Back to Basics

“Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish, game or any other dish? Who would not give all else for two pennyworth only of beautiful soup?”
Lewis Carroll (1832-1998)

“To cook is to lay hands on the body of the world.”
John Thorne


My adventures in the kitchen this past week are a riches to rags story.

Juan returned home on Monday from a weekend dive trip to Santa Rosa Island, one of the two northern-most Channel Islands. Unfortunately, he returned with barely half a limit of California Spiny Lobster, Panulirus interruptus.

I quickly decided it didn’t matter when he opened the ice chest to reveal a 6 ½ pound behemoth. It dwarfed the two smaller lobsters next to it.

It was Valentine’s Day and we’d been planning to cook some lobster for dinner, figuring he’d come home with at least one. The two small crustaceans would be more than enough for a meal, Juan insisted, adding that we should freeze the monster and serve him up at a dinner party. A debate ensued over which lobster to cook while Juan struggled to hold the squirming beast for a photo.

Killing one’s own food doesn’t happen much for suburban dwellers like me. I tend to catch and release when fly fishing and the closest I’d come lately to personally delivering a death sentence was plunging some Dungeness crabs into boiling water.

This guy definitely gave me pause. It was hard not to feel a bit of a pang knowing he’d escaped commercial traps for so many years. If we were going to eat him, it didn’t seem right to relegate him to the deep freeze. We needed to enjoy him fresh out of the sea.

I won the argument with that bit of reasoning and with that, the huge creature snapped its tail, arched its back and flew out of Juan’s hands onto the driveway with a loud smack. We quickly ushered him, only slightly subdued, into the kitchen.

We boiled him for a few minutes, split him open and rubbed the meat with olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, then broiled both halves under the broiler until just barely done.

The tails were plated up with simple accompaniments: pinto beans, brown rice, grilled flour tortillas and limes. I was reminded of afternoons in Puerto Nuevo, Baja California, back when the restaurants there served real lobster. Tuesday night we had leftover lobster in an aromatic tomato sauce tossed with pasta.

Wednesday night we had lobster tacos, piled high with cilantro and avocado.

By Thursday night was I was wishing I’d lost the argument and we’d cooked the smaller lobster.

Friday night, I arrived home from work to find a box from Amazon on the doorstep. It turned out to be gift from my sister; Melissa Clark’s new cookbook In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite. I’ve long been a fan of Clark’s New York Times column and had given the book to my sister for Christmas, knowing she too is an admirer of her straightforward, unfussy recipes and inspiring narrative. Now my sister was returning the favor and after a week’s worth of lobster over-indulgence, her timing was perfect.

I opted for the restorative power of a great pot of soup and was happy to find, early Saturday morning, that I had all the ingredients on hand for this one. It was just what the doctor ordered: unpretentious, bright, meatless (except for the stock) and soothing. And, while it’s clearly good for you, it’s also very, very good.

Red Lentil Soup With Lemon

Very slightly adapted from Melissa Clark’s In The Kitchen With A Good Appetite

Time: 45 minutes
3 tablespoons olive oil, more for drizzling
2 large onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red Aleppo pepper (or a pinch of ancho chile powder)
2 quarts chicken or vegetable broth (I used homemade turkey stock)
2 cups red lentils
2 large carrots, peeled and diced
Juice of 1 lemon, more to taste
1/3 cup chopped fresh mint. Can substitute fresh cilantro or parsley.
1. In a large pot, heat oil over high heat until hot and shimmering. Add onion and garlic, and sauté until golden, about 4 minutes.
2. Stir in tomato paste, cumin, salt, black pepper and chili powder or cayenne, and sauté for 2 minutes longer.
3. Add broth, 2 cups water, lentils and carrot. Bring to a simmer, then partially cover pot and turn heat to medium-low. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary.
4. Using an immersion or regular blender or a food processor, purée half the soup then add it back to pot. Soup should be somewhat chunky.
5. Reheat soup if necessary, then stir in lemon juice and mint. Serve soup drizzled with good olive oil and dusted lightly with Aleppo pepper if desired.
Yield: 6 servings.

