Chestnut Risotto

Simplicity of effect often takes considerable complication of means.

A chestnut risotto is basically starch over starch. Admittedly chestnust does have protein content but the mouth-feel is that of a chewy starchy product.

In order to not bore the palate with a monotonous texture, you must break it up.

The recipe consists of three parts — preparing the chestnuts, preparing a chestnut broth and making the actual risotto.

The complications make for a dish that is both rich in taste and texture.




Ingredients

2 lbs raw chestnuts

1/2 cup shallots (finely chopped)
1 cup carnaroli rice
3 cups broth (use dashi otherwise)

1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

olive oil
4 tbsp rosemary (finely chopped)

sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Please note the simplicity of the ingredients. The complexity comes in how they are manipulated.

Score the chestnuts with a knife with an X mark. Roast in an oven heated to 350°F for about 15 minutes.

While they are still warm, you must peel them. It's hard sweaty work and they don't peel as well when they cool down so your fingers are likely to feel the burn.

Inevitably, some of them will  be moldy. You must discard these.

Separate the chestnuts into whole ones and partial ones. Cut the whole ones into quarters and set aside.

Blend the partially broken ones with the broth. You may need to add some whole ones if there are not enough partial ones. Don't worry about blending them fine. Strain the broth from the now broken pieces.

These broken pieces act as the uneven textural interest. Put them away to let dry for a bit. (They need to be dry since they will get pan-fried later.)

Now, we prepare a standard risotto. Keep the chestnut broth just under boiling on a separate heater.

Fry the shallots in the olive oil. When limp (about 8 minutes), add the rice and let it fry for a bit. When the rice is translucent and coated with oil, you will be able to see the white rice kernels. Add he broken chestnut pieces and sautée for a bit (about 3-4 minutes.)

Add the whole chestnut pieces and the rosemary.

Now make the risotto. Alternately add the warm chestnut broth, and keep stirring till all the broth is used up and you get a creamy textured wet risotto.

Add the parmigiano-reggiano and serve at once with tons of black pepper.

Tomato Risotto with Oregano, Fennel & Feta

This recipe was originally by Diane Kochilas — a Greek adaptation of the Italian risotto — and it had the risotto cooked in Ouzo. (Can you hear the howls from Italy already?)

Anise tends to have an overpowering smell (at least to the CC) so he toned it down by using fresh fennel instead of Ouzo or Pernod.

Incidentally, fresh fennel is still plenty potent.

The feta does add a wonderfully creamy element, and the recipe tends towards the richer side because of the overpowering smell from the fennel and umami from the summer tomatoes.



Ingredients

8 ripe tomatoes
1 bulb fennel (finely chopped)
1 shallot (finely minced)
4 cloves garlic (finely minced)
2 cups carnaroli rice
4 cups broth.

2 tbsp fresh oregano (chopped)
1 tbsp lemon zest (optional)
olive oil
salt
black pepper

2/3 cup feta

Recipe

The original recipe has the tomatoes grated over a box grater but with summer tomatoes, it was easy enough to just pass them through a food mill.

Sautée the shallots, fennel and garlic in olive oil. Keep the broth on a simmer in a separate vessel near by.

Add the rice and fry making sure that each rice grain is covered in the oil.

Add the broth and the tomatoes alternately. Keep stirring the risotto until it absorbs all the broth. Make sure it's not over cooked. It should still have a bite (al dente) and the mixture should just be slightly on the wet side.

Stir in the feta, oregano and lemon zest at the end right before serving.

Pea-Broth Risotto

(Recipe: link.)

Goodness Gracious, Great Scapes of Garlic!

Nothing screams summer like the first garlic scapes. Clearly, the CC went just a tad overboard when he bought ten of them so it was inevitable that he would put them to good use.

If you've never had them, they have the mild pungency of garlic but a texture like that of asparagus stems which makes them quite versatile.

Garlic-Scape FritattaIngredients

2 garlic scapes (sliced real thin)
1 carrot (grated
3 eggs
1/4 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Heat the broiler.

Mix the ingredients. Heat a skillet at medium low heat. Toss in the mixture. When barely set (30 seconds) stick under the broiler for about 2 minutes.

