For the past 4 years since I have been in Italy I have collected a lot of cookbooks and have been inspired to start cooking and baking much more. What I have found while cooking is that I am nervous to deviate from the recipe, so I am hoping that with blog I can challenge myself to be a bit more adventurous.
When I was going through a stressful period due to exams, I wasn’t doing much cooking and we were living off pre packed food as I could not face the thought of cooking. One of the pre packed food we had picked up at the shop was a radicchio risotto (and we all know how many bad ingredients are in these pre packaged food) so I decided to create my own Radicchio risotto.
Radicchio Risotto
Ingredients
- For the Risotto
- 3 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 medium red onion diced
- 1 garlic clove finely chopped
- 50 g butter
- 150 ml red wine
- 800 ml - 1 litre chicken / vegetable stock
- 75 g parmesan finely grated
- 30 g pine nuts
- 75 g smocked bacon
- 300 g carnaroli or arborio rice risotto rice
- For the Radicchio
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 400 g/ 2 heads radicchio
- 3 sprigs thyme
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 220°C/ gas mark 7. Roughly slice the radicchio and place it in a roasting tin. Toss with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, thyme and season with salt and pepper. Place it in the oven and cook for 10 to 15 minutes or until starting to brown. Give a quick stir half way through.
- Roast the pine nuts in the same pan that you are going to cook the risotto in, until golden brown.
- Once the pine nuts have browned place in a bowl on the side. In the same pan, brown the bacon until nice and crispy and then set aside. When cool break up and keep it for the serving.
- In the same pan with the oil from the bacon add some more olive oil if needed heat up and add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper, sauté until soft and transparent but not browning. Pour in the rice and stir until the grains start to change colour.
- Pour in the wine to deglaze the pan. Make sure to scrape in all the rice that has stuck to the sides of the pan. Once the rice has absorbed the wine add a ladleful of stock at a time stirring continuously it has absorbed. Repeat the process until the rice is just cook and has a creamy consistence.
- Add two thirds of the radicchio to the risotto and stir through.
- Remove from the heat and add the butter stirring continuously. Finally stir in the parmesan cheese, keeping a little extra to serve.
- To serve, place the risotto in the bowls, add some of the remaining radicchio to the top and sprinkle over the bacon, pine nuts and the parmesan cheese.