fauren

Looking Forward: PF1, Outstanding in the Field and Added Value

Tomorrow is the opening of PF1, the architecture-cum-farming project at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. I will be out of town this weekend, visiting my folks and newly-into-her-third-trimester sister (yay!), but I hope to make it out there next weekend to snoop around and see what's growing.

I also just ordered my copy of Outstanding in the Field: A Farm to Table Cookbook, which Sam Sifton called one of the summer's "most interesting new cookbooks" in the New York Times. I've been a long-distance admirer of Outstanding in the Field for quite a while now, and I'm doubly excited to get this cookbook -- not only will I get to try out some new recipes in the kitchen, but it'll also give me a guaranteed topic of conversation at their dinner in Brooklyn this September. Yes, despite not yet having been economically stimulated by the IRS I managed to shell out for a ticket, which I am sure will be more than worth it.

The dinner was scheduled to take place at Added Value (recently profiled in Edible Brooklyn), which I'm hoping will still end up being the case. I've biked by the farm several times, on my trips to the Red Hook Ball Fields for huaraches the size of my face and ceviche out of paper cups, but I've never gone to take a look. After seeing their new office space on Van Brunt Street shape up on my trips to Fairway and meeting someone who worked for them (my vegetable tour guide at Stone Barns), though, it would be great to spend some time there. But if not dinner, there's always the chance to join in on one of their volunteer days this summer.

Generally speaking, some of my favorites foods are now cropping up at the Greenmarkets. Yesterday, the little market near my apartment in Bartel-Pritchard Square was overflowing with pints of strawberries, and this week's pickup from our CSA yielded some beautiful garlic scape. It's going to be a delicious summer!

Silver Spoon Strawberry Risotto

I decided on Saturday to finally purchase The Silver Spoon, the storied Italian cookbook that was translated into English for the first time last year.  If nothing else, it's very pretty.

When I got home from the bookstore, I opened it up to browse some of the recipes.  The very first recipe I laid eyes on was for strawberry risotto, something that struck me as both strange and serendipitous; strange simply because I'd never encountered a savory dish featuring strawberries before, and serendipitous because I'd just purchased some beautiful Tristar strawberries from Fantasy Fruit Farm at the farmer's market in Tompkins Square Park (corner of Avenue A and East 7th Street, New York), which takes place every Sunday.  It was a clear sign that the risotto should be my first attempted Silver Spoon recipe, so this afternoon I headed over to my neighborhood supermarket to purchase the remaining ingredients for the dish. 

First, a couple of liberties I took: 

• I substituted short-grain brown rice for a standard white risotto rice.  I may have sacrificed some of the creaminess as a result, but brown rice is a bit more nutritious (it has more fiber and nutrients than white rice, and it has a lower glycemic index). 

• I used 3/4 of a cup fewer strawberries than the recipe called for because the flavor of the Tristars was so robust.  I also did not completely hull them; they were so ripe that removing the caps was all that was necessary.

• Rather than using the full 7 tablespoons of butter the recipe called for, I used only two and substituted extra virgin olive oil for the rest.

I also debated about the cup of light cream that finishes off the recipe.  It seemed a bit like cheating for the right texture, but admittedly I couldn't resist the idea of an entrée that managed to have both strawberries and cream in it.

The risotto took just over an hour to make from prep to dinner time.  Aside from the constant stirring required of any risotto, it was very little work for a meal with a surprisingly complex flavor.

I was more than happy with my first bite.

The flavor of the strawberries had mellowed considerably, making room for the savory ingredients, and the cream added a delightful richness that I'm sure I would have missed if I'd decided against using it.  As a result, each bite had a nice trajectory from tart to buttery to nutty.

The garnish is more of my Anise Hyssop.  It worked very well here, too.