Daring Bakers

Just a quick note to say my daring bakers challenge won't be up for a while, I have my masters dissertation due in 6 days! eeeep! then I will be finished uni, probably forever! So I haven't had time to make the challenge yet and last night my oven broke!! unlucky! hopefully I can get it fixed before Thurs when the work is due and make it on Friday cause everyone's look great and I can't wait to make mine!

Daring Cooks August Challenge

Rice with mushrooms, tofu and artichokes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
Equipment:

• 1 Chopping Board
• 1 knife
• 1 medium saucepan
• 1 Paella pan (30 cm/11” is enough for 4 people. If not available, you may use a simple pan that size)
• 1 Saucepan

'Sofregit'

Cooking time: aprox. 1 hour
Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 5 big red ripe tomatoes, chopped
• 2 small onions, chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped (optional) - used red pepper
  
• 4 or 5 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 cup of button or Portobello mushrooms, chopped (optional) - used
  
• 1 Bay leaf
• Salt
• Touch of ground cumin
• Touch of dried oregano

Directions:

1. Put all the ingredients together in a frying pan and sauté slowly until all vegetables are soft.
2. Taste and salt if necessary (maybe it’s not!)

gratuitous close up!

Ingredients (serves 4):

• 4 Artichokes (you can use jarred or freezed if fresh are not available) - used marinated as couldn't find any others
  
• 12 Mushrooms (button or Portobello)
• 1 or 2 Bay leaves (optional but highly recommended)
• 1 glass of white wine
• 2 Cuttlefish (you can use freezed cuttlefish or squid if you don’t find it fresh) - tofu, just patted dry to soak up the flavours, this worked really well
  
• “Sofregit” (see recipe above)
• 300 gr (2 cups) Short grain rice (Spanish types Calasparra or Montsant are preferred, but you can choose any other short grain. This kind of rice absorbs flavor very well) – about 75 gr per person ( ½ cup per person) Please read this for more info on suitable rices. - used brown pudding rice
  
• Water or Fish Stock (use 1 ½ cup of liquid per ½ cup of rice) - veg stock
  
• Saffron threads (if you can’t find it or afford to buy it, you can substitute it for turmeric or yellow coloring powder) - used turmeric, poor student over here!
  
• Allioli (olive oil and garlic sauce, similar to mayonnaise sauce) - optional - I ran out of time and added some garlic to some store bought so I could taste it together..
  

Directions:

1. Cut the cuttlefish in little strips. Tofu into triangles
   
2. Add 1 or 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and put the cuttlefish in the pan. missed step to add tofu later so it didn't break apart
   
3. If you use fresh artichokes, clean them as shown in the video in tip #7. Cut artichokes in eights.
4. Clean the mushrooms and cut them in fourths.
5. Add a bay leaf and the artichokes and the mushrooms.
6. Sauté until we get a golden color in the artichokes.
7. Put a touch of white wine so all the solids in the bottom of the get mixed, getting a more flavorful dish.
8. Add a couple or three tablespoons of sofregit and mix to make sure everything gets impregnated with the sofregit. - more like 4-5
   
9. Add all the liquid and bring it to boil.
10. Add all the rice. Let boil for about 5 minutes in heavy heat.
11. Add some saffron thread to enrich the dish with its flavor and color. Stir a little bit so the rice and the other ingredients get the entire flavor. If you’re using turmeric or yellow coloring, use only 1/4 teaspoon.
12. Turn to low heat and boil for another 8 minutes (or until rice is a little softer than “al dente”) - mine took a lot longer cause it was brown rice
    
13. Put the pan away from heat and let the rice stand a couple of minutes.

Cooking away..steamy!


almost done!


plated up, see tub of sofregit in the background, this recipe made far too much which is a bit annoying cause I don't have any room in my freezer or any other use for it...


little close up


Hope everyone enjoyed this months challenge.. to my blog readers, sorry I've been so inactive lately I still have tonnes of uni work and 20,000 words to finish before September, thanks for being patient, I'll try and update more regularly when the dissertation is a bit more on the way... it's going very slowly at the minute.. stress!!!