Food lover’s guide to a weekend in San Francisco

If you’ve read this blog you’ve heard our complaints about the limited selection of certain ingredients available to us on the Central Coast. While we agree that it is the happiest place in America, we still feel the urge to spend a weekend every now and then in the foodiest place in America – San Francisco. Here we can find nearly any ingredient and a good dose of inspiration.

Here’s our basic plan step by step

Step 1. Find a place to stay. San Francisco has thousands of hotels. Everything from luxury rooms in touristy areas to motor inns in neighborhoods. What they don’t have is much in the way of parking. When you go online and get a killer deal you will most likely arrive to find that you’ll be charged $40 a night to park your car. On a recent trip we opted to stay at the Pacific Heights Inn which offered free parking, a reliable recommendation and a fairly decent rate by San Francisco standards. PHI is located in the Marina/Cow Hollow district of the city which has a nice selection of restaurants, bars and shops. It is a neighborhood full of young hip families. A nice respite from the tourist/homeless crowds found in Union Square. What PHI doesn’t offer is a swanky room that makes you want to hang out instead of hitting the streets to either shop, eat or drink.

Step 2.Make dinner reservations. San Francisco has dozens of great restaurants. If you want to dine at a restaurant of note be sure to make reservations well in advance. We read restaurant reviews and scan online menus for days trying to decide where to eat.

Step 3.Ditch work early enough on Friday to get to the city in time to check-in to a hotel (or in our case a motel), grab a cocktail and make a 7:30 dinner reservation. At night we leave the car and take taxis to and from our chosen restaurant. This eliminates the need to fight traffic, find parking and designate a driver. You can get almost anywhere in the city for less than $20 each way.

Step 4. Go to Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building on Saturday morning…and go hungry! On a recent trip we headed to the market at a bit after 8, spent a few minutes shopping before we came upon the Roli Roti rotisserie truck.
One whiff of their porchetta sizzling on the rotisserie and we were hooked. Porchetta is rolled pork loin filled with a rosemary/lemon herb mix. Grilled on the rotisserie for 4 hours until crispy brown on the outside then sliced and placed on a fresh baked Acme Bread Company deli roll with a smear of onion marmalade and whatever greens are available (curly grass, baby arugula, baby Italian parsley) DELICIOUS!!! The other amazing thing they do is roast potatoes in the bottom of the rotisserie in all of the drippings from the racks of chickens they have roasting. So we split a sandwich and a side order of roasted potatoes and thought we’d died and gone to heaven. Of course it didn’t hurt that we had the good fortune of being in the city on a clear February morning where the temperature reach an amazing 75 degrees that day.

Next stop, Boccalone. We’ve written about their Tasty Salted Pig Parts in the past. Well somehow in the past we missed Nduja, a spicy spreadable salami. Wow! That right there is reason enough for us to get in the car and head north. It can be spread on a cracker, used to enhance sauces and surely other yet to be discovered uses.

I could go on about the joys of Farmer’s Market but those are the standouts from this particular trip. If you enjoy food, this market is a must do if you find yourself in San Francisco on a Saturday morning. And don’t forget your ice chest!

Step 5. Plan a trip to the Mission district if you are into Latin foods. I go for the empanada skins at Casa Lucas on 24th street. There’s a self-serve Mexican bakery just across the street which netted Juan a big bag of fresh baked cookies.
Between the amazing restaurants, Farmer’s Market and the Mission district you can’t help but return home with a new outlook on working in your kitchen (once you recover from the full feeling you’re bound to leave the city with).

I was recently given a set of pasta attachments for my Kitchen Aid mixer. Devon and I put it to work and paired it with our new buddy Nduja. This one’s a keeper!

Pasta with Nduja and Roasted Tomato Sauce
Adapted from The Zuni Café Cookbook

1 pound pasta (we used fresh fettuccine)
2 cans whole tomatoes, drained, juice reserved
½ cup olive oil
1 yellow onion sliced
6 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 bay leaf
Salt
Sugar (if needed)
½ Nduja salami
½ cup grated pecorino romano cheese
Cut tomatoes in half and place cut side down into a shallow roasting pan in one crowded layer. Add enough of the reserved tomato juice to come to a depth of ¼ inch. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and broil until tops are charred.




