Beefy veggie brown rice

My husband laughed when I told him we were starting a cooking blog. "Let me know if you need any comic relief," he said. "I'll make white rice." He's much better at rice than I am, actually.

I hear brown rice is much better for you, anyway, so I've decided to learn to cook it. I also think we don't eat enough leafy greens, so I decided to hide some spinach in it.

I like Fine Cooking's choose-your-own-adventure recipes a lot. What I did with the brown rice here is sort of based on their risotto, except of course I'm breaking the rule about the arborio, right from the get-go.

• ~ 1 cup carrots, chopped
• 5 oz. shiitake mushrooms, chopped
• olive oil to saute them in
• ~1.5 cups brown rice, uncooked
• 2 containers beef stock (~6 cups)
  
• 5 oz. baby spinach
• handful fresh sage leaves (from my monster sage plant), chopped
• ~ 3 oz. shredded asiago/fontina/parm cheese mix
  

First, I chopped up the mushrooms and carrots, and sauteed them in some olive oil until they were soft. (I'm never sure how much oil to use. Recipes always claim something like 2 tbsp., but that never looks like enough to me; it looks suspiciously like it'll burn to the bottom of the pan with that little. So I add more, until it looks right.)

While that was going, I put all the beef stock in a pot and simmered it. I think it's supposed to absorb into the rice better if everything's hot.

When the vegetables were done, I added a ladleful of the beef stock to deglaze the pan, waited for it to cook down a bit, and then I threw in the rice. Actually, looking at the recipe now, I think I should have toasted the rice in the oil before I'd diluted it with the broth. But whatever. I toasted the rice in my broth-adulterated oil, and then ladled in more broth - enough to cover all the rice.

At this stage, you stir the rice, wait for it to cook down until when you scrape your spoon across the bottom of the pan, the rice/broth is slower to fill the gap in again, and then ladle in another cup or so of broth. Repeat, until the broth is absorbed and the rice is the texture you want it.

But after about half an hour of this, I was getting to the end of the stock - maybe a cup and a half left - and my rice was still crunchy. So I dumped all the stock in and I covered the pan, and for about 15 minutes, I let it cook like regular rice rather than like risotto. That fixed it right up; it absorbed much of the broth and wasn't crunchy anymore.

At that point, I threw in my spinach and sage, and stirred and cooked it until the spinach wilted. (It always looks so discouraging at first: the spinach just sits there, taking up all that space, and for like two minutes I stand there wondering if it's ever going to wilt. But then it does.) Then I took it off the heat, and I added the cheese, a little bit at a time because the rice already tasted good, and I didn't know how much cheese would be too much and ruin it.

I call this one a success: we all liked it, even the toddler. Although he did find the spinach and pick some of it out.