Stephencooks

Gnocchi with Duck Liver and Porcini

  

The tajarin the other day got me doing some research into Piedmont cuisine and I found that an old favorite of mine, potato gnocchi and chicken liver sauce (salsa di fegatini) is an ancient combination that's popular there. Elizabeth David, in Italian Food, offers a typically succinct recipe for the sauce: "1/2 lb. of chicken livers, a few dried mushrooms, flour, Marsalla, stock, butter....Cook the [chopped, floured] chicken livers in butter with the [reconstituted] mushrooms. Season them with salt and pepper, pour over 1 sherry-glassful of Marsalla or white wine. When this has reduced, add 1 cupful of chicken or meat stock and simmer the sauce until it is thick."

When I stopped at the Super 88 Asian market the other day I came away, as I often do, with a half-pound container of fresh duck livers, so I decided to make the sauce with them. I usually make my own gnocchi (slavishly following Marcella Hazan's recipe in The Essentials of Italian Cooking) but  a couple of weeks ago my friend Joe and I stopped at Micucci's Groceries in Portland -- a wonderful shop full of Italian specialty foods and wholesale quantities of things like porcini and dried spices -- and I spied some great-looking gnocchi in the freezer. They looked so much like the ones I make that I couldn't resist. I guess I'm getting lazy!

The sauce is an adaptation of the basic David formula, with the addition of some fresh tomatoes and rosemary.

Quick Gameday Barbeque Ribs

  

I seem to be on a comfort food kick lately, with stuff like braised short ribs and lamb shanks, homemade pasta, pizza twice a week, bread pudding and chocolate soufflé predominating. I blame it on fall and some sort of primordial urge to put by a few pounds of fat for the winter (I don't need them, thanks....) or the advent of football season, which always seems to me to include junk food pleasures, since I grew up in Big Ten towns and was tailgating from the age of two. Anyway, I'm not over it yet, because the other day a pack of ribs called out to me from the meat case.

I know the barbeque police are going to be all over me for this, but sometimes I don't want to spend all day smoking ribs, so I developed this easy shortcut method to flavorful ribs with no messy charcoal or outdoor cooking. The smoke taste is artificial but the eating is really good, and they get better if they're done a day ahead of time.

The ribs in the photo were made from spareribs that had been crosscut at the Asian market into bitesized 1" segments, but this works well with a rack of baby back ribs, which are almost always available in the supermarket.

I serve these with beer, cornbread, rice and collard greens for a casual supper, but they also make very popular snacks for a gameday spread around the flatscreen, especially since they stand up well to being reheated or being held on a warming tray or, for travel, in an insulated container. Just the thing to make for your contribution to that Saturday afternoon tailgate party on a Friday night while you're relaxing with a movie. The recipe multiplies well, so don't hesitate to make a mess of 'em. They're addictive, especially paired with football and beer. Takes around 3 hours, but only a few minutes of active time....

Pan Roasted White Bass with Wine-Butter Sauce

 

When I'm in Boston for a business meeting I often try to swing by the Super 88 Asian market in the South Bay Center in Dorchester, for Asian staples of course but also for their fish market: a sixty-foot counter with fresh fish -- usually as many as 50 varieties -- arrayed on a bed of ice. They also have live tanks for lobsters, crabs and some varieties of fish. A fish market like this is essential if you're going to make a good bouillabaisse, since the traditional bouillabaisse has a wide variety of fish types. And it's also essential if you like to cook and serve whole fish, since many fish markets and virtually no supermarkets never handle whole fish at all (they buy their fish "cut" from a fish processor).

Usually I steam a whole fish in the Chinese style, or grill it over charcoal, and for those methods I'm usually looking for a 2-1/2 - 3-1/2 pound fish. Hybrid striped bass, black bass, small salmon (all farmed) and many other varieties are available in this range. This week I had the idea that I'd like to pan roast some smaller fish, in the Italian manner with garlic, herbs and olive oil, to serve individually, so I selected a couple of one pound white bass. White bass is a freshwater cousin of my favorite wild saltwater fish, the striped bass (the two are cross-bred to produce the freshwater-farmed hybrid striped bass), and as far as I've been able to find out it's only available wild-caught.

