Zuchini Risotto
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Ingredients
- 3 tbsp (45 mL) extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 small zucchinis, cut into rounds
- Salt, QB
- Freshly ground black pepper, QB
- 3 tbsp (45 mL) extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 shallots, minced
- 2 cups (500 mL) arborio rice
- Salt, QB
- 4 to 5 cups (1 to 1.25 L) warm vegetable broth
- 1 glass dry white wine (optional)
- 2 tbsp (30 mL) butter
- Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, QB
- 4 to 6 zucchini flowers, for garnish (optional)
Instructions
Make sure your vegetable stock is heated up and ready to go.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the zucchini and a pinch of salt and pepper, and cook until the zucchini is soft. Set aside.
For the risotto:
Pour the stock or water into pot and bring it to a simmer.
In a separate pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallots or onions and cook until they soften. Turn up the heat to medium-high, add the rice and stir until all the grains of rice are coated in olive oil. Cook until the rice becomes translucent.
Add the wine, and stir, cooking until all of the liquid is absorbed. You’ll smell the sweetness of the wine, and you’ll start to see some of the starchy creaminess come out of the rice.
Now start to add a little warm stock or water a ladleful at a time. After every ladle goes in, you want to let it cook until the liquid is almost fully absorbed into the rice, stirring every so often to coax out the starches and to make sure nothing sticks to the pan. So add a ladle of the simmering stock, a pinch of salt and stir. When the liquid is almost fully absorbed, add another ladleful. Keep going, ladle by ladle, until your dish looks rich and creamy, and the rice is almost, but not quite, cooked. Risotto generally takes 16 to 18 minutes total. Test it by tasting it. I like mine a bit al dente. You make yours the way you like it.
When the risotto is finished, take it off the heat.
Add the zucchini, butter and Parmigiano to your risotto and stir to combine. Serve. If you have some zucchini flowers, you can keep them whole as an edible garnish, or chop them up, and sprinkle them on top.
Notes
The texture of the risotto can be dense and somewhat dry, or it can be “soupy.” Italians say that the perfect consistency is a l’onda, which means the risotto should move like a wave when you gently shake the pot. But this is personal preference.
Risotto is creamy and comforting—perfect for kids, so this is on my sister’s menu. It’s also a great way to get kids involved in cooking, since it requires a fair amount of stirring, which is easy for them to do, and they get to watch the dish develop right before their eyes.
My kids brag that they’ve been making risotto since they were three years old, when I used to let them stir while I was holding them. Now I just lay everything out and they actually make it themselves.
For this risotto you want to use vegetable stock. Chicken stock would overpower the zucchini. For the same reason, I like to use shallots instead of onion, but mild-flavored onions are fine if you don’t have any shallots on hand.