Bears, beer, and risotto

I know it’s been a while.  I’ve been off in the semi-wilds of Canada for nearly a month, fighting off bears with my bare hands and riding moose.  Actually, the closest I came to bears was from a kayak while they were turning over enormous rocks on a Vancouver Island beach.  I was happy to have some water between them and my small fiberglass shell.  I didn’t manage to spot one moose, even from afar.  I did eat lots of delicious ribs, hamburgers, poutine, all sorts of cakes, and drank lots of micro-brewed beer instead. That means there’s a little more of me that’s come back from Canada than when I left.  I promise that there will be more about Canada in later posts, but right now, I’m here to talk about risotto with seafood and peas.  Why?  Because that’s what I made for dinner last night and I had some leftovers to take photos of.  As an extra added bonus, it also tastes good!

The long running joke

I happened to have a bag of frozen squid rings, shrimps and mussels at the ready, so that was what I used in this risotto along with the peas.  If you have hankerings for other kinds of shellfish, or prefer to just use squid rings or shrimps, go right ahead.  The dish is very forgiving. I suggest cutting the squid rings into strips and peeling and de-veining the shrimp before you cook them in the risotto.  My frozen seafood was precooked, so they only needed to be added to the risotto for a couple of minutes to heat through.

Oh, the shells are all from a beach called Matapouri in New Zealand, if you’re wondering.  I plan to put some of them in the garden here in France as a very long-term joke on archaeologists who may excavate this area in about 500 years.  Can you imagine how confused they will be to find shell particles from the other end of the world?

This is similar to a risotto I posted on Italian Kiwi a couple of years ago for shrimp and pea risotto, which I had completely forgotten about until I started writing this post.

Travel Photo Of The Week

As this post has a marine feel, here’s a photo I took yesterday on the beach.  The hoards of tourists have finally hung up their jandals (flip-flops to you none Kiwis) and snorkels and headed north again, so we can find a bit of sand on the beaches along the Cote d’Azur.  This one is on the east side of Cannes.  Just so you know, if you want to come the the South-East of France to do a bit of beach-going and sight-seeing, now is the perfect time as the french and Italian kids are just about to go back to school, the water is still warm, and the outside temperature is pleasant and not too hot, so it’s actually fun to go sight-seeing.  Don’t tell the locals that I told you, as this is the time we all cherish: when we have the place to ourselves!

By Lisa Watson

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Risotto with seafood and peas

Seafood risotto is very flexible as you can add the seafood you like most and it will taste great every time!

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 400 g Arborio or Carnaroli rice 2 cups
• 4 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1/2 Onion
• 1 clove Garlic
• 250 g Prawns, mussels, squid rings 1/2 lb
• 80 ml White Wine 1/3 cup
• 80 g Peas 1/2 cup
• 5 Tbsp Tomato Puree
• Boiling water or Stock
• 1 Vegetable or Fish Bouillon Cube if using water
• 1 tsp Salt
• to taste White Pepper

Instructions

• Heat the stock, or the stock cube in water in a large pot on the stove until it is simmering.
• While the stock is heating, finely chop the onion, and mince the garlic. If the seafood is frozen, thaw it by placing it in a colander and running cold water over it.
• Heat the olive oil in a different large, heavy-based pot.  Saute the onion and garlic until the onion becomes translucent.
• Add the rice and stir until it browns slightly.
• Add the white wine and let it boil off.
• Pour in enough heated stock to cover the rice mixture,  and put the timer on for 13 minutes.
• Add  the salt and stir in.
• As the rice is cooking, watch the level of the water.  As it goes down, add stock from the simmering pot, one ladle-full (or cupful) at a time. Stir the rice often.
• After 6 minutes of cooking, add the peas, and tomato puree and seafood (if it is uncooked).
• As the time gets to around 10 minutes, add precooked seafood. Start tasting the rice to see how done it is. The type of rice you have may vary the cooking times. If it's close to being cooked, don't add any more stock and let the water in the rice boil off, stirring frequently.
• Serve while hot with optional white pepper.