I served the pan roasted bass with an herbed rice and a salad of rocket and tomatoes. The bass was sweet and fresh-tasting and worked well with the sauce, and the rice was a good pairing. Since this preparation is quick and easy it's perfect for a change-of-pace midweek supper. The almost universally available farm-raised trout also works well prepared this way, and popular because they are less bony, although some say the flavor of the farmed trout is bland (adjust cooking time as discussed below).

Tajarin with Truffle/Sage Butter Sauce

  

The other day I got a comment from Helen, who has a facinating new blog called Beyond Salmon. It's about fish (Helen teaches a course on fish cookery at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts) but she has broader interests. She was insprired by my Braised Beef Short Ribs and had this to say: "I've been really nostalgic about our trip to Piedmont last fall (and their pasta with braised rabbit).  I was not even a big fan of pasta before we went, but Piedmont pasta has ruined me for life...after reading your post, I really got in the mood for braising a rabbit and making some homemade tajarin (all egg yolk -- ton of cholesterol, but oh so good :)"

I've travelled in Italy but never in Piedmont, and until Helen's message had never heard of tajarin, which, I soon found, is a rich egg noodle made with egg yolks. Lots of egg yolks! (I've also never cooked rabbit, but that's a story for another post.)

It just goes to show that the next culinary adventure is always just around the corner. I asked Helen to fill me in on tajarin, and she mentioned that Jeffery Steingarten had written about it in his book The Man Who Ate Everything. Okay, I once had a copy of that book around here somewhere, but I never read the part about tajarin. (I bought it in an airport bookstall at the beginning of a business trip to Europe, read about a third of it and found it annoying for reasons I can't now recall. I never picked it up after I returned from the trip. E says that since I said I didn't like it she may have given it to the thrift shop.)

Helen kindly sent me the cliff notes for Steingarten's tajarin:

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 Tbsp salt
20 yolks from extra-large eggs

I bridled at a recipe which called for 20 egg yolks so cruised the internet for other tajarin recipes and found that there's a range of opinion, as is usual with traditional recipes.

Wine-Braised Lamb Shanks

  

Last week I made braised beef short ribs while I was visiting my daughter, and the satisfying warmth and goodness of that family meal was very pleasant indeed. This week I wanted to extend that feeling a bit by making another meal based on herb-infused slow-cooked meat for our wonderful neighbors Kit and Carrie. In the two-plus years we've lived next door to them, dining together every couple of weeks, either in the warm and beautiful timberpeg house they designed and built for themselves or at our table, has become a cherished rhythm in our lives. We're not family, of course, but the feeling of being safe at home with our loved ones is certainly in the air when we gather for these meals. 

Braised lamb shanks is a simple, honest meal that makes high use of a marginal cut of meat, the most common vegetables, some hearty wine and a few aromatics from the fall herb garden. Making it spreads a warm fragrance throughout the house as it cooks, slowly, for several hours, and serving it to family or good friends just feels right. For Kit and Carrie the lamb was served with homemade egg noodles (to be the subject of a future post) and a simple salad of baby spinach, slow-roasted grape tomatoes, a few shavings of red onion and a crumbling of goat cheese, dressed with the spectacular Maine Maple Vinaigrette dressing that is a signature preparation in the dining room at Clay Hill Farm down the road.

Old Forge White Pizza

  

I've never been to Old Forge, Pennsylvania, or tasted the famous "White Pizza" that originated there, but shortly after I moved to Maine I fell in with a sleeper cell of Wilkes-Barre / Scranton area natives (Lex, Joe and Lester) who march in lockstep devotion to the stuff. (Old Forge is a village of about 10,000 that has been subsumed by Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in their sprawling gallactic collision along the Susquehanna.) These are people who will drive seven hours primarily to go to a pizza shop. (I'm not getting in the middle of the battle about which one is the best -- apparently there are about ten shops clustered on the main drag and feelings run high when the question of which  is the best.)

After a recent return from white pizza Mecca, Joe suggested that, with help from him and his cohorts, I might be able to create a reasonable facimile of Old Forge White Pizza, since I like to make pizza and I like to hang with the Old Forge contingent. So I agreed to take a run at it.

White Pizza (I'll drop the "Old Forge" designation for the rest of this post) is essentially a rectangular double-crust pan pizza, stuffed with a blend of cheeses and topped with olive oil and rosemary leaves. Variations on that theme are apparently available in the pizza shops of Old Forge, but the cognoscenti disapprove of any deviations from the orthodoxy: "It's the combination of the cheese, the rosemary and the olive oil, with a crust that's not too thin or thick, that makes a White Pizza," Joe informed me, "and nothing should be added or changed."

