Mmmmmmm Risotto!

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

I love risotto. Love, love, love it. Butttt….it does have three little downsides:

1) It’s not exactly calorie/heart attack proof, what with all that delicious melted butter and oodles of oozing Parmesan cheese…*ghfffhhslobbergfffhh*

2) It’s not a difficult thing to make once you know how but it is hard on the feet. You have to stand over and watch it for the whole cooking time, a recipe quality that lazy cooks like me abhor.

3) It’s a boozy type of a meal. You see, every good risotto needs a wee glass of white wine. But then, you find that you’ll be pouring yourself a glass. And then the whole dish takes so long to cook, that you will inevitably need a top up, leading to a half cut cook by the end of the process. Which is maybe why risotto always tastes so ridiculously good.

I did a bit of a bold thing today. I found myself doing an unplanned food shop for dinner, with no idea what to make. So, instead of just buying a rubbish ready meal or the usual pasta/pesto combo, I popped into the bookstore next to the supermarket to find inspiration. So casually and deceptively did I browse the cook book section of the bookstore, the poor clerks must have genuinely believed that I was going to buy something. Hah!

So I found this little recipe for Butternut Squash Risotto in a cheap & cheerful student’s cookbook type affair. I texted myself the ingredients and headed off to the supermarket, chuckling away to myself about my own cleverclogness. Mwah mwah!

Once I got the basic ingredients home, I consulted my BBC Good Food bible, and sure enough, found an almost identical recipe there. Thunderbirds were indeed go.

What you need for a scrumptious Butternut Squash & Sage Risotto for 4

(I made this for two and just halved everything more or less, it worked a treat)

1kg of butternut squash, peeled and cut into nice bite-sized chunks

A bunch of lovely sage, half of it roughly chopped and half of it in whole leaves

1 1/2 litres of veg stock

50g butter (ai curumba!)

1 onion, finely chopped

300g of arborio risotto rice

1 small glass of white wine (and 1 more for the cook)

50g Parmesan, finely grated

Olive Oil

First things first. Pre-heat your oven to 200C/Gas mark 7. Put your chopped and peeled butternut squash into a roasting tin and add a good glug of olive oil. Scatter over the chopped sage leaves and give it a good stir/toss. Pop it into the oven for about 25-30 minutes, or until lovely and soft and a bit browned. Careful that the sage leaves don’t get too burnt though.

Meanwhile, start your risotto. Over a medium heat, melt half of the butter and add your finely chopped onion. Let the onion sweat for about 10 minutes, until soft but not coloured.

Get another saucepan and put in your veg stock. You want it to be simmering away nicely throughout the cooking process so that it’s piping hot as you gradually add it to your risotto.

Now add your arborio rice. Stir it all around so that it’s nicely coated with the butter and onions. Let it cook for a minute or so, until the edges of the rice are transparent.

Throw in your wine and let it simmer until the wine has evaporated. Turn down your oven to a low heat and now you can add your stock, only a ladelful at a time, for the next 25 to 30 minutes, or until the risotto is lovely and creamy/oozy/soupy.

It’s important to stir it constantly. It goes like this: add a ladelful of stock and stir until that has been totally soaked up by the rice. Repeat this around eight or ten times I’d say. You kind of lose count as the whole process is quite hypnotic.

You’ll know when the rice is done as it will be that special oozy texture. Give it a taste – it should have a little bit of a bite.

When your risotto rice is just about ready, get half of your cooked butternut squash and mash it up. Add this mashed butternut squash to your risotto rice and stir it thoroughly so it’s lovely and mixed.

Now you can add the rest of your butter and your delicious Parmesan cheese. Stir it really well and set aside to rest for a minute.

You can fry your sage leaves in butter now. Soooo good.

You can serve up your risotto now by plopping a nice amount on a plate and scattering some of the whole butternut squash chunks on top. Finally, add a sprinkling of your beautifully fried sage leaves on top.