The vagarities of Spring

Spring is here with its fickle weather.  It’s the time of the year that shouts out to you from its blue sky that it’s beautifully sunny so that you pull that light clothing out from the back of your wardrobe where it has been hibernating for the Winter. You strap on some light sandals as well, and say to yourself that it will be silly to take a pullover as you’ll just end up carrying it rather than wearing it. Once you are too far from the house to change, Spring magics up a seething mass of storm clouds from nowhere to pour some rain on you. Just in case you were starting to get complacent.

Asparagus everywhere

One of the positive sides of Spring, aside from flowers popping up everywhere, bees buzzing around, and trees turning into a mass of bright green, is the asparagus that starts appearing in the shops.  I’ve told you about the late beginning of my love affair with asparagus when I started working in Germany in a town next to Schwetzingen which proclaims itself “the world asparagus capital”.  I tasted asparagus for the first time and was hooked! This year, at the market, I was delighted to find a wild asparagus (the thin ones in the photo above) as well as the regular green ones.  I have been told that I can go out and pick it myself but I’m always scared of picking plants in the wild and then poisoning everyone (I think that’s a fear I  gained after reading and seeing “Into The Wild“), so I’ll just go ahead and let someone else do the gathering and then sell it to me.

The perfect dish to make with these two types of asparagus was risotto.  If you can find it, get some of the purple asparagus and some white (yes it comes in rainbow colours!) to make the dish really pretty.

Travel Photo Of The Week

Nothing says Spring more on the Cote d’Azur than finding all the blue chairs by the sea in Nice full of people enjoying the balmy breeze and the beach view. At this time of the year, you can often tell who the locals are as they are still wearing vests or jackets, while the tourists are already sporting Summer clothing.

by Lisa Watson

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Risotto with asparagus

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp Olive oil
• 2 cups Arborio or Carnaroli rice
• 1/2 Onion
• 500 g Asparagus 1.1 lb
• 125 ml White wine 3/4 cup
• 1 Vegetable Stock Cube 2L/ 8 cups vegetable broth
• 1 tsp Salt
• 40 g Grated Parmesan Cheese + more to taste
• White pepper to taste

Instructions

• Heat the stock, or the stock cube in water in a pot on the stove until it is simmering.
• While the stock is heating, finely chop the onion and peel the stalks of the asparagus if woody, then chop the asparagus into short lengths of about 3 cm ( 1 inch).
• Heat the olive oil in a different large, heavy-based pot.  Saute the onion until it becomes translucent.
• Add the rice and stir until it browns slightly.
• Add the chopped asparagus and stir in.
• Add the white wine and let it boil off.
• Pour in enough heated stock to cover the rice mixture. and put the timer on for 13 minutes.
• Add  the salt and stir in.
• As the rice is cooking, watch the level of the water.  As it goes down, add stock from the simmering pot, one ladle-full (or cupful) at a time. Stir the rice often.
• As the time gets to around 12 minutes, start tasting the rice to see how done it is. The type of rice you have may vary the cooking times. If it's close to being cooked, don't add any more stock and let the water in the rice boil off, stirring frequently.
• Just before you take the risotto off the heat, add the Parmesan cheese and stir it in.
• Sprinkle with white pepper and serve.

How to win over your guests and destroy your enemies using risotto

If you’re looking for a first course to win over your guests and destroy your enemies, then you’ve come to the right place.  Risotto made with Prosecco (or any dry sparkling white wine) makes an elegant start to a meal.  Actually, I’m not sure how you will destroy your enemies with risotto, unless you dump a truck-load of it on top of them, but it will make any dinner guests glad that they took up your dinner invitation! It is very typical to eat risotto or pasta as a start to a long festive meal.  It is usually preceded by many aperitifs , and followed by some kind of meat dish and three or four different sides, then dessert, then coffee, then a liqueur like grappa to try to settle all that food jostling around in your stomach.  It’s no surprise that in Italian, there is a word for the sleepiness you feel after eating a big meal for lunch: it’s called *l’abbiocco*. This is one of those untranslatable words that they should really think up a word for in English.  We English-speakers get our own back though for the fact that Italians don’t have a word for “toes”; they just call them “feet fingers” (dita dei piedi)!

