Pumpkin Risotto

 

Best Wishes for the New Year everyone. (I know it's late, but better late than never) I've gone missing for sometime, But I'm back invigorated from my holidays back home in Sri Lanka. It's always great to be back with your loved ones, someone to pamper with all good food cooked with love and mere company of my parents. It's never enough and always feels very difficult to get back to routine in this foreign land.

You may wonder if I had cooked all the recipes in this blog. Some of these recipes are my experiments, whereas most of the others are regular food I make and there are also some that I have made purely for blogging. Today's recipe is also one of them. I tasted this at a Swiss home and thought I have to share this with my readers.

Risotto rice slowly get infused with vegetable stock until they are soft and cooked. I separately roasted pumpkin cubes with canola oil and garlic. I use canola oil whenever I cook with high heat as it has a higher smoking point compared to olive oil. You could also add pumpkin along with rice to cook, but it can get mushy and loose its shape. Hence I roasted it added at the end.

Print Recipe here

Serves 2-3

Ingredients

150g Risotto Rice

400g Pumpkin cut into cubes

1 onion diced

4 garlic cloves

1 soup cube dissolved into 500ml hot water

Vegetable oil

50g - 75g parmesan cheese grated (Soy cheese for Vegans)

50g pumpkin seeds

Method

Heat the oven at 230c, mix pumpkin, garlic cloves with 1-2 tablespoons of canola oil. Spread it in a wide tray and roast it for 20-30 till pumpkin is cooked. Keep an eye on pumpkin as it should not be overcooked and mushy.

Heat oil in a pan, sauté onion for few minutes till translucent.  Add rice and fry stirring well till rice turns to be translucent.

Now add ladle of hot vegetable stock, reduce heat and stir slowly till the stock is absorbed by rice. Likewise keep adding ladleful of stock gradually until rice is cooked. If stock is finished before the rice is cooked add hot water.

Once rice is cooked turn off heat add roasted pumpkin and grated parmesan, mix well and close the lid. Leave it for 2 minutes during this time parmesan will be melted and create a creamy texture. Serve immediately with some more parmesan and pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top.  

Notes I have not added salt since vegetable stock and parmesan cheese is salty. You may add salt to your taste when cooking the rice.

I'm also sharing my new series of photos about 'Swiss Festival - Desalpe'. This is a farmers festival where farmers take their cattle to alpine pastures during Summer and at the end of Summer they bring them down to farms in valleys. Swiss farmers decorate their cattle with flower crowns and cow bells for this festival.  It reminds me of Hindu festival called 'Mattu pongal', where we worship and offer pongal (Rice cooked with jaggery) to Cows. Check out my facebook page to see more about this Swiss farmers festival.