A Caesar Salad Worth Sharing

Flavor reigns supreme in this surprisingly simple salad with multiple layers of well-balanced flavors. My friend Max got this recipe from his friend Justin, who got it from his father, showing that there are several stamps of approval that brought it to my plate. With a few adaptations, this recipe is all about mincing finely and mixing well – resulting in every bite having the same balance of flavors.

This salad is also a great example of how simple, whole foods made fresh at home are within reach of anyone looking to live a healthier lifestyle, or can round out a fitness plan no matter what your goals might be.

Ingredients for one medium-sized salad:
2 cloves of garlic 
1/3 cup of olive oil
 ½ teaspoon of dry mustard
 ¼ teaspoon of pepper
 ½ teaspoon of salt
 ½ teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce
1.5 ounces of anchovy fillets
1 lemon – juiced
 2 ounces of parmesan cheese
1 head of romaine lettuce
 Croutons to taste

Preparation:

• Infuse the oil with garlic – begin by finely mincing the garlic and then heat the oil-garlic mixture in the microwave for 10 seconds.
• Mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
• Add the infused olive oil and the Worcestershire sauce and mix well with a rubber spatula.
• Mince the anchovies as finely as you’re able and add those to the mix, making sure all ingredients
  
  are as evenly spread about as possible.
• Grate the parmesan cheese with a fine-gauge microplane and add it to the mixture – again, mixing well so it’s evenly distributed.
• Just before serving, add the lemon juice and once again, mix it well so as much of the juice stays emulsified in the oil-heavy mixture.
• Dice the lettuce in mouth-sized pieces so as many pieces as possible
  
  get both crunchy spine and soft leaf and there’s plenty of surface area for dressing without needing to cut the pieces to eat them.
• Pour the dressing over the lettuce, and (yes) – mix it vigorously. You want to be sure every piece of lettuce in the bowl gets some of this delicious dressing on it.
• Add croutons last (so they don’t get soggy) and serve it up.

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Serves two.

Note: other Caesar salad dressings include egg. Max is not a big fan of eggs, so he just leaves them out. That simple omission doesn’t compromise the flavor, and it shows how being willing to “go off script” with recipes occasionally leads to great results.

Sometimes you simply don’t have an ingredient, or you simply don’t like it – in either case, it’s no big deal and you’ll soon discover how important (or not) that ingredient is to getting the result you want. In this case, leaving the egg out does not affect the flavor one iota, and it also gives this dressing a shelf-life in case there’s any leftover.

Enjoy!

A Thanksgiving Feast

One of the reasons we moved to North Carolina was to be near family, so it has been a real treat for us to host Thanksgiving dinners for much of our extended family at our house in Raleigh. And, like many folks we know, Lauren and I lead hectic lives, so we try to approach Thanksgiving with an eye to making it as easy as possible, while still trying to make it special.

We have a wide range of food preferences in our family, so trying to cook for this group is a tall order, and the key is to find a favorite of everyone’s and then go from there. Of course, some of the best dishes are those carb-laden comfort food favorites, and inevitably we’ll end up with more than one. One year, instead of green beans we blanched some brussels sprouts, cut then in half and roasted them with an Italian dressing drizzle. Delicious!

Anyway, enough about the context, here’s what we made for our first Thanksgiving in Raleigh, which was declared “the best Thanksgiving ever” by many at the table. Try one or all of these recipes and mix and match with your own.

Here’s what’s on the menu:

• Brined Grilled Turkey
• Red wine-reduction Cranberry Sauce
• Lauren’s Mashed potatoes
• Nancy’s Southern Belle Corn Puddin’
• Mum-mum’s Turkey Dressing (stuffing)
• Szechuan green beans
• Olivier’s salad
• Dessert

Brined-Grilled Turkey
My Thanksgiving turkey is first brined and then grilled. The brining is a process that permeates the meat with flavor and moisture through osmosis and takes at least 24 hours. If your turkey is frozen, thaw it first and then brine it. The result will be succulent and juicy enough so that even non Turkey eaters will ask for seconds.

