This recipe uses black Venus rice and truffle oil from Belazu who kindly sent me lots of ingredients to try. I hadn’t cooked black rice before and now I’m a total convert. It’s got a fantastic flavour and texture and looks amazing and combined with the truffle oil it’s a winning combo. You can add parmesan too if you want to. My recipe is Italian comfort food and perfect for dinner with a salad.
I was sent a big bag of black Venus rice from one of my favourite companies Belazu who stock the best Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ingredients, check them out online. So I thought I’d make a recipe that works well with the rice, in Italy they usually serve black rice with seafood so I added giant prawns and I must say its a great combination of flavours. And now I prefer it to normal risotto rice.
I cooked this for a friend of mine the other day and she loved it so much she told me I had to put it on the blog. The combination of flavours is fab with the mushrooms, parmesan and truffle oil… they are a marriage made in heaven.
It’s also really easy as most of the work is in the prep, so once you have done that it’s a doddle. You can get little bottles of truffle oil in supermarkets or online and of course in Italian delis, and before you think it’s too expensive, you can get them from as little as £3.50 and remember a little goes a long way, so it will last you for ages.
This is a perfect dinner party or date night supper and works really well with a crispy salad with my vinaigrette recipe which is also on the blog.
A perfect romantic dinner date, Valentine’s dinner for two or a dinner party, just double or triple the quantities for the amount of people you are feeding. This easy risotto tastes delicious and before you think it’s too expensive to cook, I got a frozen lobster for £5.00 from Lidl at the time of writing this. However, my latest update (November 2020) is I recently got one for £6.00 from Morrison’s. It’s a bit of work getting the meat out, but after that it’s easy. For the stock, I can’t praise Knorr fish stock pots highly enough. You would be hard pushed to make a better stock and they are a store cupboard essential round in my kitchen.
This risotto was put on Twitter by David Beckham when he cooked it for his family. I looked at the pictures of him proudly cooking it, and I checked out the ingredients and worked out it was a risotto Milanese. I have recreated it so you can try a bit of the Beckham. It’s a really rich, creamy risotto that would work well with a crisp lettuce salad dressed with my vinaigrette to counterbalance the richness of the risotto which would be a delicious dinner for two on a date night.
Perfect for a vegetarian dinner party, this risotto can be made with any squash instead, so if pumpkins are not in season you can use what it’s available. It’s not only perfect for a Halloween dinner, but it’s delicious all year round too. It’s baked, so there is no need to stand over a hot stove stirring for half an hour unless you want to make it the traditional way (which is fine too). The crispy sage leaves and the caramelised pumpkin taste amazing together and I like it with a little dribble of aged balsamic over the top as well.
Recipe
Serves 3-4.
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
12 sage leaves, chopped
12 sage leaves, fried till crispy
400g risotto rice
800g pumpkin peeled, cored and cubed
1 litre hot chicken or vegetable stock
30g butter
40g of finely grated Parmesan (or plant based parmesan)
More Parmesan to grate on top
You can leave the scallops off if you don’t want them, but this combo of flavours is really good with or without. I get frozen scallops from the supermarket which are cheaper, and more convenient, but the scallops from the fish monger are super fab. The risotto is baked so it’s easy and you don’t have to stand over it, whilst entertaining.
Serves 4.
Ingredients:
For the scallops
How:
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Heat a large oven proof saucepan, which has a lid, over medium heat.
Add the oil and onion and cook until soft, about 4 mins.
Add the saffron, rice and stock, cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes.
Stir in the butter, Parmesan, salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with a sprinkling of parsley, lemon zest and a lemon wedge.
For the scallops, sear the scallops in a hot pan with the olive oil and butter for 1½ minutes each side until golden. Arrange them on top of the risotto.
Serve straight away.