Sautee onions in 3 tablespoons olive oil until they begin to color then stir in the garlic, pepper, and bay leaf. Add warm tomatoes and a few more tablespoons of olive oil. Add the salami and simmer long enough to combine the elements. Season with salt and sugar if necessary.

Drain cooked pasta and fold into the tomato sauce. Serve sprinkled with grated pecorino romano to taste.

In Honor of Meat

Sometimes you just need a little red meat.

In the 60’s, when the craving hit my family we’d head to Lawry’s The Prime Rib on La Cienega Blvd. in Beverly Hills. My grandparents lived in Los Angeles and often when we’d visit from San Diego, they would treat our family to dinner at Lawry’s.

It was always a special occasion. The restaurant was expensive, even in those days, and for our family it felt like a big night out. My mom would doll up my sister and me in our best dresses, put my hair in a bun, which I hated, and remind us to be on our best behavior.

My grandparents were loving and wonderful people. As proper grandparents should, they showered their grandkids with presents. They took us on tons of outings --often to Kiddyland (also on La Cienega) and the La Brea Tar Pits. My grandmother baked cookies and made taffy. And they lived in a large house complete with a bar and a slot machine where my sister and I could pretend to be cowboys in an old time saloon.

In exchange for their largess they expected good behavior from us when out in public.

My most vivid memory of one of these meals at Lawry’s was of an elderly couple coming up to our table as we finished our meals. The husband leaned over conspiratorially to my dad and said, “Those are the most well behaved children we have ever seen in a restaurant. You have a lovely family.” My parents and my grandparents beamed with pride.

What the elderly couple didn’t know was that there was a secret behind our etiquette.

Much of the allure of Lawry’s, besides the beauty of a big red slab of prime rib on your plate, were the giant wheeled silver carts the chefs rolled over to your table that contained the standing rib roasts. The rolling doors on the carts would be dramatically opened to reveal the rib roasts and the chefs would carve them up tableside. It was quite an impressive sight befitting the over-the-top splendor of the restaurant.

And every time we went to Lawry’s, as we settled into our booth, my parents would point to one of the carts and remind my sister and I that that was were where they put the naughty children who didn’t behave at dinner. As absurd as that sounds, I believed it one hundred percent. And my parents, enjoying their martinis, never bothered to let me in on the joke.

Speaking of big metal contraptions that encase meaty delights, my new smoker from Weber arrived on Friday. The thing is enormous. It could fit two naughty children inside. It also has me thinking that I need to make some new meat eating friends as it seems fewer and fewer of my current pals are carnivorous.



I christened The Beast on Sunday and smoked up some baby back ribs. Kathy emailed me the next morning and claimed they were the best she’d ever had.



This spice rub is terrific on pork—baby back ribs in particular. Sprinkle both sides of the rib racks with the rub, then grill them over indirect heat on a charcoal grill for about 40 minutes. (These puppies took 4 ½ hours on my new smoker and they were worth every minute!)




Dry Rub

Adapted from Saveur Magazine

MAKES 3 CUPS
1 cup sugar
1⁄4 cup seasoned salt, such as Lawry's
1⁄4 cup garlic salt
1⁄4 cup celery salt
1⁄4 cup onion salt
1⁄2 cup paprika
3 tbsp. chili powder
2 tbsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp. lemon pepper
2 tsp. ground sage
1 tsp. dry mustard
1⁄2 tsp. ground thyme
1⁄2 tsp. cayenne
1. Sift together sugar, seasoned salt, garlic salt, celery salt, onion salt, paprika, chili powder, black pepper, lemon pepper, sage, mustard, thyme, and cayenne into a bowl. Store in a jar. (When using, sprinkle onto, don't rub into, meat.)

A Fungus Among Us

If you met my dad today you'd never imagine him as a hunter-gatherer. Well maybe a gatherer. But the hunter part you'd have a hard time believing.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of the day a large box arrived and was placed in the middle of our living room. Our dad opened the box and out came a bear skin rug. The rug had been a bear that my father had hunted in Michigan and it was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. With big, shiny white teeth and snarling expression frozen on its face, I was sure it was going to get us all! My dad thought it was hilarious to roar every time my brother or I came anywhere close to the beast. Then he chased us around the house, up and down the stairs, through the kitchen and back into the living room until my mom finally put a stop to the shenanigans. As a small child when my friends feared the Boogie Man at night I'd image that the bear, hanging on the wall, had come back to life and was just outside my bedroom door waiting to eat me!

