Vegan risotto
Hey Hounds,
I've got a vegan coming to dinner Christmas night (heaven forfend! And he drives a BMW, with leather seats, gadzooks!) But mine is not to question, mine is to supply chow.
For starters, I'm thinking of porcini risotto. I have wonderful vegetarian porcini stock cubes from Italy, so that takes care of my liquid. I'll use olive oil instead of butter (gasp). And I will pass some grated parmigiano around for my fellows of the non-vegan persuasion.
My question is, anyone got any other suggestions for making this an acceptable, if not an outstanding, risotto?
Gracias,
- Sean
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I like to make my own roasted veg stock (time permitting) for risotto. I have made vegan risotto for a lot of folks, and most of the time, they love it (even without putting cheese on top of theirs). I use both the stock and mushroom cooking liquid.
I love fresh porcinis (only had the luck / good timing to get some once or twice), but I like morels better for dried mushrooms in risotto. I usually try to use some sort of fresh wild mushroom (chanterelles are usually easy to get, at least here), and occasionally use some cremini mushrooms as well. As you probably know, usually you'd saute the mushrooms separately (if you're putting mushrooms themselves in) and then add them for just the last 15-20 minutes of cooking or less. I usually saute them with olive oil, garlic, wine, and salt / pepper ahead of time, then leave them covered, and add them for the last bit of cooking.
I like to throw in some chopped baby spinach at almost the very end (so it ends up with just a tiny bit of bite) in mine.
I really like Milanese style (with a little saffron dissolved in some of the stock).
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Vegetarian risotto is not daunting. Have a pot of hot liquid (water, vegetable stock or V-8) with a ladle next to the vessel in which you're gonna make the risotto. Make a soffritto (sauteed onions, green bell pepper, celery or fennel, and garlic) using olive oil. Add the arborio rice. Stir well. Add 1/2 cup of Marsala or Madeira. Stir well and let the spirits be absorbed. Add the liquid a ladle full at a time, stir until absorbed before adding another ladleful. Etc. Just before the risotto is finished, toss in some defrosted petite peas or a combination of defrosted peas and carrots.
Sean, if your making an Italian dish like risotto, the closing is 'Grazie mille', not what you said.
Buon appetito!
Buon natale e felice anno nuovo!
Suo amico, ChiliDude
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Even if you don't use them in the risotto itself, you could brown some button mushrooms in olive oil and add some chopped onion - the object would be to get some great brown fond in the pan to deglaze into your cooking liquid.
Also, I like thyme and sage and scallions with mushrooms - you could add fresh thyme leaves and ribbons of sage and chopped scallion tops just at the end...
and ditto on the lemon, ali patts.
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Little bit of lemon juice to bring out the flavour of the mushrooms. Lemon seems to make mushrooms mushroomier somehow. Depending on how you are serving you could serve with lemon zest as the garnish. (That is if you can actually use one of those zester things - I just seems to get mush rather than nice pretty strings!) Or if you have fresh porcini you could fry a couple of nice slices from the middle of the mushrooms so that they get a little brown and use them.
I like my porcini ravioli with a sage beurre noisette, I wonder if there's some way of having a little nutty note without using butter hmm... -
bitsubeats
Dec 22, 2006 05:56 AM
"porcini stock cubes?" why not use the liquid left over when rehydrating the dried porcini's instead?
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