In order to serve dinner at mid-afternoon on Thursday, I began the brining very late on Tuesday. I took the Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe on Foodnetwork.com and then modified it based on the ingredients we had at hand and anything I thought would taste good. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe/index.html

12-14 lb turkey (make sure it fits in your biggest pot and can be immersed)
1 gallon Swanson’s chicken broth
1 cup Kosher salt
½ gallon water
½ gallon apple juice
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
5 cloves of minced garlic
4 sprigs of rosemary
1 bag frozen chopped onion
1 big pot to hold all of the liquid and immerse the turkey

• Sauté the onions and garlic with a little olive oil until transparent, then add the rosemary sprigs and peppercorns and heat them for about 4-5 minutes.
• Transfer the onion-garlic-herb mixture to the bottom of the brining pot and add the salt with a cup each of the chicken stock and apple juice and swish it around to dissolve the salt.
• Then put the turkey into the pot and then pour the rest of the apple juice, chicken stock and water to the pot.
• Put it in your fridge and leave it there overnight.
• Allow about 3 hours to cook, so take the Turkey out of the brine right before you put it on the grill.
• I did not put the turkey directly on the grill, but instead in a roasting pan with a V-shaped rack on top of the grill.
• Place the bird breast-down on the rack and then cover it with aluminum foil until 1 hour before taking off the grill (in other words, let the skin get crispy brown but not burnt).
• In order to be sure it was cooked, but not overcooked, I used a meat thermometer that sits outside the cooking area with a probe stuck directly into the thickest part of the breast. ($6.99 at IKEA: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80100406)
• Once the breast temperature hit 153°, I turned off the heat and took the Turkey inside and let it sit undisturbed for 10 minutes or so.
• To serve, I carved the turkey in the kitchen and arranged the meat by dark vs. white on a platter.

Last year, we discovered that the N.C. State University Food Sciences department sold smoked turkey breasts, which we enjoyed quite a bit so we decided to do it again this year. And while it’s certainly delicious, I do have a hankering for my brined-grilled turkey. I’ll have to find a way to fit that in this year…

Winey Cranberry Sauce.

12 ounce bag of fresh cranberries
1 cup of sugar (or 24 packets of Splenda sweetener)
1 cup of red wine (any kind)

• Pour the wine into a pot over medium heat. 
• As the wine warms, add sugar and stir until it dissolves.
• Rinse the cranberries and add them to the warming wine-sugar mixture.
• Bring it to a boil and lower the heat to a simmer and let them cook on a low boil for about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally while letting the cranberries pop while cooking.
• Turn the heat off and let the sauce cool on the stovetop. It thickens while it cools.
• NOTE: You can make this cranberry sauce the night before and then heat it up on Thanksgiving day.

This is my own creation and it was so well received I’ve decided to make this a regular on our Thanksgiving table. I used to make it with canned cranberry sauce and a much more elaborate reduction process, and then I realized that making the sauce from scratch is no harder to do than boiling hot dogs. And I am always in favor of doing it the easy way!

Mashed Potatoes
This is Lauren’s favorite and she does it so well that I give her wide berth in the kitchen and don’t get in her way. Part of the key to a great Thanksgiving is to apply economic theory about division of labor and let anyone make part of the meal if that’s what they do best and/or enjoy doing it. There’s plenty of work to go around.

While the turkey is baking, you can make the mashed potatoes first and then keep it heating as described below.

3 pounds of potatoes
1 stick of butter
1% milk
Salt & pepper to taste

• Take 3 pounds of potatoes, peel them and then chop them into cubes.
• Boil them in salted water until they fall apart with a fork (10 minutes or so).
• Drain and then transfer the pieces in large spoonfuls to a potato ricer.
• Rice the potatoes into a large ceramic bowl.
• Slice a whole stick of butter into pats and spread around the bowl so it melts into the potatoes.
• Add salt and pepper to taste (lots of pepper, easy on the salt).
• Get a hand-held mixer and mix 1% milk into the potatoes until the consistency is light & fluffy.
• Suspend the ceramic bowl over a pot of hot water, cover with aluminum foil and stir occasionally to keep warm while you work on the other parts of the meal.

Southern Belle Corn Puddin’
That is not a typo - this dish does not have a “g” at the end because it is truly as southern as magolias or civil war re-enactments. Whatever your sentiments, corn puddin’ is a delicious dish so make it part of your Thanksgiving. This comes directly from Lauren’s family cookbook and is attributed to her mother, Nancy.

