Vegan MoFo III - Day 9 – Risotto

Today I realized how unfair I have been with one more of my favorite food: risotto! I didn't find a post about it here! But you know, can be just my lack of tagging. So, let's talk about this wonderful Italian dish!

Every time I think about my life before being vegan I realize that I didn't eat too many kinds of food because there are a lot of things that I just started to eat a few years ago. To be true, in the case of the risotto, I just started to eat it with more frequency after Matteo arrived. Yes, I know, shame on me!! But it's never late and for the last (almost) 5 years I have been eating a lot of it. And you can imagine that I was just eating it, not cooking it, 'cause I have an expert of Italian food at home. And he knows how to cook the best risottos ever: risotto alla milanese (the yellow one, sometimes with mushrooms), risotto primavera (with vegetables), risotto alla piemontese (the white one).

But yesterday, excited with my new food processor (am I the only silly person in the world that gets excited with it?!), I decided to cook my first risotto (sometimes I helped Matteo, but never did it all by myself), that I called “Brazilian risotto”. Yes, it is green and yellow! We are having a small problem in Ireland to make risottos (maybe this is the reason that I didn't blog about it yet): we can't find the arborio rice anywhere anymore. So we stayed a few months without cooking risotto but a few weeks ago Matteo found another kind of rice: the parboiled. It's not the same thing but it works. I think my risotto was good and I did enough to lunch and dinner!

lunch

Recipe:

250g parboiled rice (the best quality is Arborio, Vialone Nano or Carnaroli)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (or olive oil)
2 vegetable stock cubes
1 chopped onion
1 sliced zucchini
1 cup of broccoli
2 or 3 teaspoon turmeric
black pepper and parsley (optional)
1 tablespoon vegetable margarine
vegan parmezano

Put the oil in a pan and heat it for a minute. Add the chopped onion and let it fry until it turns gold. Add the rice and let it fry, stirring it, until it gets transparent. The traditional way too prepare risotto is to have the water with the vegetable stock cube (called brodo) separated and add it step by step while the rice is cooking but we cheat on it! Well, we learned from an Italian woman (my mother in law), so I think it's totally fine! So, our way to do is: add the water (enough to totally cover the rice and one inch more), the stock cubes, the turmeric and let it cook for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring it. Add the zucchini, the broccoli and the herbs. Let it cook until the water is mostly absorbed (you have to check it from time to time, but it will take more or less twenty minutes). At this point you have to try the rice to see if it's soft enough (using the Arborio rice is easier to notice that). If it's not, add more water (one cup) and wait the water being absorbed again. Don't forget to stir it sometimes or the rice can start to stick to the pan. When the water is almost gone, turn off the heat and wait 2 or 3 minutes. Add the vegetable margarine and stir it again. Serve it with vegan parmezano on top.

dinner

Vegan Food Top 10 until now:
1. Cupcakes
2. Mushrooms
3. Pizza
4. Soup
5. Risotto