Risotto Primavera

We're back with another budget dish from Cooking Light. This time, it's the Risotto Primavera from the June 2010 issue. This dish seemed a little heavy for our southern climate back in June, but now that the temperatures are more consistently out of the near triple digits, it's a lot more palatable. There's nothing particularly summery about it, so all of the ingredients should be available wherever you might live.

This recipe rings up at $2.48 per serving, which, if your grocery store is anything like ours, is influenced heavily by the inclusion of fresh asparagus. We'd be willing to bet that you could sub in some of the frozen stuff without anyone batting an eye. Purchasing the Arborio rice in bulk may offset a decision to go with the fresh stuff.

Before you think another minute about making this dish, beware: Risotto requires constant attention. You'll be stirring and reducing for about 20 minutes, so put on some comfortable clothes, flip on the tele, give your stirring arm a quick arm warm-up, and get ready to cook!

The first step is to roast the tomatoes in the oven for 15 minutes. (We recommend lining your jelly roll pan with heavy aluminum foil to speed up your clean-up.) You can use this time to trim up your asparagus, grate your cheese, and measure out other ingredients, because, once you start adding liquids to your rice, you won't have time to even think about measuring, grating, or chopping.

Next, you're ready to combine your water and broth in a sauce pan, heating - but not boiling - them. The onion goes into your Dutch oven first, then rice, then vinegar. Then it's time for your marathon stirring session!

You'll add in half-cups of the broth and water mixture one at a time, stirring until all of the liquid is absorbed. According to the recipe, this should take about 20 minutes, start to finish, which we found to be pretty accurate. When the last cup of the broth mixture goes in, so do the veggies (other than the tomatoes).

You've probably notice that, due to a clerical error in our grocery list-making, we ended up sans peas. We subbed in frozen corn instead; the consensus in our house was that the corn lent the dish a little more snap than the peas might have.

Off the stove came the rice mixture and in went the grated cheese, making the texture of the dish smooth and luxurious. We plated the mixture and topped it with tomatoes and more cheese, then a dusting of pepper and, voila - an inexpensive, hearty dish that required just a little bit of elbow grease!

If you're wondering whether it's possible that this dish reheated well - it certainly did! Just be sure to heat it in short increments and stir until you're happy with the temperature. This isn't something you want to shock in the microwave for 5 minutes!

Gingery Pork Meatballs with Noodles

It seems like everyone's saving their pennies these days, and that fact has prompted Cooking Light to start a new feature called "Budget Cooking". Their recipe for Gingery Pork Meatballs with Noodles (Sept 2010) is advertised with a price tag of $2.06 a serving - let's see if it packs big flavor at a low cost.

The ingredient list is heavy on pantry staples, i.e., things Cooking Light thinks you should already have in your kitchen. Items like breadcrumbs, soy sauce, sesame oil, and some spices aren't counted in the calculation, which allows the "budget" label to be applied to a dish that, at face value, has a laundry lists of components. These items can have high costs if you don't have them on hand, but you're guaranteed to get loads of use out of them, especially if you frequent the magazine's files for recipe ideas. All of the ingredients for this particular recipe are easy to find, including the "wide rice noodles", which we scored from a local Whole Foods-style grocer.

A lot of times, as we skim recipes when creating our weekly menu, we miss the little "idle times" hidden in the instructions. Make sure you budget 30 minutes for the meatball mixture to chill. This would be a great time to chop up the ingredients for the noodles or, if you're super-prepared, to fit in a quick workout or throw in a load of laundry!

Now, the recipe itself says, "cook noodles according to package directions," which would be easy to do...if we could read Japanese. Thankfully, a quick Google search yielded several preparation options. We picked the path of least resistance, soaking the noodles for 30 minutes, then adding as detailed in step 3 of the recipe. Either 30 minutes wasn't enough, or we should've bitten the bullet and boiled them, because we ended up with some seriously crunchy noodles!

At left is the finished product: a lovely, easy-to-assemble taste of Asian cuisine. The meatballs are moist and the ginger, garlic, and soy sauce give them a distinct taste that will breathe life into your dinner repertoire. We took them to work the following day and were pleasantly surprised by how the flavors held up after a turn in the microwave. (No improvement in those noodles, unfortunately, but we'll keep at it!)

This one's a keeper, gang. Tuck it away in your recipe file for a rainy day and wow the pants off of your roommate, significant other, or whoever else is over for dinner!