2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
2/3 cup milk
3 Tbsp. butter
1 can Green Giant Niblets Corn
1 Tbsp. flour
Pinch of salt

• Pre-heat the oven to 350°
• Beat the first three ingredients together, then add the butter to make the custard.
• Mix gently.
• Drain the corn and dredge it with the flour and salt.
• Fold the corn into the custard.
• Pour into a buttered baking dish.
• Put the buttered baking dish into a pan with a little bit of water in it and all into the oven.
• Bake for 35 – 40 minutes along with the turkey dressing (below) or until the top of the puddin’ is golden brown.
• This can keep warming in the oven covered in foil if your timing is off.

Mum-Mum’s Turkey Dressing (stuffing)

Lauren’s grandmother on her mother’s side is Kitty Edwards, but all her grandkids (and great-grandkids) call her Mum-mum. She grew up in Suffolk, Virginia and last year we celebrated her 100th birthday. Needless to say, she’s a big part of the family and one of her dishes at the Thanksgiving table is the turkey dressing.

5 cups of bread cubes toasted and brushed with melted butter (or go buy 5 cups of Pepperidge Farm unseasoned stuffing mix)
½ cup of celery sliced thin and chopped
¼ cup of onion diced (or a half-bag of frozen chopped onions)
1 egg beaten
10 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp of salt
1 tube of Jimmy Dean “Pork Light” sausage (50% reduced fat) http://jimmydean.com/products/premium-pork-light-sausage.aspx
5 cups of Swanson chicken stock

• Preheat the oven to 350º
• Mix the sausage, bread crumbs and other ingredients in a large bowl.
• Grease a 9 x 13 lasagna pan (or any pan that goes in the oven)
• Press the sausage-bread-etc. mixture into the pan
• Pour the chicken stock slowly over all of it so it moistens everything.
• Bake along with the corn puddin’ for 20-30 minutes until the top is brown.

Szechuan Green Beans

1 big package of frozen Green beans (Trader Joe's french green beans are awesome)
1 tsp Ginger – grated
2-3 cloves of Garlic – minced or pressed
drizzle of Sesame oil
1.5 Tbsp Olive oil
sprinkle of Sesame seeds
Salt to taste

• Lightly steam the green beans in the microwave with a little bit of water and a covered dish (3 min. on our microwave).
• They should still be crisp at this stage.
• Put about 1 Tbsp. olive oil in the bottom of a pan and then drizzle a little bit of sesame oil for flavor.
• Heat the garlic and ginger together to bring out their flavors but not so much that they turn brown.
• Add the steamed green beans and stir so that they are coated.
• Let it cook about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Add salt to taste and then the sesame seeds.
• Mix it all up and serve hot.

Olivier’s Salad

Like me, my brother-in-law knows his way around the kitchen, and he enjoys entertaining and eating. Well, it so happens that he is French, and considering how serious the French are about gastronomy, Olivier does his heritage proud with the most amazing salad dressing. I never tire of eating his salad because the dressing is so flavorful and savory, so we’re always happy when Olivier makes his salad.

The lettuce he uses is romaine, and he adds tomatoes, cucumber slices, carrots and sometimes avocado. This dressing is so good, you can even use it with a bag salad from the grocery store and I guarantee you will have no leftovers. This amount of dressing is enough for a big salad for 10-12 people and there still may be some leftover. It keeps well in the fridge in tupperware, so go ahead and make the whole thing - you won't be disappointed.

For 2 cups of dressing:
8 cloves of pressed garlic
2 tsp of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard
¼ cup of red wine vinegar
2-3 Tbsp of Kraft parmesan cheese (the green can)
1 Tbsp of salt
20 grinds of fresh ground pepper
2-3 Tbsp of dried dill weed
1 cup of extra virgin olive oil (or however much you need to bring it to a total of 2 cups of dressing)

• Mix all the ingredients well with a stick blender until it has a runny paste consistency.
• Add little by little to match the amount of lettuce you have and don’t worry if you have left overs.
• Do not over-dress the salad – I can’t describe how much is too much dressing (which I find unappealing), so taste it along the way and decide for yourself.

Dessert
What would Thanksgiving be without dessert? We’ve discovered that our local farmers market includes some baked-goods vendors that do an outstanding job with pies. So we usually outsource our dessert to those fine and talented folks by getting a pumpkin and a pecan pie and then serving it up with Harris-Teeter Natural vanilla ice cream.

