One of my favorite commenters, Josiane, managed to correctly identify and inquire about the lima bean risotto I made last week to accompany the “ricotta” butternut squash I mentioned in my last post. So I figured I’d make it again and post a recipe for her.

I thought I was lightly adapting the recipe for Risotto with Vegetables du Jour in Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure, but when I looked it up, I was pretty much making it exactly as specified, other than adding some wine to the broth. In a side note she even suggests lima beans, which I thought was my own idea, as one of the vegetables “du jour”. I wish I had actually adapted it so I wasn’t posting an exact recipe, but honestly, it’s a very basic recipe and there’s not much to change. Another thing: I used a pressure cooker, as you can probably tell from the name of the cookbook I got the recipe from. If you haven’t made risotto in a pressure cooker, you have no idea how EASY it is. I highly recommend investing in a pressure cooker – or putting one on your wish list. And as soon as you have the pressure cooker, get Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure because it’s excellent. Because I’m always looking up pressure-cook times for various beans and grains, it’s probably my most-referred-to cookbook.

You can also make this the hard way, by standing over the stove, stirring constantly and slowly adding the the broth as it is absorbed. It’s up to you!

Lima Bean Risotto
very lightly adapted from Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure

1 large shallot, minced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
large pinch saffron (Trader Joe’s sells this for a reasonable price, although that’s not very helpful for Josiane, who is in Canada!)
salt to taste (the recipe calls for 1 tsp; I find the perfect amount depends on the broth you choose)
3 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup cooked lima beans (I had some leftover from another dish in the freezer)
2 Tbsp freshly-squeezed lemon juice
something green: thinly sliced scallions, chopped parsley or other herb, etc.

Mince the shallot.

Prep and measure the rest of the ingredients.

My broth is homemade and fairly concentrated, so I watered it down a bit so not to overwhelm the risotto. Here it is combined with the wine.

Heat some olive oil over medium-high heat in a pressure cooker (or medium-large pot if you are doing things the hard way). Add the shallots and cook until soft, then add the rice, salt, and saffron and stir to coat with the oil.

Add the broth and wine, put the lid on, take the heat up to high, and bring up to pressure. Then reduce the heat to low or medium-low (the lowest at which you can keep it at pressure) and cook for 5 minutes. Release pressure using a “quick-release” method.
(If you aren’t using a pressure cooker, get a book to read and a chair to sit on, and add the broth 1/2 cup at a time, waiting until it is absorbed to add the next dose. This will take about 30-40 minutes, if I remember correctly, but it’s been a very long time.)

There are three possibilities when you remove the lid of the pressure cooker: 1) the risotto will be a little dry, 2) the risotto will be a little runny, or 3) the risotto will be done perfectly. In the case of #1, add a little broth, as well as the lima beans and green stuff and return to medium heat just until the lima beans are heated through, stirring. In the case of #2, return to medium to medium-high heat to boil off the extra liquid, stirring and adding the lima beans and green stuff 2 or 3 minutes before it’s ready. If #3, just add the lima beans and green stuff and heat a couple of minutes until the lima beans are warm. Mine was a little liquidy.

I’ve added the limas in this picture.

After removing from the heat, add the lemon juice, adjusting the amount to taste. Adjust the salt if necessary.

And serve. This was accompanied by vegan “fish” in a garlic-tarragon sauce.

Josiane, I hope that helps – I’m sure you’ll add your own touches; let me know how it goes! As for the rest of you, any other requests?!

And now, Torticia.

Want to hear something I personally find completely crazy? Ten years ago today Mark and I went on our first date. It was an epic date, too: he picked me up at noon and I didn’t get home until well after midnight. We’ve been together nearly every day since. Anyway, like most of the country, Northern Virginia is laboring through 100-degree-plus days, with heat indexes as high as 115. Most people probably don’t think “lasagna!” when it’s 110 degrees out, but I do think “lasagna!” when it’s time to make a special meal for Mark. I’ve posted a few lasagna recipes before, but since I hardly ever make things the same way twice, here’s another one. I called it Blender Lasagna because I realized while I was assembling it that I had used the blender for every layer.

