Risotto with Toasted, Crushed Hazelnuts - a Perfect Thanksgiving Side Dish

For Thanksgiving we have a menu we love. Roast turkey, corn bread stuffing with Italian sausage, shiitake mushrooms and Turkish apricots, baked sweet potatoes with butter, cranberry sauce, roasted Brussels sprouts and sautéed string beans with garlic-toasted almonds.

Since I started doing travel writing, I like to include one dish I've learned to make on a trip. Last year, I made Moroccan style pickled vegetables to go with the Kosher dill pickles I've made for years. This year I am going to make risotto with hazelnuts.

On a month long trip in Switzerland, I enjoyed dozens of meals. Since I was researching local Swiss wines, those meals were wine-paired. Needless to say, I had a very good time. At one of the first stops on the trip, our group of six journalists was treated to a dinner at the chef's table at restaurant Le Mont Blanc at Le Crans in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. One of our group was a vegetarian. We always envied her meals, especially that night when she was served risotto with hazelnuts.

That dish made an impression. So, last night I made risotto and hazelnuts. The combination of creamy rice and crunchy nuts is hard to beat. I'm thinking it would be a great Thanksgiving side dish.

Herb Scented Risotto with Toasted, Crushed Hazelnuts

Last night's risotto was made with vegetable stock. Any stock would add to the flavors of the rice, but whatever kind of stock you use, it would improve the dish if you use homemade not store-bought stock. The salt content of processed stock is very high and the flavor is, well, not that great, in my opinion. Making stock is not difficult. Stock freezes so easily if kept in an air-tight container. It will keep for months with no lessening of flavor.

The recipe can be entirely vegetarian or can be adjusted to include meat, poultry and seafood. Adding more vegetables and protein will turn this side dish into an entrée.

If whole, toasted hazelnuts with the skins removed are not available, find whole, raw hazelnuts. Roast in a toaster oven set at 350 F for five minutes. Remove when hot and wrap in a cotton towel. Rub with your hands. The skins will come off. To crush then, place the roasted hazelnuts on a cutting board and press down on the nuts with the flat side of a chefs knife. That will crush them. Use the cutting edge of the knife to more finely chop the nuts. Reserve.

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 cups risotto
4 cups homemade stock (vegetable, chicken, duck, beef, pork or shellfish)
2 cups leafy green (black kale, spinach, Italian parsley) washed, stems removed, finely chopped
1 cup yellow onion, washed, peeled, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, skins and root end removed, finely chopped
5 brown or shiitake mushrooms, washed, pat dried, thinly sliced
1/2 cup whole hazelnuts, toasted, skins removed, crushed
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon sweet butter (optional)
2 cups freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

Directions

Heat a large frying pan with half a tablespoon of olive oil. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Add the leafy greens, onion and garlic. Sauté until lightly browned. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add the rest of the olive oil and heat over a medium-low flame. Add the risotto and sauté for 3-5 minutes until the rice is translucent. Add back the sautéed vegetables and stir well.

Add half a cup stock, stir well and let the rice absorb the liquid. Add a half of cup of stock as the liquid disappears. Continue stirring and adding stock until the rice is al dente. If you run out of stock, a little bit of water can be used.

Finish the risotto with a tablespoon of sweet butter and adjust the seasoning with sea salt and black pepper.

Top with the crushed hazelnuts. Serve with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese on the side.

Risotto with Farmers' Market Fresh Squash Blossoms and Baby Zucchini

Risotto scared me at first. My son Franklin brought a box home from a trip to Italy and it sat in the pantry for years. I had the same fear of risotto I had about cooking a duck. Both seemed to require a skill set that was beyond me.

After much hesitation, I finally took the plunge and you know what I discovered, making risotto is easy, requiring only a little more skill than making pasta.

In fact, think of risotto and pasta as two sisters. The key to both is what goes on top.

Just about everything you like with pasta will work with risotto. Most vegetables, meat, poultry, seafood, and fresh herbs if sauteed first can be added to risotto just the way you'd add them to cooked pasta. And both like a bit of freshly grated cheese on top.

This past Sunday at the Pacific Palisades Farmers' Market, I could have chosen any number of fresh vegetables to use for the risotto: corn, tomatoes, asparagus, peppers--red, yellow, orange, or green--carrots, onions, Italian parsley, kale, or spinach. I settled on squash blossoms with baby zucchini because one of my favorite farmers, John Sweredoski insisted that I had to get them, they were that fresh, that good.

He was right.

Risotto with Farmers' Market Fresh Squash Blossoms and Baby Zucchini

Yield 4 servings

Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups Arborio, Carnaroli, or Vialone Nano rice
10 squash blossoms
6 baby zucchinis, washed, ends trimmed, cut into thin rounds
4 garlic cloves, peeled, finely chopped
6 shiitake or brown mushrooms, washed, thinly sliced and roughly chopped
1/2 yellow onion, peeled, finely chopped
4 cups broth, vegetable, chicken, or beef, preferably home made
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sweet butter
Sea salt and pepper

Method

Slice open each squash blossom. Cut off the stem and pistil and discard. Flatten the blossoms on a cutting board and cut length-wise into thin strips. In a large saute pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil and saute all the vegetables until lightly browned. Remove and set aside.