This year, we went to the mountains to see the leaves turn colors and ended up in an apple orchard. Of course we came home with a mountain of apples, so Lauren prepared two apple pies and froze them so we can thaw and bake on Thanksgiving. If it works out well, I’ll post that so you can give it a try. In the meantime, I hope you try one of these dishes for your Thanksgiving. Let me know what you think!

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Feijoada: Brazilian Party-in-a-Pot

Feijoada (fay-ZHOO-ah-dah) is the national dish of Brazil – a country whose people are known far and wide as fun-loving and free-wheeling. Feijoada is delicious and nutritious and, when done right, it can take some time to prepare. It is associated with good times and having friends come over for lunch and go home at midnight, so for those two reasons, it’s almost always eaten on Saturdays.

[Side note: I lived off-and-on in São Paulo for a little over 2 years and I discovered that Paulistas eat feijoada on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I never got a good explanation for that oddity. Since most other Brazilians don’t understand Paulistas anyway, I’ll leave that one open for you all to share your theories about that one.]

So here is my attempt to share my short-cut ways to make a feijoada as quickly and easily as possible, while retaining the flavor (and having enough energy myself to join the party). Even this way, it’s a fair bit of work so plan on dedicating your Saturday morning to cooking and the rest of the day & evening to enjoying yourself.

Feijoada as a meal has 5 main components:
1. Feijoada - the bean and meat stew itself,
2. Rice
3. Couve (KOE-vee)
4. Farofa (FAH-raw-fah)
5. Fruit

1. Feijoada – work on this first so it slow-cooks while you work on the other dishes.

Ingredients:
1 big pot.
2 bags of dried black beans
1 smoked ham hock (it must be smoked or don’t bother)
1 ring of low-fat turkey sausage or low-fat polska kielbasa - Hillshire Farms or equivalent.
1.5 pounds of well-marbled beef (chuck steak is fine)
1 packet of frozen chopped onions (I LOVE this – no tears)
5 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves – minced or pressed
½ bunch of parsley – finely chopped

** The day before the feijoada (Friday night), hand-sort the beans to be sure there are no rocks or twigs in the bag. Then rinse them in a colander. Soak them overnight in 6 quarts of water. Make sure your pot can hold at least 8 quarts and if not, you might cut this recipe in half and simply have a smaller meal/party, but that would be sad so borrow a pot and do it right. And remember to invite the person who lent you the pot.

Start by slowly heating the pot to a slow boil. Put the bay leaves, the ham hock and chopped parsley into pot. While the big pot heats, cut the beef into small bite-sized pieces and remove all big pieces of fat. Brown the beef in a skillet and remove any liquid from the pan with a turkey baster so the meat gets a nice browning on all sides. Use cooking spray so it does not add any grease. Put the meat into the pot and add water so it covers everything.

In the same skillet, sauté the onions slowly until they are transparent. While the onions are doing their thing, slice the sausage into ¼ inch medallions, and then cut each piece again into fourths. Put the sausage pieces into the skillet and let them hear up with the onions. Then put the whole mixture into the pot.

Cover the pot and let it simmer slowly over several hours while you work on the other dishes. After a few hours, slowly take the ham hock out of the pot so that it does not fall apart in the pot. Put the ham hock to the side and when it cools down you can discard it.

2. Rice – use any kind of rice you like, but authentic Feijoada is eaten with long-grain white rice.

Ingredients:2 cups long-grain white rice
½ bag of frozen onions (save the other half for the couve)
1 Tbsp Olive oil
Salt to taste

I usually take the rice and rinse it with a strainer. Then I take the frozen onions and sauté it with a little olive oil them until transparent in a small pot. When the onions are ready, I put the rinsed rice grains into the pot and mix them around for a minute or two with the onion and oil so the flavors infuse the grains. When the sizzling sound dies down, add a few pinches of salt to taste and 4 cups of water, then bring it all to a boil.

When it reaches a boil, cover and reduce the heat until it stays at a gentle boil. Leave it covered about 15 minutes or so until the water is gone. Stir it with a fork so the onions get well mixed into the rice, cover it again and leave it alone until it’s time to serve.

