Luscious lemon risotto

A couple of years ago I read Italian chef and food writer Anna del Conte's memoir, Risotto with Nettles. Nigella Lawson says del Conte was her mentor, and you can read Lawson's review of the book here.
       I photocopied some recipes, including a very intriguing one for Lemon Risotto, which del Conte says is one of her most popular dishes. I've been meaning to make it ever since, and this week, with two close friends coming to dinner - the kind you can experiment on and they won't mind if it goes wrong - I finally managed it. I was spurred on partly by my sister giving me some lovely shallots and garlic from her garden when I was in Auckland the week before.

Anna del Conte's risotto al limone
(Serves 4-6, depending on appetites)

60g unsalted butter
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 shallots, chopped very finely
1 celery stick, chopped very finely
(you can chop these together by pulsing them carefully in the food processor)
300g risotto rice, such as Arborio or Carnaroli
1 litre light meat stock or vegetable stock
1 large lemon with unblemished skin
6 fresh sage leaves
small sprig of rosemary
1 free-range egg yolk
4 Tbsp freshly grated parmesan cheese, with more to serve if wished
4 Tbsp cream
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat 30g of the butter with the oil in a large heavy saucepan. Add the shallots and celery and cook gently until soft (about 7 minutes).
Mix in the rice and continue cooking gently, stirring, until the rice is well coated in the fats and partly translucent.

Heat the stock in a Pyrex measuring jug in the microwave or in another saucepan.
Pour about 150ml (roughly a sixth) into the rice. Stir thoroughly and cook, stirring regularly, until the rice has absorbed most of the stock.
Repeat, stopping halfway through to add the lemon rind and herbs (see below).

While the rice is cooking, zest the rind of the lemon, then squeeze out the juice and set it aside. Chop the herbs finely. Mix with the rind and stir into the rice when it has absorbed about half the stock..  

Continue adding stock and stirring until the rice is cooked but still a little al dente. (You may not need all the stock. Del Conte says good quality Italian rice takes about 20 minutes, but I find it takes a bit longer.) Take off the heat.
Call the eaters to the table and warm a dish or bowl for the risotto.
In a small bowl, combine the egg yolk, half the lemon juice, the parmesan, the cream, the remaining 30g of butter, and a very generous grinding of black pepper. Mix well with a fork. Stir this mixture into the risotto. Cover the pan and leave to rest for about 2 minutes. Taste for seasoning. (At this point I added the rest of the lemon juice, but suit yourself.)
Give it all an energetic stir, transfer to the hot dish or bowl and serve at once, with more grated parmesan alongside if you wish (I knew we would all wish, so it went on top).

This is a surprising and remarkably satisfying dish, because it combines subtlety and richness. I can't eat it as a first course, though - too filling. So I served it with a green salad and an artichoke-stuffed pork fillet from another Italian woman's book. But I'm writing in the intervals of making a great pot of minestrone for tonight, and it's getting to the stage where it needs my full attention, so I'll post that recipe next week.

Making it up

Reading my new Italian cookbook again (see previous post), I was struck with how useful these kinds of cookbooks are - the ones where you're given a range of methods, and then shown how to ring the changes so that you can create a huge variety of dishes from the same concept.
      As well as my new Italian, I have Richard Ehrlich's The Lazy Cook: Simple, Sophisticated Food and How to Make It, running through pan-grilling, flash-roasting, gratins, and more. I treasure it, partly because Harvey bought it, but mainly because it's so user-friendly.
      The other day I downloaded my first e-cookbook, Fast, Fresh and Green, by Susie Middleton. In a nutshell, it gives nine interesting ways to prepare vegetables - quick-roasting, quick-braising, hands-on sauteing, walk-away sauteing, two-stepping, no-cooking, stir-frying and grilling - with lots of appealing examples. I expect it will boost my vege consumption very nicely.
       So tonight I took a leaf out of all these books and concocted my own risotto. Earlier I had sorted out the vege bin and cooked up a broth made mainly of rather tired leeks and spring onions, a proper onion and woody bits of asparagus, with a few green peas thrown in. When I blitzed it, it became a delicious thin green stock. There were a few fresh sticks of asparagus left too, but they were too good to go into the common pot. I cooked them separately and kept them warm to have as part of my dinner. But if you had plenty of asparagus, you could make the stock entirely of that, plus an onion - then it becomes asparagus risotto instead.