Fortunately the rug is no longer part of the family. After a long stint in my dad's closet it was given to the son of one of my dad's good friends and put where it belongs, hanging on a wall in a cabin in the woods.


The memory of my dad, the gatherer, is much less scary, for the most part. I recall walking through the forest with him, picking mushrooms and taking them back to the car to be properly identified. I don't remember us ever eating anything he picked but rather dissecting them, looking from mushroom to book and back trying to get a positive ID.

20 years ago he gave me a copy of David Aurora's Mushrooms Demystified. Mike and I started hiking the hills in search of chanterelles. Easily identified, delicious, safe to eat and this year they are being harvested by local gatherers in abundance. If you are familiar with the book you'll remember the photo of David Aurora coming out of a field with a big box of shrooms and a face painted green. That's how I started to feel after consuming a box of freshly harvested chanterelles. Freezing some before you get to that point is a great idea.

I lightly dry saute mine, then put them into small ziploc bags once they've cooled and pop them into the freezer for use during the leaner shrooming times of the year.After making chanterelle enchiladas, and about 10 different types of pasta with chanterelles and whatever else I happen to have on hand, I've landed on my favorite use for the golden fungi - Wild Mushroom Risotto. Part of the reason I'm partial to this recipe is that it allows me to use up some of the home dried porcini mushrooms a fellow forager recently sent out way.


Wild Mushroom Risotto

1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped wild mushrooms (reconstituted if using dry)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, diced
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 +/- cups liquid - I use a mixture of chicken stock and the reconstituting water.
1 tablespoon fresh thyme or 1/2 tablespoon fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan



Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a medium sized pot. Add diced onion and cook until translucent. Add chopped mushrooms and saute until soft. Add rice, when slightly translucent around the edges add the wine. Start adding liquid a ladle full at a time all the while stirring the risotto. As the liquid is absorbed add more until the risotto is al dente. Add herbs, butter and cheese and let rest for 5 minutes. Serve with a green salad and a glass of the rest of that bottle of wine you opened for the risotto.

Life's Simple Pleasures

After both growing up with the same turkey with sage stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping and green bean casserole every year, my sister-in-law Nancy and I made a pact that our Thanksgiving tradition would be to never make the same recipe twice. As a result, come mid-October, we compulsively check our mailboxes until finally the November issue of Bon Appetit arrives. Together we pour over the lists of menus and recipes. Our husbands are consulted and we pull together what we hope will be a fabulous menu. Shopping lists are made, shopping dates arranged and long loving hours are spent concocting a beautiful meal that takes on average 20 minutes to consume. I love the entire process and wouldn't dream of giving it up in a million years. However, by the Saturday after Thanksgiving I'm done with turkey for the year and I'm also ready to enjoy some time outside the kitchen.

This is when I turn to the simple things in life.

A few weeks earlier we'd been to a local restaurant and had a simple and delicious salad of bresaola with arugula. I was on the hunt to recreate it. Hmmm, where am I going to find bresaola in SLO County? One of the great benefits of living on the Central Coast is the availability of fresh ingredients. The downside is the scarcity of exotic or international ingredients. Things like empanada skins and guanciale are non-existent in the county.
An email to Devon netted me a sarcastic "Bresaola in SLO? Yeah, right!". This resigned me to postpone my re-creation until I could make it up to San Francisco. I added it to my shopping list along with the empananda skins and guanciale. Then the call came - Devon had happened upon a local restaurant that sells bresaola! In a foiled attempt to purchase the bresaola from Devon's source I actually found a second source in SLO!

Bresaola in hand I set about recreating this delicious, simple salad. Now, if I can just locate a local source for the empananda skins and guanicale...

Bresaola Salad
Fortunately thinly sliced bresaola goes a long way as you can expect to pay upwards of $20 a pound for it. A quarter of a pound should be plenty for about 6 salads.