3. Couve – That’s the Portuguese word for collard greens (KOE-vee), but it’s more fun to say than “collards” isn’t it?

Ladies who walk around saying “couve” can be mistaken for Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen, and guys can be mistaken for WorldCup Soccer Star KaKá, so why not add it to your vocabulary?

Ingredients:1 8-oz bag of frozen collard greens
1 ½ bag of frozen chopped onions
1 Tbsp olive oil
½ bunch of fresh parsley
There is a way to prepare couve from fresh collard greens so they do not become bitter, and my mom has told me several times how to do it and I can never remember, so do what I do – use frozen collard greens! The frozen collards have never gone bitter on me, so it works.

Sauté the onions with the olive oil in a skillet slowly until transparent. At that point, add the parsley and stir. Then add the frozen collards and stir while they thaw and cook. Don’t worry if the collards are already thawed – let it cook either way. Cooking time after the collards hit the pan is probably only 5 minutes. Once cooked, turn off the flame and you can leave it in the pan covered until it’s time to serve it all.

If you need the pan, just put the couve into a serving dish – it will keep fine while you work on the farofa. Remember to go back and stir the feijoada pot gently from the bottom occasionally so the bottom doesn’t burn and be careful not to break apart the ham hock.

4. Farofa – this is a quintessentially Brazilian garnish that is often prepared and served with other dishes. It’s awesome even on its own.

Ingredients:16 oz bag of manioc flour
1 bag of frozen chopped onions
¼ cup of olive oil
2 large eggs
½ cup of peanuts (can be substituted – see below)
Farofa begins with farinha de mandioca (manioc flour), which might be hard to find outside of NJ, MA or FL, but it’s worth searching for. Ask around where you can buy Brazilian food products and you’ll find mandioca.

Take a bag of frozen chopped onions and sauté over a medium flame in a deep skillet with the olive oil until transparent. Next, crack the eggs into a measuring cup and whip it with a fork, then set the egg mixture aside until you need it in a few moments.

Add the manioc flour to the onion-oil mixture little-by-little and stir with a spatula as it all gets integrated. Stir over the medium flame while breaking up clumps and letting the whole mixture take on a “toasted” consistency.

Clear away the center of the skillet and slowly pour the egg little by little into the clearing and immediately add the flour-onion mixture into the egg. The egg should end up like thin wisps in the mixture like the egg in egg-drop soup. Repeat the process until the whole egg is gone. Keep the flame on medium and keep stirring.

The last part is to let the whole mixture get very hot (but be careful not to burn it) and then add the peanuts. Stir as needed, then transfer to a serving bowl and serve it fresh and hot.

Farofa is as individual as the maker, so peanuts are a particular favorite of Lauren’s and it was a natural for me to make it this way. Some people put chopped green olives in the farofa, and others use raisins, bacon, thin-sliced carrots, a combination – whatever strikes your fancy. Whatever you use should not be large chunks or dominate the farofa in any way, but instead it should add a subtle layer of flavor.

Again, remember to go back and stir the feijoada pot occasionally so the bottom doesn’t burn.

5. Fruit

Serve the whole meal with orange slices or banana. Some people claim the oranges “cut the grease” or “minimize the gas” from the beans. I am not sure either one is the case, but it’s a common way to eat feijoada. It also adds an interesting taste to the overall dish. The fruit is a garnish.

How to serve and eat feijoada:

Even though feijoada is also served in fine restaurants on Saturdays, it is essentially a family-and-friends dish, so serve it up family-style. Take the pots directly to the table and ladle out directly onto your dish.

It’s okay to separate the couve, farofa and fruit, but the feijoada should be served on a bed of rice and not side-by-side with the rice. Even Paulistas know enough to eat it that way.
[Note to my Paulista friends: You know that even the son of a Carioca can't resist a jab or two every once in a while. Alas, my heart has always belonged to Rio...]
Remember that feijoada is not a mere meal, so you have to invite several friends over to enjoy it with you. You will also need lots of music and cold drinks. Choose your favorite beverage, or try caipirinhas – the national drink of Brazil and the first post on this blog. Whatever it is, serve it cold and make sure you don’t run out.