Tips to make risotto even more elegant

If you’re looking to make this risotto even more sumptuous, you could drizzle some truffle oil over it just before serving, or ever scatter tiny pieces of chopped up truffle over the top of it; that is if you can get your hands on a truffle. This year because of the long drought, truffles in Italy are in short supply.

This risotto is very delicate in taste, so I highly recommend using homemade stock, or a good store-bought one, as most of the flavour comes from this ingredient.  You can find the recipe here

You can read about other recipe ideas to make your holiday season truly Italian here are a few more ideas from some wonderful Italian bloggers:

Daniela of La Dani Gourmet will be tempting us with a delicious sweet treat called torrone morbido,

Carmen of The Heirloom Chronicles baked a Sicilian Christmas pastries called Ciascuni, 

Francesca from Pancakes And Biscotti warmed us up with Italian Hot Chocolate

By Lisa Watson

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Risotto with Prosecco and Hazelnuts

Amaze you guests with this recipe for Risotto with Prosecco and Hazelnuts!

Course entree, first course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 35 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 400 g Canaroli or aborio rice 2 cups
• 1 small Onion
• 200 ml Prosecco 3/4 cup
• Vegetable or Chicken Stock
• 60 g Hazelnuts 2.1 oz
• 40 g Grated Parmesan Cheese 4 Tbsp
• 1 tsp Salt

Instructions

• Toast the hazelnuts by putting them in a small dry frying pan and cooking them at a moderate temperature on the stove-top for 5 minutes.  Let cool, then chop roughly.
• Heat the stock in a pot on the stove until it is simmering.
• While the stock is heating, finely chop the onion.
• Heat 4 Tbsp of olive oil in a different large, heavy-based pot.  Saute the onion until it becomes translucent.
• Add the rice and stir until it browns slightly.
• Add the prosecco and let it boil off.
• Pour in enough heated stock to cover the rice mixture. and put the timer on for 13 minutes.
• Add  the salt and stir in.
• As the rice is cooking, watch the level of the water.  As it goes down, add water from the simmering pot, one ladle-full (or cupful) at a time. Stir the rice often.
• As the time gets to around 12 minutes, start tasting the rice to see how done it is. The type of rice you have may vary the cooking times. If it's close to being cooked, don't add any more water and let the water in the rice boil off, stirring frequently.
• Just before you take the risotto off the heat, add the Parmesan cheese and stir it in.
• Sprinkle the risotto with the chopped hazelnuts before serving.

The story of the ravening monster and the pumpkin

This week, I’m starting with a very sad story of emerging life, and sudden loss.  I had a pumpkin plant sprouting in my vegetable garden. Every day it unfurled its leaves and grew bigger and longer. Unfortunately, also the weeds around it basked in the warmth of the early Autumn sun and grew overnight into a giant forest of prickly heads that covered the valiant pumpkin plant from view. An ignorant monster (that would…ahem….be me), flew into a frenzy and pulled out all the weeds in large handfuls.  In this fit of frantic gardening, the monster snagged some of the pumpkin plant and snapped the growing stem off at ground level. No amount of roaring and gnashing of teeth (nor superglue) could bring the pumpkin plant back to life, thus the monster was forced to go to the supermarket this year to buy pumpkins.  And that my friends, is why you should never let the weeds in your garden grow too much.

A Fall-coloured risotto

So, I went to the supermarket and got a wonderful butternut squash to make this pumpkin and speck risotto.  I know in my heart-of-hearts that the risotto I would have made with a pumpkin from my own departed pumpkin plant would have been much more satisfying, but what can you do? This pumpkin risotto is a wonderful way to kick off the Fall season.  The orange of the pumpkin and the brown of the speck seem like sprinkles of falling Autumn leaves mixed in with the rice (aren’t I just so poetic today!). Of course leaves mixed in with rice would taste revolting, but pumpkin and speck make a very tasty combination.

If you can’t get speck, either use raw Italian ham, or bacon.  The recipe I’ve written below is for making risotto in a pressure cooker.  If you want the traditional way of making it, click here to read the instructions.