Ginger-Pumpkin Bread Pudding

 

The masterminds over at Slashfood have jumped the gun on Halloween by declaring today The Great Pumpkin Day and calling on the food-obsessed among us to post all sorts of pumpkin-related goodies. Of course I've been busy with pumpkin stuff here at Stephencooks because pumpkin is a great Fall food, and as my regular readers know, I love Fall foods -- give me a crackling fire, falling leaves and a blustery wind outside and I'm straight into the kitchen to make cobblers, stews, pies and cups of steaming hot chocolate.

Of course, pumpkins get carved around here too, but cooking with them is almost as much fun. Bread pudding is an easy dessert that I almost never get tired of making. I adapted this Ginger - Pumpkin Bread Pudding very loosely from one published in Bon Appetit a few years ago and credited to Commander's Palace in New Orleans, though I've made so many changes over the years that the lineage from the Palace's version to this one is extremely blurry.

Not only is this dish easy to make, it's the perfect finish for a casual dinner  with friends. Made ahead of time, the puddings can go in the oven just as dinner goes on the table and be baked and still warm right on time an hour later. My favorite kind of make-it-look-effortless cooking!

Thanks, Slashfood, for coming up with The Great Pumpkin Day!

Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkin Quiche

We like to play with food, so carving pumpkins is always a hit around here. And this year, in honor of Slashfood's Great Pumpkin Day, we kept track of the carving scraps and used them to fashion a jack-o-lantern face on one of our favorite foods, pumpkin quiche.

Like all quiches, this is extremely easy once you have a blind-baked pie crust in hand, so it's a snap for a weeknight supper, or game-day spread, and with pumpkin, thyme and cheese it's always a great hit.  A green salad on the side and a nice crusty French bread makes a quick, satisfying meal for Fall.

Fiery, Dark, Dangerous Chocolate Soufflé

  

Okay, I suppose it's cheating to use one post for both the web events Sugar High Friday #13 and Is My Blog Burning? #20 but I couldn't help myself. I've been looking for an excuse to make this adaptation of a dark chocolate soufflé  I developed several years ago for the 2001 Valentine's Day edition of my column "At Table" in Boston's South End News  -- and along came SHF with a Dark Chocolate theme, and IMBB just two days later calling for Soufflés. I didn't need the I Ching to tell me that the time was ripe for the emergence of the Fiery, Dark, Dangerous Chocolate Soufflé.

Sugar High Friday!

Sugar High Friday, now in its 13th edition, which was conceived by Jennifer at The Domestic Goddess, asks bloggers all over the world to post a tempting sweet within guidelines proposed by the month's host, who for this edition is Kelli at Lovescool. This month, Kelli's challenged us to "add a twist to one of your favorite" dark chocolate recipes, and so I've dutitfully complied!

Is My Blog Burning?

Is My Blog Burning?, in its twentieth edition, is the recognized granddaddy of all food web events. Founded by Alberto of Il Forno (see his original post proposing IMBB here) in the dim, prehistoric days when most current participants in the event were still a little foggy about what "blogging" meant, if they had even heard of it. A simple concept (everyone post on the same day a dish within the bounds of a theme proposed by the host), it has become the model for most of the web events now filling our calenders.  This month, the host is the Kitchen Chick, who proposed that we all tiptoe through the kitchen while making a soufflé.

Dark Chocolate Soufflé with a Kick

The most faithful of readers of Stephencooks.com will remember another SHF offering here (for #9) called X-treme Chocolate Tartlet, which was developed for the same 2001 Valentine's Day column as this offering. In that post I explained that I had fallen under the spell of the "Mayan" chocolates created at Cacao, the wonderful handmade candy kitchen down the road from me in Kittery, which combine the lure of dark chocolate with the heat of cayenne pepper. I'm still under that spell, so I adapted my recipe for this soufflé into the fiery version shown here with the addition of some heat. I used to think the addition of espresso to a dark chocolate concoction was a pretty vigorous intensifier before I went down this road,  but now I want to lace every chocolate dessert I know with a little of the Mayan fire!