In the same pan add the other tablespoon of olive oil. Season with sea salt and pepper. Add the risotto and saute on a medium flame, turning frequently, until the grains start to be translucent, about 5 minutes.

Add 1/2 cup of broth, deglazing the pan and stirring the grains with the liquid until the broth is absorbed. Continue adding the broth, 1/2 cup at a time, allowing the rice to absorb the liquid. Keep stirring.

After 10 minutes, add back the sauteed vegetables and mix together with the rice.

After another 5 minutes, add the butter and stir well, continuing to add 1/2 cup of broth at a time. Season with sea salt and pepper. From this point on, start tasting the rice.

When the risotto is done to your taste, Make sure you have enough liquid because a good risotto has a nice amount of gravy.

Serve immediately because the rice will continue to absorb the liquid even after you've taken the pan off the burner. Sprinkle freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese on top.

Variations

Add a roasted tomato, skin removed, roughly torn apart, with its juice

Saute the kernels from one ear of corn with the other vegetables

Saute 1/2 cup finely chopped Italian parsley with the other vegetables

Add 1/2 cup sauteed diced sausage pieces

Add 2 pounds fresh butter clams, cooked in 1/4 cup water for 5 minutes covered over high heat, add the opened clams and broth at the same time you return the sauteed vegetables to the pan

Summer Vegetable Risotto

With summer vegetables appearing in the farmers' markets, a vegetable risotto is a perfect way to feature the bounty of the garden.

This past Sunday at the Palisades Farmers' Market, we picked up several ears of fresh corn and some baby zucchini. We also bought carrots, spinach, Italian parsley, scallions, green garlic, squash, asparagus, English peas, spinach, and broccoli, any of which would be good in the risotto.

To make risotto requires a variety of rice--Carnaroli, Violone or Arborio-- with a high starch content, the source of risotto's distinctive creamy quality.

For the liquid, you have a lot of choices: vegetable, chicken, meat, or fish stock, wine, even water with a pat of butter added for flavor. You'll achieve the best results if you use homemade stock with its fresher taste and lower sodium content.

Risotto likes a steady hand, stirring frequently for 18-20 minutes. Because the rice both releases starches into and absorbs the stock, there is a window of a few minutes when the rice is simultaneously al dente and the broth creamy. Past that point, the grains bond together, becoming gummy like porridge, which still tastes good but isn't risotto.

Those last moments are crucial and the rice wants all your attention. Whatever you want to add to the risotto should either cook in a few minutes like spinach or be prepared ahead and added in those last moments.

Serve immediately because the rice will keep absorbing the broth even after you've removed the risotto from the stove.

Risotto with Farmers' Market Fresh Vegetables

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

1 large tomato, washed
1 small yellow onion, peeled, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled, finely chopped
1 ear of corn, shucked, kernels removed
4 baby zucchini, washed, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups risotto
3 1/2 cups homemade stock, vegetable, chicken, fish, meat, or wine
2 tablespoons olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
1 teaspoon sweet butter (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut out the stem part of the tomato. Put the tomato on an aluminum foil covered cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil and roast for 30 minutes. Remove, let cool to the touch, peel off the skin and discard, tear apart and reserve the pulp and juice in a bowl. The tomato can be roasted ahead and frozen. That way it is ready and waiting whenever you need it to spice up a sauce or stew or, in this case, a risotto.

Drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil into a frying pan. On a medium flame, saute the onions, garlic, and corn kernels until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Remove and set aside.

Drizzle the 2nd tablespoon of olive oil in the pan, season with sea salt and pepper, add the rice, stir and cook for 2 minutes, then add 1/2 cup of stock. The stock will deglaze the pan, adding the caramelized flavors of the vegetables to the rice.

Continue stirring. Add another 1/2 cup of stock as the rice absorbs the stock. Continue adding a 1/2 cup of stock at a time, stirring, and adding more stock. Do this for 18-20 minutes until the rice is al dente.

When the rice is almost cooked, add back the sauteed vegetables and roasted tomato pulp. Stir well, taste and adjust the seasoning with sea salt and pepper, a drizzle of olive oil or a pat of butter.

Serve with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.

Variations

To the saute add 4 mushrooms, brown or shiitake, washed, dried, thinly sliced

To the saute add 1/2 cup finely chopped Italian parsley leaves

Add 1 cup grilled chicken breast, cut into small pieces

Add 1 cup asparagus cut into 1/2" pieces to the saute

Add 1 cup grilled Italian sausage, cut into small pieces