My entry for this months In The Bag - Cooking the month of October food blog event, hosted this time around by the delicious Julia is a risotto. The risotto itself is totally delicious and I am/was very pleased with it. But it appears that I was so pleased with it that LBH and I consumed both portions before I remembered that I had to photograph the beast as proof that I had actually tried the dish. My profuse apologies, but there is no photographic evidence of this dish and it feels like we are going back to the good old days of cookery books with no pictures. I'm convinced that they didn't add a picture of the dish if it didn't work.
Anyway, this risotto did work, I promise and it is my entry for this months event.
Cherry's Pumpkin & Pancetta Risotto - which is also heavy on the black pepper
Serves two
Finely chop 1 golden onion & mince 1 clove of garlic. Add to your risotto pan along with 70g of cubed pancetta and add a tablespoon of olive oil. Heat gently and soften these ingredients down.
Hollow out 1 small or medium sized pumpkin and grate or finely chop the flesh, leaving out the seeds and stringy bits that you are bound to come across. Put the pumpkin flesh to one side.
Chop, using scissors, 10 fresh sage leaves into small pieces over the risotto pan, adding them to the onions, pancetta et al. Then add 250g of risotto rice to the pan, mixing well until the rice is almost glassy in it's appearance, this should take about 90 seconds on a medium heat. Tip in the grated pumpkin at this time and give the whole pan a good stir.
Add 4 ladles of vegetable stock (you will need 600ml of stock in total) and then lower the heat so that your risotto begins to simmer. Add a twist of salt and a whole heap of freshly ground black pepper at this stage, about 8-10 twists of the pepper mill. Continue to add the stock, ladle by ladle, when the rice soaks it up. Test the rice after about 15 mins to see whether it is cooked or still crunchy. Do make sure that you don't let the rice become one big mushy mess by over cooking however! If you run out of vegetable stock before the rice has cooked then simply add tablespoons of water.
When you are certain that the rice is cooked to your liking add 2 heaped tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan. Mix well and serve immediately, piping hot and straight from pan to plate. I don't add more cheese than this as the sage and pancetta are more than tasty enough so you don't want to mask these flavours with lots of cheese.
Enjoy this risotto, we did! I promise that next time I make it I shall post a picture for all to see.
This has been my entry for In The Bag - Cooking the month of October. Hosted by myself Cherry Menlove, A Slice of Cherry Pie & The Real Epicurian
