Carb-Loading with Risotto
01.15.09 | in Fitness | 0 Comments Share
Looking for something other than pasta to charge up your glycogen stores? We have a simple celiac-friendly risotto recipe you can whip up at home.
A basic risotto is like a canvas, allowing worry-free experimentation and incorporation of things you love. It's a rich, satisfying comfort food that can act as a side dish or a main course. In addition, if you keep the cheese and oil in check, it can be a great not-the-same-old-pasta-again carb-loading meal leading up to big races. Risotto is naturally gluten free, which is particularly nice for folks with celiac disease, and can easily be made vegetarian.
From a showing-off-in-the-kitchen perspective, risotto is a relatively easy dish to master, but is somehow mystifying and impressive to those that have never made it.
On Your Marks
- 2 cups arborio rice
- 1 medium sweet yellow onion
- 4-6 garlic cloves, whole
- 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 6 cups chicken stock; the only meat in the dish, this can be swapped with vegetable stock for vegetarians
- 1/2 cup dry white wine; a moderately priced wine will be fine—you don't want to use swill, but there's no point in wasting a fantastic bottle on cooking
- 1 package dried morel mushrooms
- pecorino romano cheese
- fresh basil
Get Set
- In a medium-to-large sauce pan, bring the stock to just under a boil.
- Rough chop the entire onion (pictured). There's a standard, magical technique to chopping an onion—do you know it? If not, check out Food Network's excellent video tutorial. Note on the downward strokes how she holds the onion and curls her fingertips in—that's good knife skills, son.
- Flatten each garlic clove with the flat end of your chef's knife. This makes it easier to mince as well as remove the skin (if it's still on). Finely mince the cloves.
- Pour a cup of the heated stock into a small bowl, then add the dried mushrooms. The mushrooms will take about 20 minutes to re-hydrate and reconstitute.
- Chiffonade the basil. To do this, remove the basil leaves from the stem, then stack them one on top of the other. Once you've stacked all the leaves, carefully roll the stack into a cylinder, much like you would see Clint Eastwood rolling his own cigarette in an old Western. Hold the rolled basil down lengthwise, then cut the roll into cross-sections with a sharp knife. Click here to see pictures of this technique.
- Who cut the cheese? You cut the cheese. With a cheese slicer, cut the pecorino romano into nice thin slices.
Go
- Heat a large saute pan over medium heat; when pan is hot, add olive oil. Both butter and olive oil are typically used in preparing risotto, but I stuck with just olive oil to cut down on saturated fats.
- Add the chopped onion to the sautee pan. As they saute, the onions will begin to become translucent. We want to saute them past the translucent point, to where they just begin to brown. This browning is called caramelization, and will provide the risotto a greater depth of flavor, add richness and a subtle undertone of sweetness.
- Once the onions have started caramelizing, wait a few beats then add the minced garlic. Thoroughly distribute the garlic throughout the pan. You don't want the garlic to brown and burn—it'll add a bitter taste and you'll have to start over.
- After another few beats, add the arborio rice. Sautee the rice until the grains turn slightly translucent and begin to toast. There will be slightly nutty smell.
- Remove the reconstituted mushrooms from the stock and give them a rough, thorough chop. DO NOT throw out the stock they were soaking in; if you look you can see a lot of sediment and particles in the stock—this will add a lot of flavor and a richer color color to the risotto.
- Add the chopped mushrooms, then pour the wine into the pan and stir. The alcohol will cook off in about a minute.
- Now comes the fun part. First, add the leftover stock you used to reconstitute the mushrooms to the pan. Stir until the rice has absorbed the liquid.
- With a medium sized ladle, begin adding the stock from the pot to the saute pan one a cup at a time; the process is to add a cup, then stir until the rice has absorbed it. Add another cup, stir until absorbed. Add, stir, absorb.
Over time you will begin to see the rice grains swelling as they absorb the stock. The risotto is done cooking when it takes on a creamy texture. Don't overcook; you want the rice to still be firm. You may not need all the stock to get you there.
When the risotto is done, fold in about half the cheese. You'll notice the mixture thicken up quite a bit. Grind some pepper into the risotto, but do not salt; there should be plenty of salt in the cheese and the stock.
The risotto's ready to be plated up and ated up. To each plating, add more cheese slices on top, as well as some of the chiffonade basil. Serve. Mmmmmmmm.
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