You will need to keep checking when it's done otherwise it will burn. The bottom will set automatically because of the residual heat from the skillet.

Garlic-Scape RisottoRecipe Logic

The CC had garlic scapes so the idea of a garlic scape risotto was never far from his mind.

To add to the rustic taste, some mushrooms would be ideal. The CC happened to have large Chinese shiitake mushrooms which would augment the taste of the garlic scapes with their earthy flavor.

However, the dish would be too monochromatic visually and texturally incomplete so to punch it up a notch, the CC thought about adding a truffle breadcrumb topping. The truffles would complement the earthiness of the garlic scapes and mushrooms and add a textural component to the dish.

The silky risotto punched up with crunchy salty breadcrumbs is a wonderful early summer delight.

Ingredients

1 cup carnaroli rice
4 garlic scapes (cut into medium pieces)
1 head spring garlic (diced fine)
4 fresh Chinese shiitake mushrooms (cut lenghth-wise into thick strips)
2 cups white wine (one for the recipe, one for the chef)

3 cups broth

breadcrumbs
truffle salt
olive oil
1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Fry some breadcrumbs in olive oil and set aside on a paper towel to drain. When cool, add in some truffle salt and powder with a mortar and pestle.

The recipe follows the standard risotto template. Bring the broth to a boil and keep warm at a very low simmer.

In a separate pot, heat up some olive oil and fry the spring garlic at a medium heat (4 minutes.) Add the garlic scapes and fry for a bit (2 minutes.) Add the mushrooms and the rice, and fry for a bit (4 minutes.) Add the salt and pepper

Toss in the white wine and deglaze. Add a ladleful of the hot broth, and keep stirring. When the broth gets absorbed, add another and keep stirring. Broth and stir, broth and stir.

Towards the end, toss in the parmesan for the mantecura.

Serve with the truffle-breadcrumb topping.

Kabocha Risotto with Fried Sage and Pine nuts

This is just an epic recipe and exemplifies what is best about understanding the science of food. It combines Italian and Japanese elements in a transparent way so that what you get is much much greater than the sum of its parts.

You can make the broth and the risotto with minimal effort. (You may skip the instructions for making the "broth" if you already have some but this recipe shows you how to get away with making it "on the fly".)

But first, you must be aware of this particular culinary trick.

Secondly, you can streamline the ingredients and the pots so that there is very little wastage of either time or effort.

The important thing to note about kabocha is that unlike butternut squash, it doesn't need to be peeled. The skin is thin and edible and delicious. What you need to do is scrape it with a peeler to get the hard bits off. The Japanese adore this particular technique because it renders the squash with alternate dark and light green colors which is visually quite appealing.

Follow the instructions closely, and be amazed at what you can achieve on a weekday when you are "exhausted".

Ingredients

1/2 kabocha
1 large red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced very fine)
1 cup arborio rice
16-18 sage leaves
4 tbsp pine nuts

4 cups dashi

1 cup parmigiano-reggiano
salt
pepper

Recipe

First, soak the konbu in 5 cups of cold water. Let it sit for 30 minutes or so while you do some prep and/or enjoy a nice glass of wine.

The onion and garlic can be pulsed in a food processor. Just make sure that you don't purée them.

Heat the oven to 350°F and roast the pine nuts for 7 minutes. Set aside.

Cut up the kabocha into large pieces. Don't get too technical. Rough shapes are fine. Also, cut up a little bit of the kabocha into neat little diced pieces. Set aside.

Bring the water to a boil. Pull the konbu off just before it boils otherwise it will taste bitter. Toss the large kabocha pieces in. Let it simmer for 10-12 minutes at high heat to get the squash to soften. When done, blend the mixture in the pot, and keep at a very low simmer.

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pot. When hot but not smoking, toss in 6-8 of the largest sage leaves. Let them fry for about a minute and fish them out and set aside on some paper towels to absorb the oil.

In the same oil, toss in the onions and the garlic. Fry for 6 minutes or so until they are colored but not caramelized. Toss in the rice and fry for a bit. Add the salt and black pepper. Just before the broth, toss in the neatly diced kabocha pieces and fry for a bit.

