Ambitious Deliciousness – Dont Eat Lazy.

What’s your favorite comfort food?

I’d bet that for a large number of you, lasagna is the perfect comfort food! Though I’m a fan of lasagna, it’s not something my mom made for me while growing up. If anything, I would say my version of comfort food would definitely be a Korean stew.

Dan and I were in Woodbridge, New Jersey a couple of weekends ago to run an errand. Being a New Yorker, I’m always making some sort of joke about New Jersey (snicker snicker). But not on this day. We ate Chick-Fil-A (yes, I know NYU has one) and stopped by Wegman’s to get groceries! Is it possible to be obsessed with a grocery store? Why, that is a resounding yes! Wegman’s reminds me of my college days in upstate New York and I will always have fond thoughts when it comes to Wegman’s.

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In the name of culinary experiments, I decided to take one for the team. I made a broth out of grass fed lamb neck and bones that the lovely Ulla graciously shared with me! I felt that it was time to exercise my risotto making skills, as it has been quite a while since I’ve made risotto.

I started out by making the broth first, then making risotto on the next day. The stock was made by placing lamb neck and bones, a small onion, some carrot top, and a carrot along in a pot with 3 cups of water. I let it simmer for about 2 hours over low heat. The broth was rich in color and quite flavorful.

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Editor’s Note: An important, updated version of this recipe can be found here.

Before we bid farewell to winter, I wanted to share this simple hot and sour recipe. This is one of my favorite soups to eat whenever I eat Chinese food, which I realize, is not very often. But now that I know how to make it, I can enjoy it anytime I want!

All of the soups I’ve had at restaurants use cornstarch as a thickener. While I don’t mind it, I didn’t want a big pot of gloppy soup so I omitted corn starch. It’s up to you!

I would recommend cooking pork on the frying pan, then deglazing the pan for extra flavor. Sorry to say that I actually ended up omitting a few ingredients that I didn’t have on hand (bamboo shoots, pork, white pepper).

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Remember my cheesecake post? This post is from the same night. My humble kitchen was transformed into a photo studio, complete with a gigantic tripod, two light diffusers and a humongous camera! It was awesome!

Photo by Edmond H. Lee*

Since this dinner recipe is pretty long, I’m going to post about the rest of it later. Having Cate and Edmond in the kitchen with me was so much fun! C was in charge of stirring the risotto. She stirred and stirred and stirred…her arm was about to fall off! Thank you for your dedication, C! You made a really yummy risotto!

While this was going on, E was running around trying to get action shots. I really liked having company in the kitchen because all I had to do was pay attention to the food, instead of stirring and trying to take pictures at the same time. Hope you enjoy E’s photos!

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I bought some oyster mushrooms the other day but they looked kinda strange. Are they supposed to look like tree barks? In any case, I diced them into tiny pieces. And while I was doing it, I pretended to be a ninja. It was more fun that way.

This recipe is a result of a random “let’s see if this would taste good together” experiment. Instead of breadcrumbs, I had crackers in a Ziploc bag from a trip and decided to crush them up. The verdict = yummy-ness. Success!

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