It took me a couple of tries to get the right amount of cayenne in this recipe, so at the end of this post you can see another style of serving for the dish. No matter how it's served I like a fresh-brewed espresso on the side, along with a well-aged cognac or a good grappa to sip.

Clasic Margherita Pizza, with Prosciutto di Parma

  

As readers of this blog know, I love to venture far and wide with pizza. However, now and then I think it's a good idea to heed the words of Marcella Hazan (in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking) who, while acknowledging that improvisation and invention are the heart and soul of pizzamaking, suggests that "...without smothering spontaneity, it may be helpful...to refer from time to time to those few blends of ingredients that represent...the broadest and longest-established consensus on what tastes best in a pizza."

Okay, the venerable Ms. Hazan has a way with too many words (even after I took some out), so let me rephrase: It's good to go back to the basics now and then! And not least because the sensual pleasure delivered by the basic pizza combinations just cannot be beat: creamy mozzerella di bufala, aged Parmeggiano Reggiano, fresh oregano, and red, juicy plum tomatoes glistening with olive oil. In the mouth, the silky texture of the mozzarella, the pungent earthy bite of the parmesan, and the succulence and sweetness of the tomatoes are all all topped by the bright notes of oregano in a delightful union of sensuous flavor and texture.

Hazan tells us that, while not all historians agree, the Margharita Pizza was created "to please Queen Margharita when she visited Naples late in the nineteenth century...." The story, as it is told, suggests that the red, white and green pizza was an homage to the flag of the then still-new Italian state. Whatever the origin, this is one of the classic versions of the world's most popular food. My adaptation  of Hazan's Margharita is modified by the addition of some garlic and some Prosciutto di Parma, the use of oregano instead of her preferred basil, and the use of oregano in the tomato base as well as on top, but otherwise hews to the lines she lays down. As usual, the best ingredients (genuine buffalo milk mozzarella, fresh Italian plum tomatoes, the best Prosciutto and fresh herbs) make a good pizza into a perfect pizza.

Beef Shortribs Braised in Wine and Herbs

  

This is a simple, hearty dish when the newly cold and blustery evenings hint of winter coming in. There are countless variations on this rustic recipe, but they all are based on slow braising in aromatics and wine in a heavy closed pot. I use a enameled  iron pot for this...it seems to be the dish it was designed to make.

I usually change the herb mix I use for this dish every time, depending on what's available, but the list included here resulted in an especially satisfying flavor and aroma so I'll probably use it again. I've always enjoyed it over buttered egg noodles, as shown here, but polenta, rice or roasted potatoes are other good accompanyments. A hearty red wine, crusty bread and a fresh garden salad completes this comforting cold weather meal.

Crab, Brie and Roasted Pear Pizza

   

Okay, this is how cooking in my kitchen goes on a lot of days: I have stuff to use up, leftovers, etc., and I'm feeling creative. The challenge is, how to use up the leftovers in an interesting way, incorporating any oddball ingredients that might present themselves, while at the same time not making an inedible mess.

Last night it was leftover roasted pears (from the Warm Duck Breast and Roasted Pear Salad) and a container of nice fresh Maine crabmeat that I bought on a whim, a few tablespoons of cranberry sauce and some brie that was knocking around the fridge, begging to be used in something.

Pear and brie works, of course. But cranberry sauce? The last time we were in Ireland we noted a national passion for brie paired with cranberry sauce. We found this everywhere, and of course we tried it. Of course, is what you say when you taste this combination. Of course!

Okay, fine. Pear, brie, cranberry sauce. But as I was putting the pizza together, the crab didn't really seem to belong, or rather, the pear, brie, cranberry sauce combination seemed complete and the crab seemed extraneous. Well, I think it would have been a fine pizza without the crab, but I used it anyway and it added yet another  layer of interest, which put it over the top.

Put simply, this was a memorable pizza: roasted pears on brie, with a cranberry background, topped with crab.

Lobster Burger Caribe

  

This is another in my series of explorations of the other possibilities, beyond grilled beef, when the topic turns to burgers. The idea of a lobster burger is not that exotic, in that you can find some version of a lobster burger on restaurant menus all over the U.S., so I set out to make something a little different with this one. Also I set out to make one that's mostly lobster, instead of mostly bread or other fillers, which in my experience is what most of them are at restaurants.