Green risotto
I melted some butter, softened a chopped onion in it, and added half a cup of arborio rice, turning it well in the butter to coat the grains.
I added the end of a bottle of white wine - about 3/4 of a cup - and turned up the heat to make it bubble.
I stirred the rice slowly to absorb the liquid, and as it disappeared, I added the hot green vege stock a ladleful at a time.
It took about five ladlefuls to reach the right consistency - definitely cooked through, but not soft. (I don't think "al dente" gets it quite right for rice - it shouldn't take much pressure to bite a grain in half, and it definitely shouldn't be in the least gritty.)
To finish it and bump up the protein, I stirred in an egg and a few more little pieces of butter, turned off the gas, and left the pot on the warm hob while I fried some cut-up bacon rashers and grated some pecorino cheese.

So my dinner was an Italian variation on Dr Seuss's green eggs and ham - a nice little pile of creamy pale green risotto, with crispy bacon scattered around, flakes of pecorino on top and asparagus on the side. It took very little time, and as my son likes to say, it was "delishwahse".
       But - and this is a recurring problem for me, though usually with meat dishes - it didn't LOOK wonderful, and I knew it wouldn't make a good photo. So you'll just have to imagine eating it instead!

Kedgeree, meet risotto

 This week I wanted a light dinner. I'd found some good smoked fish, and often I make kedgeree, but this time I thought I'd create a risotto with it instead, because there was some very good fish stock in the freezer.

          The recipe was much the same as for the ham and cheese risotto I made last January, not long after Harvey died. I poached the smoked fish gently in the stock before I started the risotto. Then I took out the fish, removed the skin, and flaked it, checking carefully for any stray bones.

           I fried a little chopped bacon first, then added shallots instead of onions, and of course used the fish stock instead of chicken stock. No herbs - finely chopped parsley can go on when it's served - and of course no ham or cheese. When the risotto rice was almost ready, I added the small pieces of fish, pepper, and lemon juice. It was delicious, a good change from kedgeree. Serve it with extra lemon wedges and a  green or tomato salad.

The other bit of culinary excitement this week was the arrival of a parcel from Amazon. I buy very few books online, because I want to keep good local booksellers in business, but I found a hardback 50th anniversary edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Vol.1 - I don't think I've ever used Vol.2) for a very low price. I'm tired of struggling to read my ancient, falling-apart Penguin copy, so I ordered it, and it's gorgeous.
        I also got a very cheap hardback of Judith Jones' memoir The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food. She was the Knopf editor who published Julia Child. It's not as good as Julia's own memoir, My Life in France, but well worth reading all the same. For me, food and books are inseparable. They've just put Mastering the Art out as an e-book, but I'd rather have the real thing.

Savoury comfort food from Italy

In the three weeks and a day since Harvey died, I've eaten dinner on my own nine times, mostly in the last two weeks. One night, I took myself over the road to Flavours, the local Indian restaurant. I felt perfectly comfortable eating alone in their upstairs room that catches the late summer sun - and there was enough curry left over to bring home for another night.
         I haven't done much shopping and I've been inclined to eat pasta and rice - I haven't felt like cooking red meat, though I'm happy to eat it when I'm out and someone else cooks it for me. The remains of the Christmas ham have come in handy too.

It was the last of the ham that inspired me to cook myself a lovely risotto, from the Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta section in Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy. Even Harvey, never a great rice lover, enjoyed this one, though I didn't make it often. The first time I must have had some rice which, though it was labelled arborio, took ages to absorb the liquid and put me off trying again. But eventually I did, with different rice, and it worked much better.
           This time, as well as good ham, I had good stock too - I'd made it from a smoked chicken carcase, and put it in the freezer. It's strange cooking with things I made, or even just bought, before Harvey died. Such a sudden line drawn across life.
            Anyway, here's the recipe - I made enough for two servings and froze half, I don't know how successful that will be. But here I've given the original quantities (only with rather more ham and cheese) to feed 4-6 people. It's very comforting food, a bit like a savoury rice pudding.

Antico risotto sabaudo (based on Claudia Roden's recipe, serving 4-6)
50g butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
100g cooked ham, diced (I used quite a bit more to finish up the ham, especially as it was for my dinner rather than an entree)
1 large sprig of rosemary
400g Arborio rice
150ml white wine
1.25 litres chicken stock
150g fontina or gruyere cheese, cubed
4-6 tbsps freshly grated parmesan

Melt the butter over low heat in a saucepan, add onion and cook gently for 5 minutes until soft but not coloured. Add ham and cook 1 minute, then rosemary and rice, stirring until the rice is transparent. (Mine never seems to go transparent properly but it doesn't matter.)

Add wine, stir and cook until it's absorbed. Add stock a ladleful at a time, stirring until each is absorbed. After about 20 minutes the rice should be creamy but al dente. Stir in fontina or gruyere cheese and cook for another 5 minutes.

Serve in warmed pasta plates with parmesan scattered over the top. I had this with a tomato and basil side salad.