's own knife slicing through garlic, its aroma slowly reaching one's nose. It is a peace which makes me think of pasta. Here, below is my own pasta, rolled out. You don't need a pasta machine to get thin pasta, as you can see

Those who have not made pasta before are daunted, I realize, but the concern is unjustified. All you need is about a pound of flour, and four full eggs. Pile the flour in a bowl, empty out a well in the middle of the flour, and add the eggs. Mix slowly, and then knead for ten minutes (or a little less with a good mixer, which is what I used). That's it. Afterwards, just cook in plenty of salted boiling water, and drain. It'll look like this.

























Of course, you can dress pasta however you want. Perhaps the nicest thing to do is to sautee some bacon, and then add raw egg off the heat, which, of course, is carbonara. But instead I made a beef sauce with plenty of excellent french wine, and drank more with dinner. The road back to a healthy life may turn out to be long, though I am doing by best. But it will be delicious, no matter what.

Hi! I'm back!!!

Hi. This is actually Raffi, back after a long, long, hiatus. For anyone who doesn't know me, I used to write on the fairly popular blog Crescat Sententia, as the resident food blogger, but also delved into things other than food on occasion. I graduated from law school and then clerked on the Delaware Court of Chancery, after which I took a job as a corporate lawyer in New York. I had a tough year, which people will learn about as a I write. And now, finally, I'm on vacation, for the next several weeks. And I intend to write again. I don't really expect anyone to read this. I've been out of the blogging loop for so long. But more than anything else, I want a record of this vacation, of how I felt, of what I was thinking. And, of course, we are in the middle of the most exciting political season in perhaps a generation. I have lots to say about it. So I don't care if anyone reads this or not. I'm going to write regardless.