Travel Photo Of The Week

This photo comes from the area of Italy called the Veneto region, near Venice, where they often use pumpkin in pasta and risotto dishes. This hill town is called Bassano del Grappa, and if you haven’t guessed already, it’s where they are renown for making grappa, a strong liqueur made from the bits that are left over after the wine-making process.  It has, of course, a museum dedicated to grappa, where you can have tastings then reel out of the museum and fall into the river.  It also has a beautiful wooden bridge and old town to wander around in.

By Lisa Watson

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Pumpkin and bacon risotto

Pumpkin and Speck risotto makes a wonderfully colorful first course or all-in-one meal to celebrate the flavors of the Fall season.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes minutes

Total Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 250 g Butternut Squash 8.8 oz
• 1 half Onion
• 1 cup Carnaroli or Arborio Rice
• 1/3 cup White Wine
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 Chicken or Vegetable Bouillion Cube
• 1 1/2 cups Hot Water
• 40 g Speck 1.4 oz or bacon
• 4 Tbsp Parmesan Cheese

Instructions

• Finely chop the onion. Peel the pumpkin and chop it into small cubes. Dissolve the bouillion cube and salt in the hot water.
• Heat 3 Tbsp of olive oil in a pressure cooker. When it is hot, fry the onion for 2 -3 minutes. Add the pumpkin and sauté it for 5 -10 minutes, stirring often.
• Add the rice and sauté, until it starts to brown slightly.  Stir the mixture often.
• Add the wine and let it boil off.
• Add the water mixture and stir everything together.
• Put the lid on the pressure cooker.  Let it start to whistle and then turn down the heat to medium-low and cook for 6 minutes.
• While the risotto is cooking, slice the speck finely.
• Take the lid off the pressure cooker and stir the risotto vigourously to crush some of the cubes of pumpkin.
• Add the speck and grated parmesan cheese and mix in.
• Serve immediately.

I found some fresh peas in the supermarket the other day and decided that I needed to eat them immediately, if not sooner……but how to have them?  My mind worked furiously….hmmm…I suddenly remembered the kids were at the canteen at school this lunchtime, so they wouldn’t be home to complain about eating shrimps (don’t ask me why they do, but they always do!)……peas and shrimps together go perfectly, and also SAFFRON!  (Another “weird yellow thing” that my kids don’t like to eat much), so it was decided: I made risotto with shrimps, fresh peas and saffron, and it was so amazingly good that I wanted to tell you all about it!

I actually love eating raw peas straight out of the pod.  They’re so crunchy and sweet!  So, there were a few less peas in the risotto  with shrimps than there were meant to be.  You can always add more that the quantity I’ve written down if you manage not to eat them before you throw them in with the risotto!

I remember eating risotto with saffron for the first time in Milan.  At the time I was ….as they say in the UK….”fresh off the boat”.  I’d just arrived in England a couple of months before, and was traveling haphazardly around Europe with almost no money, cutting my hair with a Swiss Army Knife and eating mainly bread and marmite.  We were puddling around in Greece, when a friend wrote to us using the Poste Restante system. For those who grew up in the age of cell phones and internet, this is a service where you can send letters to a post office , say in Athens, and they will hold those letters for a few months until the person they’re addressed to passes by and picks them up. Yes, I know….it’s archaic! Anyway, this friend wrote that he was actually traveling for BUSINESS, and so had a business account for eating. He was going to be in Milan the next week!  We needed a good meal so we immediately high-tailed it on the next ferry out to Italy.  He took us to one of the poshest restaurants in Milan, which tried to seat us in the most discreet place possible thanks to our torn jeans, hiking boots and backpacks.  We ate risotto al zafferano and drank way too much wine. The waiter kept coming to ask us if we wanted the check, but much to his snobby horror, we kept saying , “No, not yet!” and ordering more wine and making lots of noise. The poor waiter must have been SO relieved when we showed that we could actually afford to pay for the meal, and when we finally weaved our way out of the restaurant. Since then, saffron has always held a special memory for me. Unfortunately, I also remember the Youth Hostel we stayed in was a nightmare of screaming Italian children on a school trip who ran up and down the halls until 3am. Great memories! I’m afraid I have no photos of Milan to put up as that time was “pre-digital”, so instead I’ll leave you with a photo of the “Langhe”, which is a beautiful, not terribly well known wine region just south of Turin and South-West of Milan.  Ok, this has nothing to do with saffron, or risotto, but isn’t it nice?

