Recipe: pumpkin risotto with roasted garlic
The question ‘what are we going to eat today?’ can be quite a struggle on some days. Instead of taking a frozen pizza out of the freezer, Louise de Brabander shows in her new cookbook Easy dinners that cooking can also be very efficient and quick without compromising on flavour. Try making this pumpkin risotto with roasted garlic and you’ll understand what we mean!
“Some ingredients have the magical ability to make everything taste better. Garlic roasted in the oven is one of them. I’ve been making this roasted pumpkin risotto at least once a week for many winters now. It belongs to the comfort food category that everyone enjoys. It was served as a vegetarian main course on New Year’s Eve, offered comfort to friends with broken hearts, and reliably appears on the table whenever there are many mouths to feed. It’s convivial food, yet with some depth and carefully chosen ingredients.”
Salted farmhouse butter
“Pumpkin risotto may sound too simple to be truly delicious, but it’s the small, indispensable details that make this dish so irresistible. Taking a little extra time to roast the nuts and pumpkin, adding fresh herbs and using quality ingredients such as good salted farmhouse butter, tasty stock and aged Parmigiano Reggiano make all the difference. But the real star of this dish, the reason you serve yourself a second and even a third plate, is the surprising ingredient: roasted garlic. In a hot oven, this distinctive flavour enhancer transforms from crunchy, sharp and pungent into soft and sweet, almost caramelised.”
How to make the pumpkin risotto
- Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
- Drizzle the pumpkin cubes and garlic cloves with olive oil, and season with pepper and salt, chilli flakes, rosemary and oregano. Mix well with your hands and make sure everything is coated in a nice layer of oil. Place in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until the pumpkin has golden-brown edges.
- Heat a little oil in a pan and sweat the shallot over low heat for 3 minutes. Add the rice and stir-fry for 1 minute before adding the wine. Allow the wine to reduce and deglaze with a ladleful of stock. Allow it to reduce again, stirring, and add another ladleful of stock. Repeat this process until all the stock has been used and the risotto rice is cooked. This takes about 20 minutes.
- Place the hazelnuts in an ovenproof dish and put them in the oven for 5–10 minutes. Make sure the nuts do not burn. Leave them to cool briefly, then rub them between your hands to loosen the skins. Coarsely chop the skinned hazelnuts.
- Remove the pumpkin and garlic from the oven. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins, crush them into a purée under the blade of a knife and mix into the risotto together with half of the pumpkin cubes, a generous knob of butter, half of the hazelnuts and half of the Parmesan. Mix well until the pumpkin has been fully incorporated into the risotto.
- Taste and season generously with black pepper and, if necessary, more salt.
- Divide between the plates and finish with the remaining pumpkin cubes, hazelnuts, Parmesan and extra black pepper.
Tip: if you have a few bulbs of garlic left over, set your oven to 180 °C. Remove the outer layers of the garlic bulb, but leave the bulb intact. Drizzle with olive oil and wrap each one individually in a layer of aluminium foil. Roast until soft, for approximately 40–60 minutes (depending on the size of the bulb). Remove from the oven, leave to cool briefly and then carefully squeeze the buttery-soft garlic paste out of its skin. Spread a clove over a piece of artisan baguette, mix it into hummus or another dip, blend it into soup, add it to tomato sauce, incorporate it into a dressing or stir it through this pumpkin risotto. Store leftovers in a glass jar in the refrigerator, covered with a layer of olive oil. That way, you’ll always have a delicious flavour enhancer at hand. Use the infused oil too. Perfect for frying potatoes or incorporating into a vinaigrette.
Title: Easy dinners
Author: Louise de Brabander
Price: €31,99
Publisher: Carrera Culinair
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