Jul

31

Parsnip and Rosemary Risotto

July 31, 2008 |

inseason.jpg

Gardening is an exercise in optimism. Sometimes,
it is a triumph of hope over experience.
- Marina Schinz

The In Season series is a web diary of the gardening successes and mishaps of two eternally hopeful novices. The ladybug above will lead you to previous posts in the series.

Gardeners lead a charmed life. They go out daily a few months a year, grow random stuff, pile them in a bucket, bring the bucket in and plonk it on the table, grit, worms and all. It sits there for a few days, then the reminders begin: “We have to do something with the parsnips”.

Ummm… no one stopped you ‘we’ from doing anything with the parsnips.

When ‘we’ don’t show signs of doing anything with the stuff piling up on the table, the other person in the house contemplates the three options.

1. Throw them out.
2. Cook them.
3. Put them on the front yard with the sign ‘HELP YOURSELF’.

We love parsnips. It’s just that the girl is not too fond of cooking. And the gardener, who likes to cook, is too busy gardening.

The girl washes, cleans and weighs the parsnips. 1.5 pounds. She googles ‘parsnip recipes’, and finds many, including Parsnip wine. However, the winner is this one at Epicurious, ‘cos it’s a risotto and calls for exactly 1.5 pounds of parsnips.

And pouring hot stock into the rice, one ladle at a time, and stirring. For. Ever.

We did that once after looking for guidation to those fusspot Italians. We Indian peoples are not doing such boring, time-wastaging things. We are using pressure cooker.

Risotto is khichdi, na? In Bombay, if someone is putting one ladle of water into khichdi at a time, we are calling them ‘lukkha’ or ‘dhandha-not’ or ‘Dnot’.

And white rice? We are liking blindingly colourful dhinchak things. Like BLACK RICE. When you cook it, it turns purple, like when someone is pinching Madhuri Dixit’s bu… cheek very hard.

We changed the recipe and used rosemary and thyme from our garden too. Farmer boy was happy and the girl was telling him to stop gardening and start cooking.

PARSNIP AND ROSEMARY RISOTTO

(adapted from Epicurious)

1.5 cups starchy rice (we used black rice)
1.5 pounds diced parsnips
5.5 cups vegetable or mushroom stock
**we used water plus 2 tbsps Better Than Bouillon mushroom stock paste. The quantity depends on the type of rice used.
3 tsps chopped rosemary
2 tsps chopped thyme
1/2 cup grated Fontina cheese
** or crumbled Parmesan or Pecorino
1/2 cup good white wine or Vermouth
freshly ground black pepper or red chilli flakes
4 garlic cloves
1 cup very finely minced red onion or shallots
4 tbsps olive oil or butter
**we used half of each
more rosemary to garnish
balsamic vinegar to drizzle

Soak the rice for an hour and drain.

Heat the olive oil/butter and fry the onions until translucent, then add the garlic, rosemary, thyme and parsnips and cook on medium-high until the parsnips soften a bit.

Add the stock, the pepper and a bit of salt to taste until it is a tad saltier than you normally like it.

Add the rice, stir, put the lid on along with the weight. Put the heat on medium and wait for 4 whistles. If you want to do the stirring thing on the stovetop, go ahead. You’ll need more liquid.

Turn off the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes. Open the lid and add the wine or Vermouth, and let it simmer for about 3 minutes. It may appear very watery at this point, but let it sit for an hour to thicken up.

Reheat, stir in the cheese, drizzle the balsamic vinegar, top with the rosemary and serve.

Parsnip and Rosemary Risotto goes to A.W.E.D.:Italian at Culinary Bazaar and Food in Colours: Red at Tongue Ticklers.

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SPEAK YOUR MIND

31 Comments so far

  1. gini on July 31, 2008 11:48 am

    I know someone who loves to stir, but she is too busy using up lavender.

  2. Dee on July 31, 2008 11:49 am

    lovely concoction.. and yes the risotto looks like madhuri dixit’s cheek when pinched hard! my favourite shot is the rosemary shot! i love the green background of grass.

