Mixed Rice ("Takikomi-Gohan")

Healthy and tasty rice dish with many ingredients. Everyone will love it!

Ingredients:
1 cup japanese rice
1/2 cup pearl barely
1 packet of shimeji mushrooms (large)
2 inch long carrot
1/4 tofu cutlet

For soup:
4/5 cups dashi stock or water
1 1/2 tsp. sugar
1 Tbsp sake
1 Tbsp Mirin
1 1/2 tsp light soy sauce or 4/5 tsp dark soy sauce  
1/2 tsp salt

Method:
1. Wash rice and barely 30 min prior to cooking and drain on colander.
2. Cut carrots into julienne strips. Wash and drain mushrooms. Cut tofu into thin triangles.
3. Pour in the stock, mushroom, carrots and tofu into pot, and heat everything. When it begins to boil lightly, add sugar and sake, and continue to simmer for 1-2 minutes. Add the soy sauce and salt, continue to simmer briefly.
4. Drain all ingredients through a sieve, reserving cooking liquid. Note: let all ingredients cool completely before cooking rice, hence it might start burning in the rice cooker.
5. Place rice and barely into rice cooker, add simmering liquid. If there is not enough simmering liquid, add some water. Add solid ingredients from the sieve and mix everything lightly. Turn on heater. Note: water should be just a little bit above rice.
6. When cooking is finished, keep the cooker covered and let stand for 10 minutes (do not use function "Keep Warm"!). Open the lid and mix everything. Serve warm with some trefoil if you like.

Moroccan Cous Cous with Lamb

Our official weekend in UAE starts on Friday. Today wanted to cook for lunch freekeh, bit suddenly in the last moment changed my mind. Wanted something more light, with vegetables. Was browsing internet and saw few dishes of moroccan cuisine. Nice weekend meal, i though to myself. To cook this dish after in the evening after you reached home from work will mean that dinner will be delayed by a couple of hours. But in the weekend i have plenty of time for experiments. And i did, experiment is described below.

Moroccan Cous Cous:

500 g. Cous Cous

4 cups of water room T

70 g. butter

1/4 cup of olive oil

Pour cous cous into a wide deep plate. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and mix well with your hands.

Add 2 cups of water and mix giving air, making it fluffy. Keep aside for 10 min, until cous cous with observe all water.

Line top dish of your steamer with cotton cloth and pour one layer of cous cous in it. Steam for 5 min, add remaining. Continue steaming under the lid for 20 min.

Remove from the steamer, pour 1 cup of water and mix well with wooden spoon, breaking any combined grains.

Put it back on the steamer and allow to steam for another 20 min.

Remove from the steamer, mix again with wooden spoon and set aside, covered with a lid while you are preparing the meat.

Meat Stock:

400 g. of lamb (shoulder or leg, cut into pieces)

1 large white onion (sliced length wise)

1/4 cup of olive oil

Spices:

1/2 tsp. of turmeric

1/4 tsp saffron

1 Tsp. of black pepper powder

1/2 tsp. of ground coriander

salt

Vegetables:

1 medium potato

1 medium turnip

1 medium carrot

2-3 baby zucchinis

1 medium sweet pepper (i used yellow)

200 g. pumpkin

8 cherry tomatoes (i used 1 tsp. of tomato paste instead)

250 g. can chickpeas (washed and drained)

1. Put lamb and onions in the pot, add olive oil and fry on medium to high heat to seal the meet.

2. Mix all spices together and mix in the meat and onions. Stir and cook for another 5 min.

3. Cover with a approx. 2 l. of hot water, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 30-40 (depending on the meat) min.

4. In meanwhile prepare the vegetables to add to the stock. Peel carrot, cut in half horizontally and quarter each part. Cut the ends of mini zucchinis and slice them in four parts lengthwise. Turnips peel and cut in 8 parts. Potatoes peel and also cut lengthwise. MIx in the meat stock and let it seamer for 15 min.

5. Add drained chickpeas.

6. Add pumpkin (cut in medium pieces) and yellow pepper cut also lengthwise. Along with cherry tomatoes (i added just a tsp. of tomato paste).

7. Simmer all this mixture for 10 min until all vegetables will cook through.

To assemble:

1. Steam cous cous for 10 min. to heat it up. Remove from steamer, cut in butter and mix well with wooden spoon. Add 4 Tsp. of stock from the meat mixture, while mixing.

2. Pour cous cous into deep round dish and make a hollow in the middle.

3. Place meat and vegetables on top.

4. Pour some more stock with chickpeas over.

5. Serve with extra plate of stock on the side so everyone can put desired amount.

Enjoy! It is delicious!

Barely risotto with wild mushrooms

This is not the real risotto the way it should be. It is exactly how it should not be! It is very light version of risotto, will be useful for those who is watching their weight (like my boyfriend does). I made it with wild mushroom, which were carefully handpicked by my parents in the wild forests of Russian North.

Ingredients:

(serves 2 of course)

1 cup of dried wild mushrooms

1 cup of mixed rices (wild and basmati)

1 Tbsp. of olive oil

1 Tbsp. of butter

water (enough to cover mushrooms)

few champignon

2 chives

oregano

white pepper

Method:

Wash and drain rice for 20 min.

Place dried mushroom to the pan and add water just enough to cover them. Bring to boil and then simmer over medium heat for 15 min. It will make mushrooms soft and give a beautiful stock for our risotto. Drain mushrooms preserving the stock from boiling them. Roughly chop them.

In the other pan, heat an oil and butter, add diced chives and simmer for 2 min.

Add rice and cook for 5 minutes stirring all time so each rice grain will be covered in oil.

Add spices to the rice mixture.

ON this stage, in regular risotto you will have to add stock gradually and keep stirring the rice until it will observe all liquid, but we are not using arborio rice, so we will make it easier.

Just add diced mushrooms into the rice pan and add stock until 2 cm. above the rice.

Close the pan and simmer for around 20 min., stirring time by time, on very low heat.

And risotto is ready!

To serve:

Slice the fresh mushroom, grill them on the dry pan until golden brown on each side. than sprinkle with olive oil and place in the preheated oven for 5 min.

Place them on top of risotto and garnish with some freshly grated parmesan

Bon Appétit!