You can use the pressure cooker method to make the risotto ai gamberetti if you have one, which is what I’ve written into the instructions below.  If you don’t own one of these kitchen wonders, follow this link to make risotto the regular way. Follow the basic instructions for adding the broth, and use wine instead of beer, peas instead of spinach, shrimp instead of sausage, and saffron instead of, well….nothing…..it is very good without too!

By Lisa Watson

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Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 15 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 1 cup Arborio or Carnaroli rice
• 125 ml 1/2 cup White wine
• 1 Vegetable boullion cube
• 150 g 5oz Small precooked shrimps
• 250 g peas in their shells approx 100g/1/3 cup of shelled peas Peas
• one packet of powder or a few strands Saffron
• 2 cups Water or broth
• 1 tsp Salt
• to taste Pepper

Instructions

• Heat 2 -3 tablespoons of olive oil in the pressure cooker. Add the rice and saute, stirring frequently, until it starts to brown a little.
• Pour in the wine and let it boil off.
• Add the water or broth, the bouillon cube if using, and the saffron. Then add the salt.
• Add the shelled peas.
• Stir everything, then close the lid of the pressure cooker.
• When it starts to whistle, put a timer on for 6 minutes.
• In the mean time, if the shrimps are uncooked, sautee them in a little olive oil until they turn pink.
• When the timer goes off, run the cooker under cold water, then open it.  Depending on what rice you have used, it may be already of perfect consistency, or it may be still a little liquid.  If there is too much water, put the pot back on the heat and let some more of the water boil off for a few minutes.
• Put in the shrimps and stir.
• You could serve the risotto with finely chopped parsley sprinkled over the top of it.

What are arancine?

When you go to Sicily (I’d love to write “whenever” meaning that you and I go often!), you see arancine sold everywhere.  I first discovered them when I went to Sicily for the first time. Ha! This is for those of you who have been reading my posts for a while: you thought you were finally free of me talking about fabulous Sicily!  This one’s for you! Before you starting groaning and slinking away from the computer screen, just wait a sec.  You need to hear about arancine, and these kind of rice balls in general, as I KNOW that all of you are making risotto now after reading about how easy it is here, and often have some leftovers.  This is the perfect way to recycle the risotto that otherwise sits in the fridge and eventually gets thrown out because you forget about it.

Now, if you want to add more to the mix than just risotto:

The sequence of photos you see here are to help you make the slightly more complicated arancine, which have ragu in the middle of them, but making fried rice balls out of leftover risotto without adding the ragu in the middle are also very good.  You can use any kind of cooked risotto you like for that, as long as it is not too liquid.  If you want to go the whole way and make arancine, it’s better to have risotto that is just flavoured with Parmesan cheese.

The “real” arancine that you find in Sicily have a teardrop shape and are as big as a large pear. I ended up making these ones round, as it’s an easier shape to form.  I’ll leave the teardrops to the experts! In the end, they still taste the same. 🙂

Travel Photo of the Week

If you do make it to Sicily, and visit the beautiful city of Trapani, try some real arancine at this street-food shop below.  they have traditional flavoured arancine, but also unusual one.  the name “Ke Palle” actually means “that’s really annoying”, and literally means “what balls!”, (balls as in genitalia of a man. ).  “Palle” of course, also means ball, as in a ball you can throw around.  So now you know!

By Lisa Watson

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Arancine: fried rice snacks from Sicily

Arancine are breadcrumb-covered, fried balls of risotto rice found as street food in Sicily.  Make them at home with this recipe!

Course Snack

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 15 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Ingredients

• pre-cooked Risotto leftovers
• Ragu optional
• Mozzarella chunks optional
• 1 - 2 Eggs
• Breadcrumbs
• Vegetable oil for frying

Instructions

• Either make a simple risotto with parmesean cheese following this recipe, or use leftover risotto that you have already made.
• When the risotto is cool, there are two possible things that you can do.  You can roll it into balls the size of a golfball, or you can flatten some risotto on to the palm of your hand, add a spoonful of ragu (use this recipe here), put more rice on top, then form it into a ball.  Follow the photos above to see how this is done.
• Once you have your balls of risotto, carefully roll them in beaten egg, then roll them in fine breadcrumbs.
• Fry them either in a deep-fryer if you have one, or put a few centimetres of oil in a pan.  Heat the oil until it is hot, then fry the balls on all sides until they are golden-brown.
• Drain them on a kitchen towel and eat immediately!