Most people think of lobster as summer fare, so it may seem odd to be presenting this dish in the middle of October. However, as Jasper White points out in his excellent book, Lobster at Home, October, November and December are actually the best months of the year for lobster, with hard-shelled lobster plentiful and the price usually moderating with the slackening demand.

It took me several tries to get this one right, to the delight of my usual victims, but it all finally came together. The added flavors - sweet juicy mango, crunchy spicy slaw, the lime marinade, and the toasted cumin, coriander and fennel in the lobster patties - bring tropical notes to the burger without overwhelming the flavor and texture of the lobster.  I served this with sweet potato fries, a simple green salad and margaritas, for a little trip to the tropics in October!

Warm Duck Breast and Roasted Pear Salad, with Ginger-Braised Cabbage

  

This was my non-entry in Paper Chef #11, Favorite Fall Foods. (Since I was judging the event I wasn't eligible to compete, but I didn't want to miss the fun.)

My first thought when I started to work on this month's ingredient list for the Paper Chef competition was that  sliced duck breast would go well with an old Fall favorite in my kitchen: braised cabbage with apples,and I thought that the cabbage would work with the addition of someginger. Also, since it's Fall, roasting some bosc pears seemed obvious, for that luscious golden glow they take on, andgrilling the duck breast seemed to be the way to go. (As it turned out, there was a raging storm all day the day I made this, and though I usually don't let weather keep me from the grill, I ended upbroiling the breasts in the oven since my indoor grill is out of commission right now, waiting for a part.)

Duck breast, roasted pears, ginger-braised cabbage...that's a good start, but what to do with the nut butter? I didn't want to transform the whole thing into some sort of off-beat Pad Thai, since ginger is definitely not part of the Pad Thai tradition, nor are pears. Then the idea came to me to serve the duck and pear as a warm salad, over a bed of the gingery cabbage and apples, also warm, with a nut butter-based dressing. For some reason cashews seemed to be the right nut so I started experimenting with a cashew butter vinaigrette. It worked, after a little fussing.

So, there it is: a warm salad of sliced duck breast with roasted pears, served on a bed of ginger-braised cabbage, apples and onions, with a cashew butter vinaigrette. The essence of Fall!

Cream of Celery and Turnip Soup

  

Part of my enthusiasm for Fall comes out in an uncontrollable urge to make thick, tasty soups, so here's another one I made last night for a group of friends who braved the storm to join me for dinner. This celery, turnip and potato soup, served by the fire with crisp little frico islands bearing dollops of sour cream, was just the thing for a blustery night.

Curried Vegetable and Rice Soup

 

Last night I felt like soup but I was in a hurry. I had some leftover curried squash and some curried cabbage and peas (both based loosely on recipes in Sumana Ray's Indian Vegetarian Cooking), so I made this quick soup. It's just some instant dashi broth with soy sauce poured over a mixture of rice and the cabbage curry, with a little pile of the squash in the center.

It was a wonderful soup: spicy, flavorful, colorful, interesting...and it illustrated something to me about a lot of my cooking: I often come up with new dishes by combining ones that were made to stand on their own. I think of it as easy cooking: the time it took me to make my soup tonight was the time it took to boil the water. But as you'll see if you look at the recipe, to set out to make this soup from its raw ingredients is a rather involved process, once you separately prepare the rice and the two curries.

Shanghai Beef/Mushroom Burger

  

This is another in my series of experiments in variations on the everyday burger. It's based very loosely on a recipe for marinated and grilled flank steak in Irene Kuo's The Key to Chinese Cooking, with an adaptation of my Spicy Cole Slaw for a topping. As was the case with the Tuscan Cinghiale/Porcini Burger here a few weeks ago, it's more work than your average burger, but the results are much more interesting as well. Of course, the burgers, sauce and topping can all be made ahead so when guests arrive all you have to do is grill the burgers and relax.

I serve this hearty burger with an Asian-influenced salad, using baby spinach, fresh bean sprouts, julienne-cut daikon and a sesame seed garnish, with a light dressing made of red wine vinegar, a dash of soy sauce and some sesame oil. Some Tsingtao beer and ginger or green tea ice cream complete this fun variation on the American backyard barbeque.

Risotto Cakes with Butternut Squash and Sausage

 

Last month Rachel at Fresh Approach Cooking made New Orleans-style rice cakes with a tomatoey shrimp topping for the Paper Chef competition and I've been thinking ever since about making some sort of rice cakes with a nicely-paired sauce.

