RISOTTO CHALLENGE: Entry One

Strawberries and Cream Risotto, with Sausage Crostini

These are two recipes from Italy’s Joy of Cooking, which as you can guess is way better than dowdy ol’ American Joy. It’s called The Silver Spoon, and you should all buy it, or get a roommate who owns it, as we did.

This risotto is definitely unusual. For one, there is no cheese whatsoever in it. Also, it smells a lot like the strawberry filling we added to a puff pastry dessert a while ago. But it is more of a savory than sweet dish.

The Risotto

ingredients

• 6 ½ cups Vegetable Stock
• 7 tbsp butter
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 cups risotto rice (Arborio in our case)
• 1 ½ cups white wine (pick one you'd like to drink with dinner, naturally)
  
• 2 ½ cups mashed strawberries
• 1 cup light cream
• salt and pepper to taste

(Serves four, though we cut it in half for the two of us.)

In one pot, bring stock to boil. In another pot, melt butter and add onions. Cook for 5 minutes. Add rice and cook until you’re sure it’s all covered in butter. Then add the wine. Once wine evaporates add a ladle of stock and cook till it’s absorbed. Do this over and over until the stock is used up (about 18-20 minutes). Halfway through, add the mashed strawberries. At the end, add the cream and season with salt and pepper.


Sausage Crostini
ingredients

• 3 Italian sausages (skinned)
• 5oz of cheese (they called for straggiano, which we couldn’t find and replaced with parmigiano reggiano. If you do this, it won’t need any extra salt)
• 1 tbsp fennel seeds (strangely, the sausage we bought already had them in it!)
• baguette slices

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix sausage meat, cheese, and fennel in a bowl. Add salt to taste. Spread mix on bread, put in baking dish and bake for 15 minutes. Serve hot.


The crostini was delicious. It's really just cheese and sausage on bread, you can't go wrong there (in fact, we ate it for breakfast the next morning and it was still good).


This risotto met mixed reviews. It didn't turn out gluten-y, which is a plus, but it took on an unexpected brown color from the vegetable stock. The strawberries maintained some of their taste, but were blanched while cooking and got lost visually and texturally in the rice. We were a little wary of the whole thing, but were surprised that the more we ate, the more we liked it. And Shake's Silver Spoon-owning roommate approved, and we trust her, so it must have been good.

Our recommendation is that if you try making this risotto, add the strawberries later while cooking. They won't lose as much of their color or shape that way.

mammy's home made soup

This soup is one my mother makes all the time, and for years I didn’t realise it was her special recipe. Recently various relatives and friends asked me how she makes it so tasty and I realised there was actually a little trick to it! Her special ingredient is butter. My mother always makes this soup with potato and leeks but my favourite is with red pepper, which is what I did today. Any veg goes really, apart from the basics. These quantities make four servings.

For this one I used:

• 1 potato
• 2 onions
• 1 red pepper
• 1 yellow pepper

You also need:

• Butter (not sure what amount, but a nice big chunk…add whatever you think yourself)
• Salt and pepper
• One vegetable stock cube
• 2 pints of water.
• And a blender (hand held)

Peel and chop the potatoes and onions. Melt the butter in a saucepan and when melted, throw in the potatoes and onions. Don’t have the heat too high, you don’t want the potatoes and onions to fry, you just want them to sweat in the butter to absorb all the buttery flavour. Make sure they are well covered in butter, add in LOTS of salt and pepper and mix around. Then, with the heat low, cover the veg with some paper kitchen towel and let it all sweat in the butter for about ten minutes. Stir it every now and then. (Ha! I was about to write ‘stirring occasionally’ there, and then realised I sound like a cookbook. We couldn’t have that!)



While this is cooking up, chop the other vegetables. And boil a kettle of water. When the water is boiled pour about two pints into a jug and mix in a vegetable stock cube. When the pototoes and onions have sweat in the butter for ten minutes, throw in all the other veg and mix around. Then pour in the veggie stock. You don’t need to bring it to the boil, but let the whole thing simmer for about fifteen minutes. After it has simmered, take the blender to it. I used a hand held one to liquidise the whole thing. I left it on the heat for another five minutes after that. Divide into bowls and serve with some cream poured in, and a little more black pepper dashed on top.

 

Mammy’s verdict:
"Hmmm. Nice with the red pepper, but I do prefer the leek soup myself. Not quite as flavourful as mine, maybe sweat it in the butter for a bit longer, and add another onion. Could do with a bit more salt and pepper as well."

(note: I adjusted the recipe above to take account of her comments)