  3. Nuria on July 31, 2008 12:23 pm

    What a great combo!!! I love rice in all ways and never before cooked a risotto… so different to paella but equally glorious!!!!

    I’m taking your recipe on holidays with me ;D

    Want to party? Wanna drink? Head to my blog, please!

  4. Manisha on July 31, 2008 12:30 pm

    I got a case of the hiccups just now. A bad case. So I came here to find out who was thinking of me. But these days I am driving driving only, so no time for stirring.

    BTW, Bee, have you noticed that you have acquired a condition called the dreaded disease of the dots? One of the symptoms is when a person stops mid-word while spelling it out and ends it with dots instead. The most common symptom is when the person uses dots all the time: in the place of periods (uh, the full-stop kind), as an excuse not to finish a sentence, to cover up for poor grammar, due to sheer laziness, etc. etc. It will soon be an epidemic and I am afraid that many blogs will only be filled with dots, especially as the dot to character ratio has reached alarming levels. Experts think that the only cure might be the sauerkraut from Wisconsin.

    i hate sauerkraut (maybe it’s palatable with lavender), but yeah, one should be able to say ‘bum’ when one feels like it.

  5. OhioMom on July 31, 2008 12:52 pm

    Looks yummy, but I would have to sub those parsnips with another veggie :)

  6. Bharti on July 31, 2008 12:52 pm

    LOl…love the dhinchak khichdi! Mast post hai. In Sindhi we say ‘vaando’ for lukha.
    Seriously, thanks for the pressure cooker idea. Next time I’m doing also ;-)

  7. sunita on July 31, 2008 1:14 pm

    Yumm…I promised DK some risotto too, just after she announced the event and forgot all about it :-(

  8. Suganya on July 31, 2008 1:28 pm

    I have 2 bags of black rice. But whatever flavoring I use, it ends up tasting the same. The taste of the rice itself is overpowering.

  9. Cham on July 31, 2008 2:24 pm

    Look like a bean dip :) Creamy and delicous dish :)

  10. Lydia (The Perfect Pantry) on July 31, 2008 2:34 pm

    Such an interesting way to use your parsnips. One of my new favorites is a pear-and-parsnip soup, which is a thick, white, and somewhat sweet puree, and a real favorite in the cooler months around Thanksgiving.

  11. shammi on July 31, 2008 3:15 pm

    Hahaha! I love a good write-up, and this one was definitely one of those :)

  12. Laavanya on July 31, 2008 6:24 pm

    You two are so funny :) Pressure-cooked Risotto - this must be a first.
    I just read Mandira’s comment about the dots - i am just like that… I seem to use 3 dots like punctuation most of the time - esp. in emails.

  13. nags on July 31, 2008 8:56 pm

    hehe, this is like how people in Hyd used to make me do a lolakutty assuming all malayalis can speak like that. i managed to do a passable one before they teased me to death!

  14. Pelicano on July 31, 2008 8:58 pm

    I will admit that I love to perform tedious tasks and techniques, say, for instance: dismantling and re-bending a boxful of wire clothes-hangers so that they fit into a smaller box. (Charity-shops won’t accept them, nor do I wish to discard something potentially useful. For what? I don’t know yet…) So, when it comes to risotto- with its traditional constant stirring- I’ve found myself stepping right up to the plate…er, pot. However: recently I made my first batch of “wet” khichri and, though it may be tradition to perform this particular stirring technique for risotto, quite honestly I might have to concur that some traditions could possibly be time-wasters.

    On a side-note, I’ve heard that lavender-sauerkraut khichri- with a healthy topping of lime-ginger-green-chile pickle- will cure a bad case of the hiccups, particularly the kind frequently suffered by basil-sprout-murdering-weed-whacking-punctuation-elitists; just one bowlful not only causes said condition to cease, but also initiates unwarranted smiling and discharges of general warmth in all directions.

    sauerkraut makes you discharge other things, i’ve heard. basil dies when you go near it after you eat cooked cabbage. coleslaw or raw forms may be fine. cabbage is not meant to be cooked - with or without lavender, methinks. you bend and reshape hangers? isn’t it easier to find a bigger box? do you also contort spoons to make them forks? and vice versa?

