Thursday, May 24, 2018

Lidia Bastianich, risotto with mushrooms

Risotto con Funghi. This video has been on my mind for a few weeks because I guess I'm enamored with young Lidia. Her power mesmerizes me. She says that she doesn't wash the basmati rice because she doesn't want the grains to bloom, but she doesn't mention she wants all of the available starch to form a thick creamy sauce. She doesn't mention it's stirred continuously to knock it around, agitate the starch off of the kernels. She describes what she's doing differently than I understand what I'm doing while doing the exact same things. She's intriguing. She's a very good teacher.

The video's introduction is obnoxious and long.

Horrible jazz trumpet. It blasts out your eardrums. Skip to 1:30 to miss it. Shame, they took a lot of effort to place you on the east coast and they show excellent 70's, 80's food.

7 comments:

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

A young Lydia. I watch her on PBS sometimes. She much older now. She really knows what she is doing.

edutcher said...

Lidia is one spicy meatball.

Two, actually.

Trooper York said...

I wife used to be jealous of Lidia. I would watch her show on PBS every Sunday. I would tape it. Then I would prepare the dish she was making. You would walk in the kitchen and smell what was on the screen. People would come on a Sunday just to see what we made.

On my 50th birthday we went to her flagship restaurant. It was quite expensive. The food was excellent.

Trooper York said...

Unfortunately her son is going to have a lot of problems. He is partners with Mario Batali in a bunch of joints and Batali is going to the joint because of his sexcapades that graduated from harassment to rape. My friend Clinton Kelly already lost his gig at 'The Chew" which was canceled as ABC wants to put distance between them and Batali who was one of the co-hosts and I think a producer.

ndspinelli said...

Lidia has a restaurant in KC that does well. I just finished a pretty good book called Ten Restaurants That Changed America. One was Howard Johnson. I learned a TV chef I like, Jacque Pepin, was hired away from the famous Le Pavillon restaurant in NYC by Howard Johnson to work for his chain. Johnson was a regular @ Le Pavillon.

ndspinelli said...

Anyone surprised about Batali??? He has creep oozing out every pore. There have been very few surprises for me.

ndspinelli said...

I've eaten in restaurants run by Bobby Flay, Emeril, Batali, and found none more than good. I've eaten in Wolfgang Puck restaurants many times and always had superb meals and service.