Now comes the standardized risotto procedure. Toss in the blended kabocha broth and stir. Toss and stir, toss and stir, toss and stir.

Finally, the mantecura. Put in the parmigiano-reggiano and stir well.

When done, garnish the risotto with the fried sage leaves and the roasted pine nuts.

Squid-Ink Risotto

If you've never had it, this is one of the foods of the gods.


Recipe

2 cup vialone nano rice
3 shallots
4 cloves garlic
2 dried red chillies (crumbled fine)
2 squids (cleaned, cut into rounds)
2 tbsp squid ink

1 cup white wine
6 tomatoes (pulped with a food mill)
4 cups broth

3 tbsp thyme (substitute with rosemary)

olive oil
black pepper
sea salt

4 tbsp parsley (chopped, for garnish)

Ingredients

The recipe follows along the lines of a standard risotto with a few kinks.

Keep the broth on a simmer in a separate vessel.

Fry the shallots and the garlic in olive oil at a medium heat. Add the rice, and fry to make sure that each grain is coated in the olive oil. Add plenty of ground pepper, the red chillies and the salt. Add the white wine to deglaze, and stir. Add a ladle of hot broth along with the tomato puree. Bring to a boil stirring constantly. Add the squid ink.

The mixture will turn instantly from a pale red to a deep dark inky black. Keep adding ladlefuls of broth stirring constantly. Add the thyme/rosemary towards the end. Just before you are ready to serve, add the cleaned squid, and take the pot off the heat. (You don't want to overcook the squid.)

Serve immediately sprinkled with parsley preferably with a steely white wine.

That Italian-Japanese Cross-Connect

File this one under the "who-bloody-knew-but-obvious-in-retrospect"-category!

Turns out that "sushi rice" makes a more than excellent substitute for the arborio, or carnaroli in a classic risotto.

In fact, both rices belong to the same japonica family, the key characteristic of which is that they are glutinous (= starchy, sticky) and not "long-grained" like basmati.

Smack to the forehead, deliciousness for dinner.

Revisiting Ol' Favorites

How quickly doth a fairly ambitious dish that you once made turn into a "staple"!

Good cooks never talk about this but as their technique deepens, they get very good at formerly complex tasks. "Fancy" dishes turn routine that they can do at a moment's notice with minimal kerfuffle.

It's called learning and it's useful to remember that all those slave years in the galley kitchen were not wasted. Most importantly, all that separates you from you from the great chefs is plain ol'-fashioned hard work (and an understanding of technique.)

This is a great dish. What makes it great is the both the elegance of its concept, and the fact that it can be endlessly reshuffled to align with the seasons and the ingredients at hand.

The older recipe required — arugula, corn, carrots, sage.

This version — radicchio, peas, carrots, rosemary.

You should be able to see the infamous shuffle yourself.

Speaking of shuffling, what would your inner Italian Grandma think of these "crab balls"? Bet she's thinking about how delicious they would be in her mouth!

Risotto with Crab Balls

Cauliflower Risotto (Risotto al Cavalfiori)

Lust is not easy to portray on a blog but this recipe deserves it.

That it's made out of "winter" ingredients makes it one of the worst portrayals of lust in the repertoire so why not indulge the CC for a change, and trust his judgment?

Parallelization is essential to success here if you plan make this on a weekday. Basically, the cauliflower needs to get in the oven first so that it can start roasting while you chop the rest of the stuff, and do the pangrattato (breadcrumb topping.)

Also, this is one of those cases where a non-stick skillet is your best friend. Of course, you can also go ahead and fry the topping which would be both be super-indulgent and traditional.

Homemade stock is a plus here but you could get away with just water but it won't be the same. The CC recommends that you make a quick dashi while the cauliflower is roasting.

A food processor and blender will make quick work of a few steps if you let it. It's a lot faster than the mortar and pestle, and as you will see, quite irrelevant to the final result.

Just for the record, the CC used a mortar and pestle on a weekday. It takes all kinds to inhabit the world ...


