The wonderful world of risotto

In My Humble Opinion
1

So a friend and I made risotto the other day. It was divine and incredibly easy. It was made with two kinds of mushrooms, and he forgot the peas, or there would have been peas too.

So now I want to make one on my own. The only kind of risotto I’ve ever had is mushroom, which is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I’d like some ideas for other kinds to make. Vegetarian, please.

Also, he put in sour cream, but says creme fraiche or Greek-style yogurt works too. I am trying to avoid dairy but he insists it makes an enormous difference to the taste and the end result was spectacular.

Any suggestions?

2

Real parmesan. Freshly grated parmigiano reggiano, not from cheap sawdust from a cardboard tube or the generically tolerable supermarket pre-grated packet.

I’m quite fond of a spinach, green onion and fetta risotto, with quite a bit of lemon juice in the stock. I use chicken stock, not being a vego. You add the veggies & cheese near the end of the cooking time. A friend of mine swears by miso as a stock base, I dislike it (even though i like miso soup), so experiment and see. I also like eggplant (aubergine) and sundried tomato (often with smoked chicken too).

Risotto is one of those great things you can do with whatever’s in the pantry, as long as you have rice and stock you can invent the rest.

3

Good recommendation above. I highly recommend using Arborio rice. Long grain will not give you the same result. Shallots are a nice addition, sauteed in the olive oil before adding the rice. Once the rice is in the pan and has turned translucent, add about 1/4 cup of white wine and simmer briefly before adding the stock.

4

Oh, and a recipe that I found recently. This serves 6, so adjust accordingly. And you can delete the bacon and substitute vegetable stock, if you wish.

Pumpkin, Sage, Chestnut and Bacon Risotto

Cooking time: 1 hour 50 minutes

1 small sweet cooking pumpkin or butternut squash, peeled, about 2-1/2 pounds
Olive oil
1 TBSP coriander seeds
Sea salt and ground black pepper
12 slices bacon or pancetta
2 ounces shelled chestnuts
15 fresh sage leaves
4 cups chicken stock or canned broth
3 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
5 small stalks celery, finely chopped
1 cup arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine or dry white vermouth
4 TBSP butter
3/8 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving

Heat oven to 375. Halve pumpkin lengthwise, remove seeds; rinse seeds, drain and reserve. Sprinkle pumpkin with olive oil and set aside. Crush the coriander seeds and sprinkle over the pumpkin along with salt and pepper. Bake until soft, about 40 minutes.

Remove pumpkin from oven and spread bacon over it. In a bowl, combine reserved seeds, chestnuts, sage and salt/pepper to taste. Add tablespoon olive oil, and mix well. Sprinkle over pumpkin and bacon. Place back in oven until bacon is crisp, 10-15 minutes.

Remove pumpkin from oven. Scrape bacon, chestnuts, sage and pumpkin seeds onto a small plate; reserve. Finely chop about half the pumpkin. Chop other half so that it is slighly chunky; reserve.

Place stock in a pan over medium-low heat. Keep warm. Add a tablspoon of olive oil to a large saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots, celery and a pinch of salt. Stir, cover, and cook for 3 minutes. Increase heat to medium-high, and add rice. Stir constantly until rice is translucent, 2-3 minutes. Stir in wine until it is absorbed.

Begin adding broth to rice, stirring constantly. Allow each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take about 20 minutes. When ready, rice will be soft with a slight bite.

Remove from heat. Add chopped pumpkin, stir vigorously until mixed. Fold in pumpkin chunks. Mix in butter and Parmesan. Place a lid on the pan and let sit for a couple of minutes. To serve, top each portion with the crumbled bacon, sprinkle with chestnut, sage and seed mix. Add a dash of additional cheese.

Bon appetit!

5

cowgirl: From what I’ve read here so far, I might like the recipie you and your friend made the best. Care t’share?

6

Risotto is one of my favorite comfort foods to eat and cook. Judith Barrett has at least two risotto cookbooks out, Risotto and Risotto Rosotti. We have the latter and it has a variety of fun ingredients. For your needs I like the spring vegetable approach and another involving artichokes. White beans and kale are great for this time of year; beets are pretty intense and colorful.

Second recommendation is Lorna Sass’s Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure which is a modern pressure cooker guide. We live by our pressure cooker (keep those old funny movie scenes in the movies–modern pressure cookers are foolproof, safe and easy). Anyway, it is very very fast (maybe 10 minutes), easy, and tasty to use a pressure cooker to make risotto. Following Sass, we have had great butternut squash risottos. The green risotto with spinach and fresh basil is light.

Arborio rice is most commonly available, but try to find an Italian grocery and check out Carnaroli–a little bit different and a tad more forgiving.

7

mmm … thanks for the recipes ! Spinach risotto will be happening at my house soon, I promise you that !

Leaper: here’s my best crack at John’s Mushroom Risotto

Fry onions/garlic in a big pot. Add chopped mushrooms (he used portobello). He said it looked like more than he intended to use but that it really doesn’t much matter, quantity-wise.

Once mushrooms are soft, add arborio rice. I didn’t catch the quantity but I reckon the old 1 cup of rice per person rule still holds. Stir until everything is coated.

Begin adding stock (we used boiled water and a stock cube, I imagine starting with hot water makes the cooking process faster), a bit at a time. Also some white wine was thrown in at some point. “Don’t drown the rice!”, warned John. Splash some in, and stir, stir, stir until it’s absorbed. Add another splash, keep stirring. Again, the old rule of 2 cups water to 1 cup rice probably holds. Stir and add until the texture is right.