  15. Manisha on July 31, 2008 9:04 pm

    Discharges general warmth in all directions? You slay me!

  16. Manisha on July 31, 2008 9:05 pm

    Dammit. Give me back my interrobang. Stole my thunder totally. Give it back, you creepy punctuation-changing comment form.

    Bah.

    what is an interrobang? oh this. interrogate and bang? sounds risque.

  17. Pelicano on July 31, 2008 9:07 pm

    Pity.

  18. Pelicano on July 31, 2008 9:32 pm

    Flatware cortorting? That’s for beginners… :-) I just hammer ‘em flatter still and make tinkly-tink windchimes to send to windy fr…acquaintences. ;-)

  19. Pelicano on July 31, 2008 9:35 pm

    (cont’d)…which they may hang near their interrobang.

    lol. pel, you know how to get her good.

  20. Manisha on July 31, 2008 9:56 pm

    Y’all had better clean up your act before the Jai dude shows up with his interro…”stay on topic or you shall hang.”
    [dammit, I caught the bug]

    jai’s quite enjoying this.

  21. Nirmala on July 31, 2008 10:08 pm

    Looks good! I love anything creamy, sticky and mushy! The color of the risotto is not so inviting but I love your previous one which is in my must-try list!

  22. sushma on August 1, 2008 12:02 am

    Looks nice different color..just the other day i had risotto in lilttle Italy (a resturnat in my city)

  23. manggy on August 1, 2008 8:47 am

    PARSNIPS! Oh yeah, that’s another thing we have never gotten here :) I’m not sure if I messed up my comprehension reading a fact sheet about them but they *need* frost to grow? Huh? Well, anyway…

    I would never have thought of using black sticky rice for risotto! It has such a dramatic effect! :)

    they do grow better in cooler weather. and they are so delicious with a nuttiness and understated sweetness, you gotta taste them.

  24. purplesque on August 1, 2008 3:07 pm

    Such an unusual combination. As much as I like the post, the comments were even more fun. :)

  25. Cynthia on August 1, 2008 5:51 pm

    I’ve never had black rice but I would imagine that the flavour stands up well with the rosemary.

  26. Jude on August 3, 2008 5:34 pm

    That black rice risotto is really unexpected. Looks very satisfying. What’s up with it turning purple though? False advertising? :)

  27. Elizabeth on August 3, 2008 11:57 pm

    This sounds delicious. I love anything with rosemary but never imagined it in risotto. Love your intro to the recipe too. :)

  28. DK on August 5, 2008 11:19 am

    hehehehehe - madhuri’s Bu..cheek!! hehehe Now everytime I make risotto I am gng to have fits of giggling!

    Trust u to pressure cook Risotto…!! But it has come out looking as yummy as ever. Thanks for keeping AWED in mind :)

  29. Haley on August 6, 2008 8:46 am

    We would like to feature this recipe on our blog. Please email haleyglasco@gmail.com if interested. Thanks :)

    Haley

    http://blog.keyingredient.com/

  30. sunshinemom on August 10, 2008 7:15 am

    Bee! I actually came here twice to let you know I received your entry! It is entirely your fault for not allowing me to finish my entry!! Why?

    I clicked on that IIT slang link and got carried away once:) BTW, the link does not have ‘Godgiri’ which means trying to show off as in ‘Zyaada Godgiri mut dikha, haan!’The second time I came here, and said to myself - I have already commented!

    I just realized that I was wrong:) So sorry!!

    The risotto looks great! Is red rice the same as black rice? I have used red rice, and its tastes nice too! This is a very interesting recipe!! Thank you:)

    black rice is different. it is black and comes from thailand/china and is also called ‘forbidden rice’.

  31. EWS on August 12, 2008 1:01 pm

    I made this recipe last night and it was a big hit. Thanks for the inspiration!

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