Risotto with a difference!

This risotto with sausages and spinach has an extra special guest hitching along for the ride.  Instead of using the usual wine to make the risotto, you actually use beer.  It gives the risotto an extra depth of taste, especially if you pair it with good pork sausages. I added spinach to the risotto to make my kids eat something green, but it does actually go very well in the dish!  At the moment there are all sorts of spinach-type things popping up everywhere in the shops.  They probably should be popping up in my garden so I can go all Mother Nature on you and write “and the spinach I gathered fresh from my own garden….blah, blah”, but as I’m terribly lazy when it comes to gardening, all I can offer you is spinach grown in a local market-garden…..it’s almost like it comes from my garden, except I didn’t do any of the work, and I have to pay for it.

Why you should never give a student a home-brew kit for their birthday

This is a much more refined way to have beer.  I remember in my dark, far-off student days, when men were men and beer was free-flowing, some friends and I made the mistake of giving one of my flatmates a beer-making kit for his 21st birthday (turning 21 is a big deal in New Zealand. as years ago it used to be the age to start drinking and voting).  My flatmate, who shall not be named (you know who you are, Al!), took to beer-making with gusto and churned out gallon after gallon of revolting beer.  That being said, we drank the whole lot since we were penniless students, and even better we often dragged our couch outside into the front garden and sat in the sun drinking it (at this point all our parents should cover their eyes)….ahem, probably instead of going to lectures………luckily, digital cameras didn’t exist way back then so there are no photos I can show you of that time.  Instead, let me leave you with a photo of hundreds of sheep staring at you from my Dad’s farm.  That’s enough to make you feel paranoid that someone’s watching you and may even drive you to home-brewed student beer…..

Anyhow, enough about random sheep and drinking home-brew that’s not ready to drink….using beer to make risotto is less damaging to the liver, as the alcohol boils off, leaving the taste of the beer.  Try to use a stronger tasting beer to make the risotto, and not a lager, as it really does make a difference.

By Lisa Watson

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Risotto with beer, sausage, and spinach

Risotto with a difference! This one is made with beer instead of the usual wine. It goes wonderfully with the sausage and spinach.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 400 g Arborio or Carnaroli rice 2 cups
• Chicken stock stock cube
• 1 small Onion
• 4 Sausages approx 200g
• 250 ml Beer 1 small bottle
• 150 g frozen Spinach or 1 bunch fresh
• 40 g Parmesan cheese 4 Tbsp
• 1 tsp Salt

Instructions

• Put the chicken stock, or pot of water with the bouillon cube in it, to simmer on the stove top.  Chop the onion finely and saute it in olive oil in a second pot. When the onion becomes translucent, crumble the sausage and add it.  Stir the mixture until the sausage is browned.
• Add the rice and saute until it browns slightly.
• Add the beer and let it boil off.
• Add the frozen spinach, or chopped fresh spinach and 1 tsp of salt.
• Pour in enough water/broth from your simmering pot to cover the rice mixture. and put the timer on for 13 minutes.  Now, STAY THERE AND DON'T MOVE!!  As the rice is cooking, watch the level of the water.  As it goes down, add water from the simmering pot, one ladle-full (or cupful) at a time. Stir the rice often.
• As the time gets to around 12 minutes, start tasting the rice to see how done it is. The type of rice you have may vary the cooking times, so I'm being conservative here. If it's close to being cooked, don't add any more water and let the water in the rice boil off....and don't forget to stir it.....
• Add the Parmesan cheese and stir it in.