Right near the end he added shavings of parmesan (yes, the good kind) and a few spoons of sour cream. Don’t forget the salt: John did.

He also meant to add peas somewhere in the process, but forgot. I’d add them in the beginning, if frozen.

Hope this works ! Cooking for me has always been kind of a do-what-feels-right rather than a follow-the-recipe kind of thing for me, hopefully it works with Risotto, too !

8

You could try lemon risotto cowgirl. I’d make it with chicken stock, but you could try vegie. Some white onion, garlic, maybe some celery and leek. XV olive oil, rice, splash of white wine, stock. Add (for two) zest of a couple of lemons, juice of one. Stock. At the end add another tablespoon of lemon juice, plenty of parmesan, another tablepoon of lemon juice, maybe a litle sage. Take off heat, leave covered for 10 minutes.

It’s bland-ish - not unlike risotto Milanese, but with a zesty kick. Great way of getting the starchy ooze out of good risotto rice, IMHO.

9

Risotto rules! I make using white onion, garlic, lots of butter and arborio rice. Near the end, I stir in plenty of real parmesan cheese, and some green pesto = delicious. Or, instead of the pesto, I add some wild rocket - peppery but really nice…

10

The stock is everything! You HAVE to make it yourself.

If we’re having a roast chicken dinner, I reserve the vegetable peelings (except from the potatoes) in a large pan - if possible, I strip the meat off the chicken carcass before dinner, then return the bones to the oven to roast a little more.
After dinner, the bones and any unserved vegetables, plus an onion, a clove of garlic and some herbs go into the pan with a couple of pints of water - the whole lot is simmered for an hour and a half, then strained into containers for risotto the next day.

11

mmm … great ideas ! Keep 'em coming !

… busily scribbling notes …

12

Actually, the old standard of 2:1 water-to-rice doesn’t apply in this dish. It can typically take 4-6 cups of water for 2 cups of arborio.

Since you’re vegetarian, try making a vegetable stock for your next try. It’s easy and can be stored in the freezer for quite some time.

The day after, if you have any risotto left over, mix in additional Parmesan cheese, form the rice into cakes and fry in olive oil until crisp and heated through. This takes a little practice, but is worth it.

13

Thanks, Chefguy. I usually just count on my “keep adding liquid until it looks right” strategy. I’ll let you know how the spinach one turns out tonight.

14

Ramblings about risotto…

  1. Saute the rice for 2-3 minutes before adding your first bit of wine/stock…this helps break down the outer starchy coating on the rice and reduces clumping later on

  2. Sour Cream? Creme Fraiche? Greek-style yogurt? AHHHHH! Stop the insanity…stop the madness…if you want to creme it up use butter, RegParm, half and half or cream…why go to all the trouble to develop the subtle flavors of the risotto to muck it up with sour cream, CF or yogurt?

  3. Most “additive” risotto ingredients should be added at the last minute, folded in carefully to keep the flavors separate…if they have to be cooked previously (panchetta, bacon, frozen peas, seafood, etc…85%) do it in a separate pot/pan…you will get a better risotto consistency and distinct flavor

  4. Totally agree with mangetout…shitty stock, shitty risotto…garbage in, garbage out…

  5. I’ve had pressure cooked risotto…in a word, it sucked. Is it better than box risotto, sure…but it still sucks IMO

  6. Whenever possible…use shalot over onions…better depth of flavor in my book

Some of my favorite risottos:

  1. Not traditional risotto: Saffron, vanilla (or coconut) and seafood risotto…for the seafood you can use shrimps, scallops, combo, etc…instead of creaming it at the end…use coconut milk…very caribbean…fresh nutmeg at the very end adds a nice bite

  2. Truffle risotto…make your basic milanese version…add truffles and truffle oil at the end…best used as a side dish

  3. Panchetta, crimini mushrooms & asparagus…pretty self explanatory…double of black pepper…lemon zest works well here at the very end

  4. pesto and anchovy risotto…heavily rinse the fish and add them earlier than recommended above…they will melt in the dish and give you a nice taste

  5. Fennel adds a nice twist to basic risotto

  6. One of my old school buddies makes a great gongonzola risotto…it’s a great side dish version…but too rich for a main dish

15

Just to go over something said earlier…

Actually, it doesn’t. 1 cup of rice for about two people, but it’s not purely scalar.

About Arborio/Carnaroli rice. Both of these kinds of rice are short grain rices. They have a different starch makeup than long grain rice, which is why you get a heavenly porridge from arborio, and nasty mush from long grain.

Two cookbooks that I think have stellar risotto recipes are Cucina Rustica, by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman and Verdura also by those two authors.

One of my favorite risottos is a springtime risotto with asparagus, also good with artichoke hearts. It’s really fun to experiment, I can’t think of too many vegetables that would go badly.

16

Yes, mangetout, I agree the stock is important, but making your own is a hassle for a weeknight quick meal. Unless you have some lurking in the freezer. I generally use Campbell’s chicken “Real Stock” in a box - do you get that where you are? Tetra packs of really quite good liquid stock. I’d never use a cube, but this stuff is OK, and with some white wine and lemon and strong tasting ingredients it works fine.

They also do fish, beef and veggie varieties. A friend of mine made a smoked salmon and asparagus risotto on Saturday with their fish stock, and it was excellent. We had it with a salad of mixed lettuces with lots of radicchio, and soft goat cheese and walnuts.

17

Oh, by the way: once you master risotto, you’re but a short step from making paella, another heavenly short-grain rice dish with a lovely caramelized crust on the bottom and fragrant saffron.