Ingredients

1 head cauliflower (cut into florets)
3 leeks (chopped very fine)
2 cups arborio (or carnaroli rice)
2 sprigs rosemary (finely chopped)

4 cups stock
2 cups water
salt
pepper
1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

1/2 cup breadcrumbs
4 anchovies (preferably in salt "prepped".)
2 dried red chillies

1/2 cup pine nuts

Recipe

Toss the cauliflower florets with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in a 400°F oven for 35-40 minutes until lightly browned.

Meanwhile, chop the leeks.

Dump the breadcrumbs, anchovies, and red chillies into the food-processor and process. Roast the mixture on a skillet in olive oil, and set aside. This is the pangrattato topping.

While the cauliflower is roasting, roast the pine nuts on a skillet until lightly browned. They are there for texture, and protein.

Take half of the cauliflower, add 2 cups of cold water, and the rosemary and blend to a fine paste.

(Why is the water cold? Because with the hot cauliflower, you will get to blend it quickly without dealing with the blender's heat-explosion. Only people who have never blended will fail to understand this subtle point.)

Keep the stock warm at a barely visible simmer.

Now, make the standard risotto. Fry the leeks, fry the rice, alternately add the hot stock, and the cauliflower paste. Towards the end dump in cauliflower, and the rosemary.

Last but not least, the mantecura. Mix in the parmigiano-reggiano.

Serve with the roasted pine-nut and pangrattato.

Oh, The Horror, The Horror!

Today, while idly searching the web, the CC came across recipes for "no-rice risotto".

Really people?!?

Heck, even the Italians have experimented with variations with barley and spelt (and generally treated the results with various degrees of horror) but seriously?!?

No-rice in risotto which quite literally is etymologically related to rice?

Next up: roasted chicken minus the roasting or the chicken.

Corn Risotto with Crab Balls

This will appear to be a difficult recipe. However, if the CC can make it on a weekday, so can you.

It's called prep and advance planning. Also, if you read the recipe carefully, you will see that there are fairly obvious "synergies" between the three sections. If you use your time wisely, and this is a skill, you will see that this is a fairly simple recipe.

The herbs are fairly interchangeable. You will get great results with basil, rosemary, sage, or thyme. Tarragon can be a little overpowering so should be used with a spare hand. Combinations also work.

After the recipe below, the CC presents the underlying logic -- why is this dish the way it is? (Hopefully, this section will turn into a regular trend.)

This level of analysis which explains the harmony of flavors, aesthetics, nutrition and palate feel is absolutely necessary if you want to get to the "next level" in cooking.


Ingredients

Corn Broth

6 cobs corn (shucked, keep the cobs)
1 large red onion
sage

Crab Balls

1/2 cup crabmeat
1/2 carrot (grated - read below what to with the remaining half carrot)
1 red serrano (yes! it must be red)
2 eggs
breadcrumbs
sage (chopped very fine)

Corn Risotto

4 leeks (chopped fine, white parts only)
2 cups arborio rice (or carnaroli or vialone nano.)
1/2 carrot (grated)
1 cup parmigiano reggiano
1 cup chopped wild greens with a bitter edge (mizuna, arugula, etc.)
1 cup white wine
sage (chopped very fine)
black pepper

olive oil

Recipe

Prepare the corn broth. This step can be done ahead of time.

Sweat the onions in olive oil. Add the cobs, half of the corn kernels and the sage. Fry languidly for 5-7 minutes. Cover with water, and bring to a boil. Skim the impurities, and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove the cobs, blend the mixture, and pass through a fine sieve. (Yes, this is a lot of work. Deal with it!)

Combine the crabmeat, very finely chopped serrano, grated carrot, two eggs, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. The mixture should be loose but fashionable into balls. Create small balls out of them. Pan fry them in a skillet with a layer of olive oil, and drain on paper towels.

Now, we prepare a standard risotto. Keep the corn broth on a simmer.

Fry the leeks languidly (4-6 minutes.) Add the rice, and fry till the kernels of the rice are visible. Add the white wine and stir. Add ladles of the broth, and stir. Repeat.

Two-thirds of the way in, add the grated carrot. Towards the end, add the greens and the rest of the corn kernels.

Add the grated parmigianio-reggiano and the sage.