This was an easy side dish for an informal supper for four, since the risotto was already made. I formed the cakes and coated them several hours ahead of time and then sautéed them while the meat was resting after roasting (The cakes were served with Horseradish-Herb Encrusted Pork Loin with Apples and Onions and some Bok Choi Italiano, made with baby bok choi. The risotto cakes paired nicely with the wine-simmered apple/onion relish served with the pork. The whole menu had a nice autumn tone to it.)

Of course, any risotto variation could be used for these cakes, as long as the flavoring is complementary to whatever else is on the plate. I'm looking forward to making a seafood-based risotto, like my Shrimp Risotto, and then making cakes and serving them with a seafood stew, possibly like the Spanish Style Fish Stew. Lots of possibilities...!

Scallop Pizza with Salsa Verde and Mozzarella

 

 

Today I feel like I may be running out of things to say about pizza, but I don't think I'll ever run out of pizza variations!  This combination of salsa verde, seafood, lemon zest and mozzarella is a big favorite, so it appears on our table several times a year. The ingredients in the green sauce vary according to season and whim, and the seafood does too...shrimp, scallops, chunks of lobster or crab, etc....but the basic idea doesn't change.

For this one, I seared the scallops with a thin crust of breadcrumbs, primarily to give the scallops some color so we could see them against the mozzarella background. I'm still deciding whether I liked that or not. The pizza was great to eat but I think I like the look of the smooth white scallops better, so next time I think I'll omit the breadcrumbs.

Chocolate Bread Pudding

  

I've been exploring the world of bread puddings (see box) for the last few months and so when I needed a dessert for dinner a few nights ago with our friends Kit and Carrie I naturally went to the bread drawer to see what sort of stale goodies might be available. I found half of the loaf of a nice black pumpernickel that I bought five or six days previously for the Graveblue Sandwiches so decided to use that.

Bread Pudding Madness!


Here are some more of my recent bread pudding posts:
• Pear Bread Pudding with Blueberry Caramel
• Ginger Pumpkin Bread Pudding
• Tomato Bread Pudding I
• Roasted Tomato Bread Pudding

I had in mind a regular bread pudding, with cinnamon and raisins, but as I was assembling the ramkins full of bread I thought that since it looked like a chocolate dessert it ought to actually be a chocolate dessert. It wasn't too big a stretch to convert the recipe (I just added chocolate and upped the cognac quantity a little).

The result was extremely good. It seemed more chocolatey that it should have considering the small amount of actual chocolate I used, which was probably because of the naturally chocolatey flavor of black bread. It's possible that the bread had chocolate in it...some black breads I've made have included chocolate. Anyway, this was a chocaholic's delight.

Kit also pointed out something that I hadn't really focused on before: the technique of making the pudding from sticks of bread, with the crust end up -- which I developed purely for visual styling reasons -- in fact adds a lot to the pleasure of the dessert. The crust ends, most of which stick up above the custard level during the baking, become quite crisp and crunchy, which is extremely pleasing when combined in the mouth with the soft, smooth custardy lower part. 

Chocolatey, crunchy, custardy -- however you look at it, this one's a keeper.

Butternut Squash Risotto with Sausage, Pancetta and Leeks

 

 

This risotto is another of the seasonal inspirations that come with the change in the weather. If you're a close reader of Stephencooks you will remember that a couple of days ago I rediscovered winter squash, as I do every September, and I roasted a butternut squash and then used only half of it (for Roasted Butternut Squash and Sage Carbonara). This type of situation dictates a lot of what happens in my kitchen, because that half squash in the refrigerator starts crying out, asking what I'm going to do with it.

The variations of risotto are endless, but the only things that vary from the basic recipe are what you choose to add, how you prepare the additions, and when you add them. Of course, the broth varies too, according to the additions and what you are serving with the risotto, but the basic idea is always: sauté some chopped onion in butter and olive oil, add the rice to the pot and sauté until it turns milky, then, stirring, keep adding hot broth, a cup at a time, over a period of 15 to 20 minutes until the rice is cooked al dente (not mushy but not chalky inside).

In this version, since the squash was already cooked, it was added at the end. The sausage and pancetta were cooked and added at the beginning to deepen their contribution to the flavor, and leeks were substituted for the onions.