How to make risotto two ways

As promised, here’s risotto made the traditional way….be eternally grateful to me now, as I only did it this way for you instead of using my pressure cooker. 🙂 This recipe comes from my wonderful mother-in-law who makes this dish far better than I can!  It’s a derivative of a risotto dish called Panissa vercellese, which means that it comes from the province of Vercelli in the Piemonte region in the North-Western part of Italy where they grow Canaroli and Arborio rice.  The original risotto has a special kind of salami in it called salame della duja and lardo in it, but no Parmesan.  Sounds yummy, but it would be MUCH heavier than this version with sausages. Lardo is not exactly a diet food (but, oh man, it’s good on bruschetta!)

My mother-in-law told me that when she was young, they almost never had pasta, but always rice dishes.  Pasta was made fresh and only for special occasions.  My husband’s grandmother used to stand up to her knees in water day in and day out when she was younger, working in the rice fields.  She’s now 95 years old and recently bought 25kg of tomatoes from the market so that she could make and bottle pasta sauce for all the rest of us lazy members of the family…..maybe spending years bent in half and always wet is the secret to a long, healthy life!  If anyone wants to go and ahead and try it, let me know how it goes…..I’m more the drinking-wine-in-the-sun-on-the-terrace kind of person.

It’s all about the quality of the ingredients

The quality of the sausages is very important for this risotto.  If you get flavourless ones, then your risotto will be exactly that. If you can, try to get some from a butcher rather than the supermarket (where we all know that the sausages are made with any leftovers they pick up off the ground…….is that a good way to start a vicious urban legend or what!). If you’re feeling super-cheffy (yes, the spell-check pulled me up on that word, but you know what I mean!), you can soak the beans the night before and boil them in unsalted water for an hour before actually getting on to making the risotto.  Now, if you’re like me, you’ll never remember to do the soaking step, so just buy a can of beans from the supermarket and don’t even pretend that you’re making everything from scratch (actually, that’s directed at me from me….I think I may be going mad! Writing notes to myself in my own blog? HELP!)

What are Borlotti beans and can they be substituted?

This recipe calls for borlotti beans, which I thought that I couldn’t find outside of Italy until I realized that they have a screed of names, but are actually pretty much all the same thing.  This bean has as many aliases as an undercover CIA spy: cranberry beans, and coco rose beans are just two of them. Before cooking, the beans are a beautiful striped pink or red and white, which fades to an ugly uniform mud-brown colour when they’re cooked….shame about that, but they do taste good.  Just don’t get your hopes up that they’re going to make your dish look colourful! If you cannot find borlotti beans, any kind of dried beans will work at a pinch.

This time around, I actually used cannelini beans, which are similar, as that’s what I had on hand.  They work well too.  They are white beans, that stay whitish during cooking, so there are no surprises there! Just don’t use kidney beans….been there, done that, didn’t even want to touch the t-shirt.  Save them for Tex-Mex cooking!

By Lisa Watson

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Risotto with sausage, red wine, and dried beans

Risotto with sausage and borlotti beans is a traditional risotto from the Piedmont region in North-western Italy.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 25 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 5 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 Onion
• 2-3 Sausages
• 350 g Caneroli or aborio rice 2 cups
• 250 ml Red wine 1 cup
• 1 Beef bouillion cube or beef broth
• 1 tsp Salt or to taste
• 400 g 1 can Borlotti or cannelini beans
• 30 g grated Parmesan cheese 3 Tbsp
• 1 large pot Simmering water or broth

Instructions

• Put the pot of water with the bouillon cube in it to simmer on the stove top.  Chop the onion finely and saute it in olive oil in a second pot. When the onion becomes translucent, crumble the sausage and add it.  Stir the mixture until the sausage is browned.
• Add the rice and saute until it browns slightly.
• Add the wine and let it boil off.
• Pour in enough water/broth from your simmering pot to cover the rice mixture. and put the timer on for 13 minutes.  Now, STAY THERE AND DON'T MOVE!!  As the rice is cooking, watch the level of the water.  As it goes down, add water from the simmering pot, one ladle-full (or cupful) at a time. Stir the rice often.
• At this point, you can drain the beans and add them.
• As the time gets to around 12 minutes, start tasting the rice to see how done it is. The type of rice you have may vary the cooking times, so I'm being conservative here. If it's close to being cooked, don't add any more water and let the water in the rice boil off....and don't forget to stir it.....
• Add the Parmesan cheese and stir it in.