Plate.

Recipe Logic

The basic idea started as a corn risotto.

The CC had some corn soup in his kitchen, and it made sense to turn it into a broth, and make the risotto. However, this would've been too mundane - monochromatic if you will - corn flavor would, of course, be amazing but there is nothing to make the dish either visually interesting or amazing on the second bite. For that, we need contrast. Also, there is not enough protein in the dish.

Hence, the need for a topping. Mushrooms were considered but the season for chanterelles is long past. Seared scallops would've been a complete winner. That would be one direction to go into but it was a bit of a cliché. Plus, the texture would be soft on soft. Not a recipe for a knockout.

So the CC went in the direction of a different cliché -- corn and crab -- a classic in many cuisines -- French, American, Vietnamese. From the seared scallops, the CC went with crab cakes but they are mundane so the CC punched it up with a slight sweetness and color (carrot) and spice (serrano). You get a textural contrast as a free bonus -- the soft, wet risotto punched up by a crisp crab ball.

Now, to make the color act as tie-in to the balls as well as a visual punchline, a slight bit of grated carrot would work in the risotto but it would make the dish too sweet (with the corn, corn broth, etc.) so the CC added a base note of bitter greens which also add a dash of green color.

The herbs tie it all together. By making them identical across the board, the dish has a coherent feel.

Please note that the dish has both the aesthetics and nutritional complexity of the very Japanese washoku.

Summer Risotto

This is a glorious farewell-to-summer treat.

At the farmers' market, the tomatoes were glorious but nobody wanted any because "summer was over" - well, it's not - the CC is still blasting fans and the occasional air-conditioning. That's the problem with going by dates rather than weather. Things are not always quite so.

Anyway, a crazy number of tomatoes were bought, and logic necessitated that a last ta-ta to summer was in order.

This is riot of colors (as you can see below.) Oddly enough, it also happens to follow the traditional rules of the Japanese washoku.


Ingredients

6 pounds ripe summer tomatoes (yep! you heard that right)

1 small yellow squash
1 small zucchini

1 ear corn (if available.)
1 cup peas (freshly shelled)

1/4 cup green beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup purple beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup yellow beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup Italian flat beans (cut to resemble the above)

1 large red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced very fine)
2 cups arborio rice (or carnaroli.)
purple basil (lots!!!, shredded by hand or snipped with scissors)

3 cups excellent white wine (1 cup for recipe, 2 cups to drink)

olive oil
salt
pepper
1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

Bring a pot of water to boil. Dunk the tomatoes in batches for about 8 minutes each (depending on ripeness.) Pass the lot through a food mill to get a rich broth of tomatoes. You should have about 8-12 cups of tomato broth. (This is work. Deal!)

Bring the tomato broth to a slow boil. A lot of foam will rise to the surface. Skim, baby, skim.

Reduce the broth for about 45-60 minutes until it is "sticky" (Logic: this is the Maillard reaction with some caramelization taking place.) This is the "hard" part but since, it quite literally requires no work, it cannot really be called that.

Reconstitute with water to bring it back up to the original 8 cups.

Now, we prepare a standard risotto.

On a seperate burner, keep the above tomato broth at a low simmer. It doesn't have to literally simmer just that it needs to be on the hot side so as to not drop the temperature of the risotto when you dunk a ladleful in.

Fry the onions and the garlic at a medium-low heat for about 6 minutes. Add the beans, and fry for an additional 4 minutes. Add the zucchini and yellow squash and fry for an additional 4 minutes. Add the rice and fry till the rice is translucent and the kernel of the rice is visible (this is really obvious if you actually make this recipe as opposed to just reading this post.)

Add salt and pepper to taste. At this point, the CC adds a cup of white wine he's been drinking (read below!)

Add two ladles of the hot tomato broth, and stir. Keep stirring while it cooks. You are releasing the starch in this process. Ladles of broth and stir, ladles of broth and stir. Yes, this is fuckin' boring but deal with it. Have the afore-mentioned white wine.

Towards the end, add the corn and the peas (Logic: they cook really quickly, and you don't want them to turn into mush.)

Turn off the heat.