Blender Lasagna

no-boil lasagna noodles (I can only recommend Trader Joe’s brand), or regular lasagna noodles, cooked
1 1/2 cup vegan protein, chopped or shredded (like Italian sausage, etc. I used chick’n breasts because I had them to use up)
1/2 onion, chopped
1 small zucchini, chopped
vegan mozzarella, shredded

Tomato Sauce
1 14.5 oz can whole tomatoes
1 14.5 oz can tomato sauce
4-6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
dried oregano, basil, and red pepper flakes, to taste
salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste

Garlic Stem Pesto
enough garlic stems (scapes), chopped, to make a cup (I’ve been looking all over for garlic scapes, and finally discovered the Asian grocery store has had garlic stems all along)
6 Tbsp olive oil
6 Tbsp water
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp salt

Cheezy Sauce
1 package silken tofu
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
dried basil, onion powder, garlic powder, and salt, to taste
fresh lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, then fire up that blender or food processor! Place the tomatoes and tomato sauce in the blender and puree. Heat a little olive oil in a sauce pot, then add the rest of the sauce ingredients and cook for a minute or two. Add the tomatoes, stir, and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Rinse out the blender. Put all of the pesto ingredients in it and process until smooth, adding additional water if necessary. Set pesto aside. This makes way more pesto than you probably need for the lasagna. You can halve the recipe or freeze the extra. Or save it for another recipe later in the week.

Rinse out the blender. Put all of the cheezy sauce ingredients in it and process until smooth, adding the lemon juice last. I like mine fairly tangy so I didn’t give an amount for the lemon juice because some people may not like that much. I never measure stuff like this; just taste it and adjust the seasonings until you like it. Set cheezy sauce aside.

Chop onions and zucchini. If you’re using a food processor you could even use that to roughly chop the vegetables. Saute the onion and zucchini in a little olive oil with salt and pepper.

Place a thin layer of tomato sauce in an 8×8 pan and put down a layer of noodles. Smear with pesto. Top with the protein and add some tomato sauce. Put down another layer of noodles, add some tomato sauce, then top with the onion and zucchini mixture. Put down another layer of noodles and cover with the cheezy sauce. Put down the final layer of noodles and cover with the remaining tomato sauce. Cover pan with aluminum foil and place on a cookie sheet. Put in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, add the mozzarella, and return to the oven. Bake for 15 more minutes then remove from oven and let sit for another 15 minutes.

I consider pizza one of the greatest foods in the world, and I can happily eat it the same way week after week. I consider myself very good at making pizza. Sometimes, though, I like to try something different. Today I thought I would use the dough I’d set aside for this week to make calzones instead of pizza. Calzones use the same ingredients as pizza, just wrapped up inside instead of spread on top, except the sauce: there is no sauce inside a calzone. Instead, you top it with the sauce, or serve the sauce on the side for dipping. Here is what I did:

First, I removed two containers of frozen pizza dough from the freezer (I made this batch with half white whole wheat flour) and let them rise in the refrigerator for a couple of days (overnight is fine). Then, a couple of hours (at least one hour) before bake time, I removed them from the refrigerator.

I pre-heated the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and chopped half a head of broccoli into small florets and put them in a baking dish. Then I chopped about 1/2 pound of cherry tomatoes in half and put them in another baking dish, to which I also added several cloves of smashed garlic. I sprinkled both with flaked salt then drizzled with olive oil and a touch of balsamic vinegar. The broccoli I roasted for about 15 minutes …

… and the tomatoes 45 minutes.

I removed them from the oven and increased the oven temperature to 500.

I made a tofu ricotta by putting about half a pound of firm tofu in a bowl and adding about 2 Tbsp nutritional yeast, some flaked salt, one frozen basil cube, and the juice of half a lemon, then I squeezed all of that together until it was an even consistency. Then I mixed in a hand-full of Daiya mozzarella and a little bit of Daiya cheddar.

I made a marinara by pureeing a 14.5 oz can of whole tomatoes. I heated some olive oil in a small saucepan, added several pressed cloves of garlic, some chili flakes, flaked salt, and freshly ground pepper, and after sauteing for a minute or two, I added the tomatoes, some dried oregano, and a frozen basil cube. I brought that to a boil, then reduced the heat, covered, and simmered for 10 to 15 minutes.

Next I formed the pizza doughs into circles, though not as thin as I make them for pizza, maybe 1/4″ thick. I placed some of the broccoli, roasted tomatoes, and “cheese” mixture in the middle of each, …

… then I folded each over in half and sealed the crusts closed. (You can brush the edges with water to make them stick if you need to.) I poked some holes on top and brushed them with some garlic oil.

They both got transferred to the oven and baked for about 15 minutes or until nicely browned.

Serve with a tossed salad, with the sauce on the side (or spoon the sauce over the calzones).

I tried to get a picture of the inside of the calzone, but we’d gone downstairs – where it is quite dark – and all I had was my phone. I’d probably be better off just not having any picture at all, but I went through the trouble, so here you go:

This was an interesting change of pace but will never replace good old regular pizza in my book.