Rice with Mushrooms, Cuttlefish, and Artichokes

This delicious recipe is what I made for dinner a couple of weekends ago as part of the Daring Kitchen challenge dishes. The Daring Kitchen is a society of bakers and cooks that agree to make a special challenge dish determined monthly and post about their struggles and successes on their blogs. I heard about the Daring Kitchen when I was reading different cookbook reviews, and thought it sounded like a lot of fun.

The August Daring Cooks Challenge is Rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish, and artichokes from José Andrés’s TV show called Made in Spain.

Rice with Mushrooms, Cuttlefish, and Artichokes

serves 4

Ingredients:

4 artichoke bottoms (I got mine from a can)
12 mushrooms (button or Portobello)
1 bay leaf
1 glass of white wine

Sofregit (see recipe below)
2 cuttlefish
2 cups of rice (short grain preferred)
4 ½ cups water
Saffron Threads OR 1/4 teaspoon tumeric

Sofregit - (a well cooked and fragrant sauce made of olive oil, tomatoes, garlic and onions; it would also work well as a spaghetti sauce)

Ingredients:

5 large tomatoes, chopped
2 small onions, chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
1 bay leaf
Salt
Cumin
Dried Oregano

Directions:

Put all the ingredients together in a frying pan and sauté slowly until all vegetables are soft. Taste and salt if necessary.

Make the Sofregit before you start preparing the cuttlefish.

It was really a challenge for me to figure out how to cut up and prepare the two cuttlefish I purchased from my nearest Japanese supermarket, but luckily my sister’s Cooking Mama Nintendo DS videogaming expertise helped me out. After pouring over dozens of online squid cleaning tutorials, my sister simply tells me to:

1. pull off the head,
2. pull out the backbone,
3. cut off the top fin

4. peel off the skin

5. cut flesh/prepare as deisred

because that's how we do it in Cooking Mama!

Now I have a lot more respect for Cooking Mama! It’s more than just a fun game for kids; it can teach you how to cook!

Back to the recipe:

Cut the cuttlefish in little strips. Add 1 or 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan and put the cuttlefish in the pan. Cut artichokes in eights. Clean the mushrooms and cut them in fourths. Add a bay leaf, artichokes, and mushrooms to the pan. Sauté until artichokes turn golden. Add white wine so all the solids in the bottom of the get mixed. Add a couple or three tablespoons of sofregit and mix to make sure everything gets impregnated with the sofregit.

Add water/fish stock and bring it to boil. Add all the rice. Let boil for about 5 minutes in heavy heat. Add some saffron thread to enrich the dish with its flavor and color. Stir a little bit so the rice and the other ingredients get the entire flavor. If you’re using turmeric or yellow coloring, use only 1/4 teaspoon. Turn to low heat and boil for another 8 minutes (or until rice is a little softer than “al dente”) Put the pan away from heat and let the rice stand a couple of minutes.

Allioli - (Spicy Garlic Sauce – A really great non-butter garlic bread spread!)

I actually made this sauce before I started cooking the cuttlefish. It takes a while longer than one might think if you do it by hand with a mortar and pestle; however, some people have made this using a food processor and that seems to work, too!

Ingredients:

4 garlic cloves, peeled
Salt
Fresh lemon juice
1 cup of olive oil

Directions:
Place the garlic in a mortar along with the salt. Using a pestle, smash the garlic cloves to a smooth paste. (The salt stops the garlic from slipping at the bottom of the mortar as you pound it down.) Add the lemon juice to the garlic.

Drop by drop; pour the olive oil into the mortar slowly as you continue to crush the paste with your pestle. Keep turning your pestle in a slow, continuous circular motion in the mortar. The drip needs to be slow and steady. Make sure the paste soaks up the olive oil as you go. Keep adding the oil, drop by drop, until you have the consistency of a very thick mayonnaise. If your allioli gets too dense, add water to thin it out. This takes time—around 20 minutes of slow motion around the mortar—to create a dense, rich sauce.

To plate this dish, give a generous helping of rice with extra sofregit and Allioli sauce on the side!