Add the grated parmigiano-reggiano (the mantecura), and the purple basil. Serve immediately with lots of black pepper.

Pea-Broth Risotto

This recipe has summery goodness written all over it. It's a bit of work but not so much if you have an immersion blender (a "magic" tool, if ever there was one!)

Ingredients

1 lb organic unshelled peas (yeah, it needs to be organic!)
1 cup carnaroli rice
1 large red onion (diced)
basil
olive oil
basil
black pepper
salt
1 cup parmigiano-reggiano



Recipe

Shell the peas. Retain the shells. We are going to use the shells, and hence they need to be organic.

Fry half of the red onion for at least 4 minutes. Add the shells and fry at a low heat for at least 5-6 minutes. Add salt and pepper, and 4 cups of water. Bring to a simmer, and simmer at a low heat for 20 minutes.

Blend the mixture. The pods are absurdly fibrous and will not really blend. Strain the mixture through a sieve, and toss the fibrous part. You will be left with a lovely pale-green pea broth.

Bring the pea broth to a low simmer.

Now, we make a standard risotto using the pea broth.

Fry the rest of the diced onions in some olive oil. Add in the rice. Fry for a bit until translucent. Add the broth in ladle, and stir. Broth and stir, broth and stir, broth and stir till the risotto is almost done.

Add the peas towards the end. They will cook very fast. Add the basil as well.

Finally, the mantecura with the parmigiano-reggiano.

If ever there was green sex in a bowl, this would be it!

Risotto with Vegetables and Rosemary

The first early summer vegetables are here. Risotto was called for.

This one contains squash, carrots, peas, corn, and rosemary.

If you chop the rosemary as well as add whole pines, you will get both the fragrance as well as this bitter edge that adds a low bass note as counterpoint to the alto sweetness of the carrots and peas.

White Bean Risotto with Mushrooms

We've encountered something like this before but the CC can't invent new tricks all the time. You gotta revisit the old ones from time to time.

Difference is he added dashi (= umami) infused with mushrooms as the broth, and added some wild mushrooms to the mix.


(Recipe: link.)

Risotto with Borlotti Beans & Rosemary

There is only one thing to say about this - creamy.

Sex-on-a-plate!!! (and in the sack too if you make this right!)

Ingredients

2 cups (fresh) borlotti beans (see instructions below for dried)
2 cups carnaroli rice
1 large red onion
6-8 cloves garlic (read instructions below)
2 sprigs rosemary (finely chopped)
1/2 cup white wine
4 cups broth (homemade)
1/4 cup chopped parsley
2 tbsp butter

sea salt
lots of black pepper
1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

In a pot, combine the fresh borlotti beans, 4 cloves of garlic, some sea salt. Cover with water, and bring to a boil. Simmer at high for 4-5 minutes, then reduce the temperature and let it simmer at a low heat for 25 mins until borlotti are cooked but not soggy. You may need to add more water. (For dried borlotti, this will be closer to 45 minutes.)

Do NOT use the pressure cooker. Yes, the CC is a fan of that instrument but you need the liquor (bean broth) made the ol'-fashioned way.

Separate the beans and the liquor. Combine about 1/4 cup of the beans, the liquor and blend. Should yield about 1 1/2 cups of the bean puree.

Dice the onions and garlic fine in the meanwhile.

Heat the broth in a pot and bring to a low simmer.

In another pot, heat some butter and fry the onions and garlic at a languid heat for 6-8 minutes. Add the rice and coat it all over with the fat. The rice will glisten. Cook for about 3 minutes. Add the white wine, the rosemary and the black pepper.

Add the hot broth and the bean puree in alternation so that it doesn't cool substantially. Keep stirring. This disturbs the surface starch of the rice and gets it into the broth. That makes the risotto creamy.

Towards the end, add the rest of the beans. Add the parm just after taking it off the heat.

Serve with parsley and black pepper on top.

PS :- After the carb-OD, you may be too pooped to make whoopie. Can't have everything!

Black, Blacker, Blackest

Risotto Nero

Zucchini and Rosemary Risotto

This is truly the last of the zucchini before summer fades. They are all tiny because they need to be harvested before they spoil.