As you might imagine, feijoada is a complex, savory dish with many textures that can be quite heavy. The main issue is that it’s so delicious that almost everyone overdoes it, which is how it turns into a day-long event. Inevitably, everyone moves to the room that has the comfy couches, but the music and laughter continues and the cold drinks keep getting poured and before you know, it’s already midnight.
Don’t resist having seconds and letting it all morph into an event - hosting a feijoada at your house is quite wonderful. Share your feijoada stories with a comment or two below.
Enjoy!

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Whitney's Tomatillo Salsa

We have these awesome friends that live two doors down from us - Johnny and Whitney and their baby, Tyler. We frequently go to one another's house and share whatever happens to be cooking, usually at the spur of the moment. It usually involves a beverage or two, lots of laughing and taking turns playing Guitar Hero on the Wii.

Anyway, last weekend, they called us over to crack open their newly-acquired bottle of Herradura Tequila for some frozen margaritas. Since it's about 1000° here in North Carolina this summer, the prospect of very cold drinks made with excellent tequila meant that it took me all of a nanosecond to gather up the kids and head over there.

So the margaritas were divine, of course, but what was equally yummy was this humble little bowl of green tomatillo salsa. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am in the middle of a tomatillo kick anyway, but this was REALLY good. And since Whitney is a working mom, she's pretty much already mastered the art of the quick-and-easy-but-still-tasty meal, so I asked her to share her recipe. So here it is for all to enjoy:

1 lb. tomatillos - remove the papery outer layer
1 white onion - quartered
4 garlic cloves
2 jalapeño peppers (remove the seeds)
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of cumin
1/2 lime - juiced

Roast the first 4 ingredients in the oven at 400° for 15 minutes. When roasted, put all of the ingredients together in a food processor until mixed together. Pour into a bowl and serve with your favorite tortilla chips.

A word about Tomatillos:
They're funny-looking cousins of the tomato that we all know and love, and these have a green and have a papery outer layer. When you cook with them, just make sure to remove the papery outer layer. Our local Harris-Teeter carries them sometimes, and almost all of our local hispanic bodegas or grocery stores always have them.

My all-time favorite hispanic grocery is Compare Foods in Durham (it's part of a small chain, so look them up on the Web). The Durham store is big, clean and well-stocked with wide aisles. I can spend hours there browsing the various foods from all around Latin America and the Caribbean - literally dozens of types of chiles, tomatillos (of course), bottled sodas made with cane sugar (not corn syrup) and even a chipotle mayonnaise that McCormick's makes in Mexico. Compare is on Roxboro Road just north of I-85, set back from the street on the right side heading north. Once you spot it, you'll be surprised how big it is.

Try this Tomatillo Salsa recipe and I'll share your comments with Whitney. Enjoy!

Rosemary-Lemon Rice

So my cousin from Virginia called this morning to let me know that she was coming to visit with our other cousins who came in from California and somehow we all ended up at my house. What to do with 10 people suddenly coming for dinner?

I took a bunch of split chicken breasts and dry-rubbed them with a little salt, garlic powder and cumin and then grilled them. My half-Greek cousin made the salad (awesome as usual), and my wife took ciabatta rolls and smeared them with her cream pesto, added sliced tomatoes and then melted mozzarella on top. But even with all that coming together for dinner, I felt that something was missing.

Since rice is such a staple in our family, I wanted to serve rice but somehow it needed to be special. Since it topped out at 95° today, I thought it should be something light and summery (but as usual, I wanted it to be easy). Here's what I did:

I grabbed 4 sprigs of rosemary from the garden, stripped the leaves off the stems and then chopped them finely. I minced 2 garlic cloves and put the garlic-rosemary mixture in a pot with some olive oil and a half-pat of butter and slowly heated them. Then I zested one whole lemon into the pan and let it heat slowly as well while I rinsed two cups of jasmine rice. I drained the rice and put it into the pan with the rosemary-garlic-lemon and stirred it up. After about 30 seconds of sizzling, I put 4 cups of water into the pot and brought it to a boil. At that point, I zested another lemon into the pot, added a couple of pinches of salt, and then finished it out over a long simmer.

When it was finished cooking, I tasted it. It seemed to be missing something, so I put about 1/3 cup of coconut milk into it and it took on a creamy, risotto-like consistency. I transferred it to a serving dish by flaking it with a fork and it became a light & fluffy mound of delicious rice with a delicate lemon and rosemary flavor. The rosemary added green flecks to the rice, making it pretty on the table.

Needless to say, there were no leftovers.