Odorous but Delicious!
I have an appointment with the young associate of the Fancy RE next Wednesday. I am anticipating that she will start me on Metformin, and, as it is my understanding that the…er…unpleasant…side effects of said drug are greatly exacerbated by rich or carbohydrate-laden foods, I am trying to have my fill of them while I still can. Looking through my recipes I have realized that most of my favorite meals fall into this soon-to-be-Verboten category. I am not entirely sure what I will eat after I remove my favorite food groups (the cream, salt, and pasta groups) from my diet. Lentils? Mock Duck? It puzzles and saddens me.
I thought I would start posting some of the recipes for my favorite things, so that someone, at least, can enjoy them.
Here is a recipe for Risotto with Taleggio and Red Pepper, from a scribbly notecard in my kitchen, remembered from a cookbook by Judith Barret and Norma Wasserman that I lost long ago.
I should warn you that Tallegio is quite a powerful cheese—when I first made this, in college, my roommates were annoyed because it made our tiny apartment smell strongly of…well, Taleggio. Once they tasted it, however, their protestations were silenced, and they frequently begged me to make “The Smelly Cheese-Rice” after that.
You will need:
3 tablespoons Butter
2/3 cup sweet Red Bell Pepper, diced
4 ounces Taleggio, rind removed, cut into pieces
5 cups Weak Broth (I have frozen cubes of broth I made with veal bones and the carcass from a roast chicken, carrots, celery, onion, etc., but I have used a mix of vegetable/chicken boullion which works well too.) brought to a simmer—leave on a back burner.
½ cup dry White Wine, plus the rest of the bottle
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
½ cup Onion, finely chopped
1 ½ cups Arborio/Carnaroli Rice
Some Red Pepper Flakes
Some fresh Parsley, finely chopped
1. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a small skillet over moderate heat until foamy. Add the Red Bell Pepper and cook until soft and roasty-smelling, about 5 minutes. Set aside.
2. In a large casserole or deep skillet over medium-high heat, heat the remaining Butter and the Olive Oil, then add the Onion and cook for a minute or two until softened—Do Not Brown.
3. Add the Rice and stir for one minute to coat with the butter.
4. Add the ½ cup Wine, stir until absorbed.
5. Begin to add the Broth ½ cup at a time, stirring frequently. Wait until each ½ cup is absorbed before adding the next.
6. Repeat the above for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is like a good parent—tender but firm. Stir, stir, stir.
7. Add the sautéed Bell Pepper, the Taleggio, the Parsley, and a pinch of Red Pepper Flakes, stirring ferociously to melt the cheese.
8. Serve immediately with glasses of the remaining wine.
2 Comments
Sounds yummy. But I’ll have you know that back in the days before my acupuncturist got her needles into me (ha ha) I used to eat a fair amount of rich foods, so long as they were low carb. Not sure it was the best possible thing, but at the time basics like cheese and milk really got me through. So yeah, you may want to cut back on the carbs, but you can still enjoy food! (More important is to slowly build up the dosage of the Met – start with just 500 mg/day for a week, then up to 1000, and so on to the full dose.) Now I’m going to go drool over the creamy recipe (I’ve been off dairy since January – it may be more painful than the needles!)
A,
I came to your blog from a comment left on another re a 3-yr old’s Rainmanish behavior (eg, spontaneously memorizing the QWERTY homerow letter order). In fact, I came here specifically to offer congratulations on your PhD in math. Good for you! What was your dissertation topic, if I may ask?
But the reason for leaving a comment just here is about Metformin. It’s main effect is to discourage the liver from converting intra-cellular glycogen (aka “animal starch”) into blood glucose. It also has some (relatively small) effects on insulin sensitivity in many body cells (fat and muscle mostly), and a noticeable, but minor tendency to help lose a few pounds. In larger doses there are some GI effects (cramps and the runs mostly). Titration up to clinically effective doses sometimes gets around the side effects. The (more expensive) controlled release version sometimes helps avoid the side effects as well.
It also tastes terrible, so be prepared with water or something which will get it down the hatch quickly.
The drug has an interesting history. It’s one of three bi-guanides identified between about 1915 and WWII. One of them was associated with an elevated (small) rate of death from a sort of acidosis, and was pulled from the US by the FDA (50s sometime). All got dropped from clinical use in the US, though metformin continued in clinical use in Canada, UK, etc. In the early 90s, one of the big drug companies took the trouble of trying to get the drug back into US clinical use (financing some trials and some general pressure here and there as I understand it). Odd, since patent protection would be unavailable as I get the history; not the usual Big Pharma behavior. Anyway, it was a big (that’s $$$) hit, there being no existing drug which helped keep the liver from dumping glucose into the blood at inappropriate times; cockeyed insulin leads to cockeyed liver BG homostasis. Brand extensions (I suspect patented) have followed (combinations with sulfonylureas, controlled release, …) have followed.
Useful drug for some folks, hope it will be for you.
Bill
PS The comment parser (for legal email addresses) does not permit xxx at yahoo dot com. Probably not the best design as many of us dislike leaving anything a spam bot is likely to pick up. I’ve been waiting for them to wise up to ‘at’ and ‘dot’ for a while, but so far…
B