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| sorry all my food pictures are of half-eaten food i only think of sharing the momen when my belly is happy and full |
I have been reading all about kabocha at Happy Little Bento. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bought the Japanese pumpkin I saw in the greengrocers the other day. It's beautiful - very sweet, tender and moist. Last night, I cooked some up in the yummiest rissotto.
Ingredients
- kabocha (or any pumpkin)
- onion
- onion
- celery (optional)
- garlic
- olive oil
- arborio rice (or another risotto rice)
- olive oil
- arborio rice (or another risotto rice)
- white wine
- stock
- thyme
- stock
- thyme
- basil
Instructions
- Peel and deseed your pumpkin. Cut into bite-sized chunks. Roast at 200 degrees C until done. (I didn't have to do this step because I deliberately roasted extra pumpkin when I made a salad the other night. The excess went into a box in the fridge ready to be made into something else - the easiest way to save time and energy!)
- Chop onions and garlic. Fry in olive oil on a medium heat - the idea is to let both soften without colouring (not that I achieve this very often, my onions were pretty brown by the time I'd chopped the garlic and chucked it in!).
- Add one and a half metric cupfuls of rice (this should be enough for three people) and stir to coat the grains in the oil, onions and garlic.
- Add one cup of white wine or white vermouth. (we used a sparkling white leftover from New Year's - why we didn't finish the bottle that night or soon thereafter, I'll never know - it was still perfectly good for cooking though)
- Stir until the rice has absorbed all the wine.
- This is where most recipes ask you to add small amounts of hot stock, stirring until absorbed and then repeating until the rice is al dente. I cheat by using cold water and then adding powdered veggie boullion at the end - I just find it is easier to adjust the flavour that way. I also added one teaspoon of dried thyme at this stage.
- Stir in your pumpkin. This is where kabocha is amazing - it's so tender that some of it breaks down and melds with the risotto goo in a glorious orange ooze.
- Serve with chopped fresh basil. I got mine from here:
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| meet the ladies l-r: cherry, basil, corrie, little p and minty (there are no good girly nicknames for parsley sorry about the light it has been grey here today |
We picked them up on the weekend (CNN and I are masters of lady-picking-up, don't you know) and I'm so happy to have them here. Plants really make a house a home, even if they do attract flies (what can I say? They're ladies who pick up!). At least now I have a good reason to get a venus flytrap.
Giggle at the Ladies picking up! Love the view from their possie. I absolutely agree, there is something about adding a plant that makes home home.
ReplyDeleteI want a herb garden too! and the risotto looks amazing! will try that recipe when I have time. Soo...after you take most of the herbs off the plants, do they grow back? how do they work? xoxo
ReplyDeleteTwo Tuesdays - thank you for coming along and pointing out the view. I don't stop to appreciate it because I see it every day but it is lovely. We are lucky to have so much greenery around us living in an apartment block in the city!
ReplyDeleteStacy - you should try the risotto, it really is delicious. I started writing about the plants and realised it was getting so long, it was turning into a blog post. Watch this space!