I consider this risotto one of the tastier ever made. So, try it
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 3€ pp)
- 2 small fennel roots
- 100 g pumpkin
- 240 g carnaroli rice
- A small glass white wine
- 1,2 litre vegetable stock
- EV sunflower oil
- 1 medium onion
- Salt
- 40 g butter
- 40 g Parmigiano or Grana cheese
- 30 g top quality smoked cold cut such as nubulo, Ardennes ham, speck etc in one piece
Smoked cold cuts add to our preparations a deep and long lasting taste, so we can use them to elevate umami mainly in vegetable dishes.
Nubulo is a Corfiot cold cut made from the fillet of the pork. It is not cheap and very difficult to find abroad, so you can alternatively prepare this dish with speck, local smoked ham or other smoked cold cut.
Pumpkin and fennel root is a perfect, fantastic pairing used very often in risottos or stuffed pastas. I did nothing more than repeating a classic combination of the Italian cuisine.
We start our risotto by preparing the well known soffritto, which today will have two more extra ingredients. So we cut the onion and the fennel roots in very small dice and we gently fry them in EV sunflower oil for 10 minutes.
I forgot to tell you that we first have to clean and peel the fennels and to discard their lower and external parts, which have too many fibres.
Meanwhile:
a) We bring the stock to a boil
b) In a small pan we lightly toast the rice WITH NO FAT AT ALL
When the rice is so hot, that we cannot keep it in our hands, we add it inside the pan with the soffritto. We also pour in the wine and then we start cooking the risotto, adding a ladle of very hot – boiling stock, whenever the liquid starts to get reduced. After 5 minutes we add the dice of pumpkin.
While the rice is being prepared, we finely grate the cheese and we cut in small dice the cold cut.
When the rice is prepared (al dente of course), we remove the pan from the stove. We taste the salt and, if needed, we add some more.
We start adding the butter, the cheese and the dice of the cold cut, while stirring constantly. We continue stirring, until we obtain a very creamy result, we cover the pan with a lid and we let it stand for 3 minutes.
After this time, we stir again and we check if the risotto is well bound. If the risotto is too dry, we add a little stock and we continue stirring. If, on the other hand, the risotto is too wet, we continue cooking it till creamy.
We put in plates and we serve.