1/4 lb bresaola (Muzio's or Luna Red in SLO)
baby arugula
good quality olive oil
Parmesan cheese
lemon wedges

Place 4 or 5 slices of bresaola directly onto a salad plate and add a big handful of arugula on top of the meat. Drizzle with good quality olive oil and shave some parmesan on to the arugula. Serve with a lemon wedge to be squeezed over the top just prior to eating.

Personally I think the pepper of the arugula and saltiness of the meat and cheese is seasoning enough, but you may want to add a bit of one or both to suit your taste.

Sit down, relax and enjoy!

Of Criminals and Crabs

My dad forced my brother and me into a life of crime when we were very young.

I remember him sitting in the driver’s seat of the Buick Station Wagon as its big V8 engine idled, a cigarette dangling from his fingertips. As my brother and I crept forward in the darkness and looked back at him for reassurance we could see only the Salem’s embers glowing as he inhaled.

“Hurry up!” he’d hiss. And onward we’d scurry, hearts pounding, palms sweaty.

We’d hurl the heavy garbage bags of bloody entrails into the neighborhood park’s dumpsters, turn on our heels and run back to the safety of his car. It seemed like miles of ground to cross between the dumpster and the Buick. I was scared to death and sure that the cold firm hand of a policeman would clutch the back of my collar before I could throw myself into the back seat and lock the car door.

The dirty deed done and The Law averted, my Dad would peel out and race for home, quickly finishing the rest of his secret smoke before rejoining polite society.

“How’d it go?” my sweet mother would ask as she greeted us at the door. I couldn’t help but feel deep shame that all of us, even my gentle mom, were a part of this dark family secret. We’d been doing it for years and I knew it was wrong. But there was no stopping my dad, who insisted his kids come along for the ride each time, miniature henchmen to do his bidding.

My dad loved to fish for albacore and my mother liked clean trash cans.

Forty years ago the annual albacore runs offshore in San Diego were bountiful and my dad and his buddies would come home from overnight charter trips with dozens of big tuna. They’d divide up the catch and we kids would watch my dad skillfully clean his share as the coals in his Weber turned grey.

Dinner over, an impassioned conversation would invariably ensue between my mother and my father about how many days it would be until Trash Day. And invariably, if it was further into the future than the next morning, my mother would demand a midnight run to the park so that her trash cans wouldn’t be sullied by fishy odor.

Once their little juvenile delinquents had stealthily deposited the smelly fish guts into the Kate Sessions Park dumpsters, domestic bliss would be restored in our home.

I recalled these furtive outings as I stood over my kitchen sink the other night cleaning Dungeness Crabs. As I dropped the gills and shells and goopy viscera into a plastic garbage bag, I couldn’t help but silently calculate how many days until Trash Day. I didn’t make a nocturnal run to the nearest public dumpster but I did avoid lifting the lid of our outdoor bin for the remainder of the week.



It’s crab season right now and our local fishmonger was advertising strong supply and low prices--$4.95 per pound for live ones. So, Kathy and I cooked up a batch last weekend and served them with our favorite dipping sauce, a rich, spicy-sweet chile butter.



There’s no excuse for buying the crabs already cooked. It’s the easiest thing in the world to boil up a batch. I cleaned all eight in under 10 minutes, ripping off the legs and claws while Kathy, at the other end of our two person assembly line, partially cracked each piece and tossed the parts into a big serving bowl.

The crab was still warm when we served, accompanied by Caesar Salad and a couple of homemade baguettes.

Dungeness Crabs with Chile Butter

We usually buy one crab (1.5 to 2 pounds each) per person. Keep them on ice in an ice chest until you are ready to cook. Don’t keep them in a plastic bag—they don’t breathe much when they are on ice but they do need some air! The chile butter is divine. You’ll never go back to simple melted butter.

Bring a large pot (or pots depending on how many crabs you are cooking) of well salted water to a rolling boil.




Banish any squeamish dinner guests from the kitchen and drop the live crabs into the boiling water. Cover pot with lid and boil for 20 minutes. Crabs will turn deep orange when they are done.