Why you need to buy a pressure cooker

A good Italian friend of mine introduced me to the wonders of the pressure cooker and risotto making a few years ago.  It is often used in Italian households and I’ve adopted its use with great gusto.  Instead of having to stand over a hot stove treating the rice with kid-gloves and stirring, stirring, stirring it for 30 minutes, you get to fry it a little, just to make it realize something’s about to happen, then throw all the ingredients into the pot and close the lid on them.  Six, yes ONLY SIX!, minutes after the cooker has started to whistle, you have a steaming, fabulous plate of finished risotto sitting in front of you!

All about the ingredients

One of the favourite types of risotto in our house (i.e. one that the kids don’t try to pick bits out of that they don’t want to eat) is with Scamorza cheese and bresaola.  What the heck, you say?  What are those things anyway? Well, I only discovered them after infiltrating behind Italian lines.  So, that you don’t have to go to all that trouble, I’ll just tell you: Scamorza cheese is a smoked cow’s milk cheese from the region of Puglia in Southern Italy. Bresaola is air-dried beef that comes from a valley in Lombardia, in the North-East of Italy.  As you can imagine, this combination of flavours is fairly recent since they come from opposite ends of Italy.

Now, if you don’t have , or can’t get your hands on, Scamorza cheese and bresaola, but you do have a pressure cooker, you can use the basic recipe here to make other kinds of risotto, such as Gorgonzola cheese and prosciutto, or any cheese that melts well, and a ham substitute.  Don’t be shy: experiment!  You may be pleasantly surprised.

What to do if you don’t have a pressure cooker

Now, if you don’t have a pressure cooker….stop reading this at once, get yourself down to the cookware shop and buy one immediately!  I’m kidding, kind of…. What I really wanted to say is that, if you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can use the instructions for making Risotto with Sausages and Borlotti Beans to do it the more traditional way.

The ratio method really works for risotto

Just a quick note before we get onto the recipe: this recipe is done by ratio using cups.  I’ve tried to convert it to grams and ml for those who have a deep aversion to the cup method of measuring, but I promise you that it really works.  As it’s by ratio, the size of the cup isn’t so important; as long as you use the same one for the rice, wine and water measurements.

Travel photo of the week

It was difficult to choose between the two regions the ingredients in this risotto come from. In the end Puglia won as that’s the one I have the best photos for.  This is the whitewashed village of Ostuni and lies on the seaside on the east coast of Puglia.  The houses look as if they could be in Northern Africa.  This is due to Centuries of trade and invasions between the south of what is now Italy and the north of the African continent.

By Lisa Watson

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Risotto With Scamorza And Bresaola

how to make risotto using a pressure cooker: Risotto With Scamorza And Bresaola

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes minutes

Total Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 Shallot
• 2 cups Carnaroli or arborio rice 350 g
• 1 cup Dry white wine 250 ml
• 4 cups Water or chicken broth 1L or 1 Chicken bouillon cube
• 1 tsp Salt
• 150 g Scamorza 1/2 a cheese
• 80 g Bresaola 2.8 oz
• 30 g Parmesan cheese 4 Tbsp

Instructions

• Mince the shallot and saute it in olive oil until it becomes translucent.  Add the rice and saute, stirring frequently, until it starts to brown a little.
• Pour in the wine and let it boil off.
• Add the water, bouillon cube, if using, and add the salt.
• Stir everything then close the lid of the pressure cooker.
• When it starts to whistle, put a timer on for 7 minutes and sit down for a aperitif glass of wine. 🙂
• Dice the scamorza, grate the parmasean and cut the bresaola into small strips (I use kitchen scissors for this).
• When the timer goes off, run the cooker under cold water, then open it.  Depending on what rice you have used, it may be already of perfect consistency, or it may be still a little liquid.  If there is too much water, put the pot back on the heat and let some more of the water boil off for a few minutes.
• Add the cheeses and bresaola and stir until the cheeses melt.
• Serve immediately.

Notes

This risotto is better eaten immediately, as it is not that great when reheated because  the cheese clumps a little.  I think you'll find that there won't be any left-overs.