Friday, December 30, 2011

More on mixed-nut risotto, and on risotto in general


In response to the mixed-nut risotto I described in today’s “Cooking Off the Cuff”, a member of the Washington Post cohort asked, “do you really add the rice after the wine [rather than] adding the rice to the oil and letting it toast/get coated before adding other liquids?”

Yep. I don’t always add and reduce the wine before stirring in the rice, but I have taken to doing this sometimes and certainly did it in this case. The received wisdom, of course, is that you add the rice to the sweated onions and coat it in butter or oil before adding any liquid. But the ever-reliable British chef/writer Simon Hopkinson reports in his book and TV series “The Good Cook” that he gets better flavor by letting the wine cook and reduce before adding the rice (he has been known to use vermouth, by the way). That way, no taste of raw wine gets into the rice, and I can see where that can be an improvement. Here’s his recipe for a simple risotto using that approach.

And for my dairy-free nut risotto, I depended in part on grated butternut squash to melt into a “creamy” sauce.



By adding the wine to the grated squash, I gave the squash a little time to start cooking before the rice went in.



As best I could tell without setting up an A-B taste test, the outcome was easily as good as the traditional method, both in flavor and in consistency. But it might be interesting to cook a few risottos using the same ingredients but differing techniques and see what does and what does not make a difference for good or for ill.

For the record, this is a photo of a main-course portion of the original squash-walnut risotto that failed its taste test, but that, to my eye, looks pretty alluring.



5 comments:

  1. Ed I wholly respect your writing and cooking... but when it comes to risotto it might be best to listen to Italian, and not British experts!

    So glad I discovered this via random link through your latest blog post on a National Newspaper website.

    Ciao,

    L

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  2. Thanks, Laura. Hopkinson makes a good flavor case for adding the wine before the rice, and it's worth a try. I do it maybe once in four times, and the outcome is very good - I think the stirring (and the resultant abrading of the rice) is more important (which, since you are a pressure-cooker advocate, you may not agree with).

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  3. Thanks for your reply, Ed. I'm not anti-stirring. ; ) Actually, even when made in the pressure cooker I still advocate that all the initial steps to making risotto remain authentic - softening the onion, toasting the rice and evaporating the wine.

    I have not tried his technique of evaporating the wine before adding the rice - it just might be another route to get to the same place. But in 25 years of making traditional risotto and about 7 in the pressure cooker I have to say that I have never tasted raw wine in a finished risotto!

    When risotto is made properly, it should not contain harsh raw wine flavor. It should be a subtle tarty undertone to little al dente kernels suspended in a creamy starchy glaze.

    When the kids out of the house, I will gladly go back to carefully and attentively stirring risotto. But until then, it is great to be able to snap on the lid of the pressure cooker and let it do the work, while I separate my two little ones who are fighting over who's touching who and nipping at my heels with hunger.

    If you haven't already tried it... here is my technique. Unlike the informal quantities in regular risotto, the proportions of grain to liquid have to be very precise (also taking into account any liquid for the veggies) due to the very low evaporation rate and very short cooking time.

    I'm really enjoying reading the various posts that give a peek behind the scenes and always appreciate a light-hearted culinary debate!

    Ciao,

    L

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    Replies
    1. Thanks very much for that. I'll give your pressure-cooker technique a try (though I think I'll miss the stirring!).

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    2. Opps! Last comment, I promise.

      I did not mean it to sound like "do my rice" but if you're ever curious to try it, my technique is a good place to start!

      Ciao,

      L

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