After 20 minutes, dump the crabs into the sink and clean them as soon as they are cool enough to handle. There are ample directions on how to clean crabs on the internet. Here’s a quick recap from the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

http://www.oregondungeness.org/cleaning.shtml

To serve, break off the legs and claws, give them each a quick crack with a crab cracker or nutcracker and toss them in a big serving bowl. Break each crab body in half and add to the bowl. Serve family style with a crab cracker and pick for each person.





Chile Butter

Each pair of dinner guests can share a ramekin of chile butter. This recipe makes plenty for about 8 crabs.

Melt three sticks of unsalted butter over low heat in a small saucepan. Spoon off the solids that rise to the top and discard.

Add:

2 Tbsp. ancho chile powder
4 tsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. kosher salt
1 ½ tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. dried oregano
½ tsp. cayenne

The chile butter can be made a couple hours ahead and reheated gently. Right before serving, divide the melted butter into 4 -5 little ramekins, ensuring that the ground spices are evenly divided among them.

Dip each succulent bite of crab into the butter, stirring up some of the spice. Eat. Enjoy. Bibs optional.

Pan Envy

Every cook has a go-to dish: something that can be thrown together relatively quickly, looks pretty, tastes delicious and is a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

Kathy’s and my shared culinary history is littered with them. They are the fail safe recipes we turn to time and time again until our husbands beg us to stop. There was the Chicken with White Wine, Proscuitto and Rosemary ladled over polenta that we made every ski trip. There was the Bobby Flay Grilled Tomato Bread Salad that wowed our summer dinner guests and repulsed our husbands. Chipotle Macaroni and Cheese has been the star at many a dinner buffet over the years. And as detailed in a previous blog post, one of us seemed to serve Café Pasqual’s Carne Asada at a dinner party almost weekly there for awhile. The recipes are so entwined in joint gatherings that we lose sight of who discovered it originally.

Then Kathy got a paella pan for Valentine’s Day. Later, a photo of her proud, smiling face posed over a steaming pan of the Valencian dish appeared on her Facebook page. Not only did she have a paella pan, I hadn’t been invited to its inauguration. A big guilt trip prompted an invite a few weeks later and a mild case of desire blossomed into full blown pan envy.




Paella meets all the requirements for the go-to meal. It’s visually stunning, impressive in presentation. Most of the prep work can be done ahead and the dish simmers stovetop while the cook relaxes with friends. The only challenge can be finding bomba rice and good Spanish chorizo locally.



I’m hoping Santa remembers to add those two ingredients to his shopping cart while he’s ordering my pan.


Mixed Paella (Paella Mixta)
Source: Saveur Magazine



30 threads saffron, crushed (a scant 1⁄2 tsp.)
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken thighs,
cut into 2" pieces
10 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper,
to taste
1⁄2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 oz. dry-cured Spanish chorizo,
cut into 1⁄4"-thick coins
1 tbsp. smoked paprika
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 dried bay leaves
3 medium tomatoes, minced
1 small onion, minced
7 cups chicken broth
2 1⁄2 cups short-grain rice,
preferably Valencia or bomba
1 9-oz. box frozen artichoke hearts, thawed
8 oz. fresh or frozen peas
3 jarred roasted red peppers,
torn into 1⁄2"-thick strips
12 mussels, cleaned and debearded



1. Put saffron and 1⁄4 cup hot water in a small bowl; let sit for 15 minutes. Season chicken and shrimp with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a 16"–18" paella pan over medium-high heat. Add chicken, shrimp, and chorizo and cook, turning occasionally, until browned, about 5 minutes. Transfer shrimp to a plate, leaving meats in pan. Add paprika, garlic, bay leaves, tomatoes, and onions to pan and cook, stirring often, until onions soften, about 6 minutes. Add reserved saffron mixture and broth, season with salt, and bring to a boil over high heat.





2. Sprinkle in rice, distribute evenly with a spoon, and add artichokes, peas, and peppers. Cook, without stirring, until rice has absorbed most of the liquid, 10–12 minutes. (If your pan is larger than the burner, rotate it every two minutes so different parts are over the heat and the rice cooks evenly.) Reduce heat to low, add reserved shrimp, and nestle in mussels hinge side down; cook, without stirring, until mussels have opened and rice has absorbed the liquid and is al dente, 5–10 minutes more. Remove pan from heat, cover with aluminum foil, and let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

SERVES 6 – 8