This recipe is a bit of work because you have to do everything twice but the results are just too too delicious.


Ingredients

3 large red onions (separate into 2 + 1)
8 zucchinis (6 + 2)
6 rosemary sprigs (5 + 1)

2 cups carnaroli (or vialone nano)

broth (homemade obviously)
sea salt
black pepper

parmigiano-reggiano (grated)

Recipe

Part 1

Cut 2 red onions into semi-circles. Chop the 6 zucchini coarsely. Separate the rosemary from the 5 twigs.

(No need to get fancy here. It's all going in a blender.)

Fry the onions in olive oil languidly. This will take the better part of 8 minutes. Add the zucchini, and fry for a bit. Do not hurry this step! This is crucial to success. This will also take the better part of 10 minutes. Finally, add the rosemary, sea salt and black pepper. Fry for a bit. Add water (or broth), and let it cook until the zucchini has softened and is edible.

Dump the melange into a blender and blend till puréed.

Then, pass the whole thing through a fine tamis.

Yes, this last step is totally necessary.

Part 2

Dice the other onion. Dice the other 2 zucchinis into cubes.

Standard procedure for risotto. You need the broth simmering at a low heat.

Fry the onions; fry the rice. Add the zucchini paste (above) and boiling broth alternately so the temperature doesn't drop. Also, the sea salt and pepper. Add the rosemary and zucchini towards the end. The zucchini will cook quickly because of its small size.

Finally, the mantecura with the grated parm.

Risotto Verde

Literally what it sounds like. A "green" risotto.

Delicious beyond words. Summer delight in every creamy mouthful.

Ingredients

The "greens" (verde)

1 lb spinach
1/2 cup peas
1 cup mint

1 red onion (finely diced)
2 garlic cloves (smashed)
2 stalks celery (thinly sliced)
1/2 cup peas

2 cups rice (carnaroli or vialone nano)

2 cups broth (homemade)

rosemary
parmigiano-reggiano (grated)

sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

Blanch the spinach. Blanch the peas (if using frozen.) Blend the spinach, peas, and mint in a blender.

The rest is obvious. We've done enough risottos on this blog.

Fry the onions, the celery, the rice until translucent. Add the rosemary, sea salt, black pepper, second batch of green peas.

Add the broth and "green stuff" alternately so as to not drop the temperature. Stir, stir, stir.

No, that picture hasn't been doctored nor have any artificial ingredients been added. It really looks that color of "radioactive green".

Add the parm at the end for the mantecura. Serve piping hot with some black pepper on top.

Risotto verde

Pumpkin Risotto

Well, it's the season and all so what better way to spend a bitterly cold evening than cooking a delicious pumpkin risotto?

First, the CC hied himself to the farmers' market where two small pumpkins, and two leeks were sourced.

After that, the CC made a jaunty saunter to his freezer where previously frozen vegetable stock could be obtained.

Ingredients

1 red onion (diced fine)
2 leeks (diced fine)
2 small pumpkins (or 1 large one)
1 stick cinnamon

2 cups vialone nano, or carnaroli rice

freshly shaved parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

We roast cut the pumpkins, sprinkle salt and pepper over them, invert them over some water, and roast at 400F for 45 mins in a tightly covered pan.


When they are cool, scrape out the flesh. It should be roasted and very soft. Mash it to a pulp.

Here's the mise-en-scène.

First, the roasted mashed pumpkin.


Here are the diced onions and leeks.


Here is the grated parmigiano-reggiano.


Add the stick of cinnamon to the vegetable broth, and keep on a low simmer.


Sauté the onions on a medium-low heat. The point is soften them by evaporating their water. Do not let them brown.


Add the leeks, and sauté for a bit.


Then, add the rice and let the oil coat each grain. Do not worry if they toast just a little bit.


Now, here's the trick. You want to ladle hot broth into the rice so that the temperature does not fall. Plus, you would like to add the pumpkin.

So alternate! Broth, pumpkin; broth, pumpkin.



Finally, the mantecura. Tasty milk fats to finish off the risotto. First take the pot off the fire, then add the shaved parmigiano-reggiano.


Doesn't that look gorgeously yummy?